Superstitious conditioning shapes the illusory experience of free will under causal determinism.

The experience of free will is a conditioned illusion—a misattribution of causality reinforced through operant learning. Decisions and actions are determined, but the temporal contiguity of premotor and motor activations gives rise to superstitious conditioning, shaping an experience of and belief in free will compatible with determinism. Sustained by dopaminergic circuits and reinforced by sensorimotor feedback loops, this framework situates free will as an experiential phenomenon rooted in the functional neuroanatomy of learning. Implications for medicine, ethics, and law are discussed, along with conditions under which the experience may be disrupted or restructured.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Discussions of free will often center on the question of whether actions are determined, with a special focus on causes, effects, and when subjects experience the desire to act relative to neural events. However, because the only evidence for the existence of free will is the subjective experience itself, explanation must center on the phenomenal: why do we feel free? Here, we propose a neuropsychological model of free will as a conditioned illusion-a misattribution of causality reinforced through operant learning. First, we postulate that decisions and actions are determined. Then, drawing on classical findings such as the readiness potential preceding conscious intention and more recent work on active inference, we propose that the temporal contiguity of premotor and motor activations gives rise to superstitious conditioning, shaping an experience of-and belief in-free will that is compatible with determinism. Sustained by dopaminergic circuits and reinforced by sensorimotor feedback loops, our framework situates free will as an experiential phenomenon rooted in the functional neuroanatomy of learning. We discuss implications for medicine, ethics, law, and suggest conditions under which the experience of free will may be disrupted or restructured by disease, pharmacology, and reinforcement history.