The Emergence of Free, Intentional Control: Reply to Haselager

Choice is a kind of uncertainty-resolving intention to act that—so it seems—initiates and (in complex cases) guides the completion of the action. It seems to us, then, that we are effective, purpose-driven choosers. But further, it seems that our choosing is free: having chosen one option, it was open to us to have chosen differently. Pim Haselager allows that this description captures our instinctive conception and experience of deliberate agency and that it is prima facie reasonable to accept it. However, he adds that epistemic starting points may be overturned by empirical evidence, and he quickly proceeds to suggest that our common sense conception of agency is in need of significant revision. A serious problem for the scientist who would endorse the reductionist’s rejection of our common sense perspective on conscious experience and agency is that this perspective is quite fundamental to the epistemology of science itself.