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Free will is the capacity or ability to choose between different possible courses of action. [1] Free will is closely linked to the concepts of moral responsibility, praise, culpability, and other judgements which apply only to actions that are freely chosen.
The neuroscience of free will encompasses two main fields of study: volition and agency. Volition, the study of voluntary actions, is difficult to define. [citation needed] If human actions are considered as lying along a spectrum based on conscious involvement in initiating the actions, then reflexes would be on one end, and fully voluntary actions would be on the other. [17]
Spinoza argues that seemingly "free" actions aren't actually free, or that the entire concept is a chimera because "internal" beliefs are necessarily caused by earlier external events. The appearance of the internal is a mistake rooted in ignorance of causes, not in an actual volition, and therefore the will is always determined.
Men were considered "free" only so that they might be considered guilty – could be judged and punished: consequently, every act had to be considered as willed, and the origin of every act had to be considered as lying within the consciousness (and thus the most fundamental psychological deception was made the principle of psychology itself). [42]
the totality in psychology of sensations, perceptions, ideas, attitudes, and feelings of which an individual or a group is aware at any given time or within a particular time span—compare STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS; waking life (as that to which one returns after sleep, trance, fever) wherein all one's mental powers have returned . . .
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Self-agency, also known as the phenomenal will, is the sense that actions are self-generated.Scientist Benjamin Libet was the first to study it, concluding that brain activity predicts the action before one even has conscious awareness of his or her intention to act upon that action (see Neuroscience of free will).
Volition, also known as will or conation, is the cognitive process by which an individual decides on and commits to a particular course of action. It is defined as purposive striving and is one of the primary human psychological functions.