DOI 10.1007/s11229-007-9204-7 The illusion of conscious will

argues that conscious will is an illusion, citing a wide range of empirical evidence. I shall begin by surveying some of his arguments. Many are unsuccessful. But one—an argument from the ubiquity of self-interpretation—is more promising. Yet is suffers from an obvious lacuna, offered by so-called ‘dual process ’ theories of reasoning and decision making (Evans, J., & Over, D. (1996). Rationality and reasoning. Psychol-ogy Press; Stanovich, K. (1999). Who is rational? Studies of individual differences in reasoning. Lawrence Erlbaum; Frankish, K. (2004). Mind and supermind. Cambridge University Press). I shall argue that this lacuna can be filled by a plausible a priori claim about the causal role of anything deserving to be called ‘a will. ’ The result is that there is no such thing as conscious willing: conscious will is, indeed, an illusion