[CogSci] [Webinar on April 27] CogIST Cognitive Webinar Series: Patrick Haggard - Beyond Volition

[Cog IST]

Prof. Dr. Patrick Haggard (University College London) will be with us at
the 13th event of the Cognitive Webinar series.

Date: April 27th, Thursday
Time: 18:00 (GMT +3), 17:00 (CET), 11:00 AM (EDT)

In order to join the event, please fill the application form here:
https://forms.gle/SQRcViuQLU9gbLud7

*Beyond Volition*
Voluntary actions are actions that agents choose to make. Volition is the
set of cognitive processes that implement such choice and initiation. These
processes are often held essential to modern societies, because they form
the cognitive underpinning for concepts of individual autonomy and
individual responsibility. Nevertheless, psychology and neuroscience have
struggled to define volition, and have also struggled to study it
scientifically. Laboratory experiments on volition, such as those of Libet,
have been criticised, often rather naively, as focussing exclusively on
meaningless actions, and ignoring the factors that make voluntary action
important in the wider world. In this talk, I will first review these
criticisms, and then look at extending scientific approaches to volition in
three directions that may enrich scientific understanding of volition.
First, volition becomes particularly important when the range of possible
actions is large and unconstrained - yet most experimental paradigms
involve minimal response spaces. We have developed a novel paradigm for
eliciting de novo actions through verbal fluency, and used this to estimate
the elusive conscious experience of generativity. Second, volition can be
viewed as a mechanism for flexibility, by promoting adaptation of
behavioural biases. This view departs from the tradition of defining
volition by contrasting internally-generated actions with
externally-triggered actions, and instead links volition to model-based
reinforcement learning. By using the context of competitive games to
re-operationalise the classic Libet experiment, we identified a form of
adaptive autonomy that allows agents to reduce biases in their action
choices. Interestingly, this mechanism seems not to require explicit
understanding and strategic use of action selection rules, in contrast to
classical ideas about the relation between volition and conscious, rational
thought. Third, I will consider volition teleologically, as a mechanism for
achieving counterfactual goals through complex problem-solving. This
perspective gives a key role in mediating between understanding and
planning on the one hand, and instrumental action on the other hand. Taken
together, these three cognitive phenomena of generativity, flexibility, and
teleology may partly explain why volition is such an important cognitive
function for organisation of human behaviour and human flourishing. I will
end by discussing how this enriched view of volition can relate to
individual autonomy and responsibility.

Haggard, P. (2019). The Neurocognitive Bases of Human Volition. *Annual
Review of Psychology, 70*, 9-28.
https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-010418-103348

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