It certainly doesn’t come from having access to the brain processes that underlie our actions. After all, I have no insight into the electrochemical particulars of how my nerves are firing or how neurotransmitters are coursing through my brain and bloodstream. Instead, our experience of agency seems to come from inferences we make about the causes of our actions, based on crude sensory data. And, as with any kind of perception based on inference, our experience can be tricked. [...]
These observations point to a fundamental paradox about consciousness. We have the strong impression that we choose when we do and don’t act and, as a consequence, we hold people responsible for their actions. Yet many of the ways we encounter the world don’t require any real conscious processing, and our feeling of agency can be deeply misleading. [...]
The bond between agency and mutual accountability goes back at least as far as 300 BCE. The Greek philosophers, Epicurus and the Stoics, wanted to defend the idea of free will despite believing the universe to be pre-determined by the laws of nature. Free will has two fundamental features, they said. The first is the feeling of being in control: “I am the cause of this event.” The second is a grasp of the counterfactual: “I could have chosen otherwise.” Pangs of regret – something we’ve all experienced – make no sense unless we believe that we could have done something differently. Furthermore, Epicurus believed that we acquire this sense of responsibility via the praise and blame we received from others. By listening to our peers and elders, we become attuned to our capacity to effect change in the world. [...]
What’s more, by considering our experiences and sharing them with others, we can reach a consensus about what the world and we humans are really like. A consensus need not be accurate to be attractive or useful, of course. For a long time everyone agreed that the Sun went round the Earth. Perhaps our sense of agency is a similar trick: it might not be “true,” but it maintains social cohesion by creating a shared basis for morality. It helps us understand why people act as they do – and, as a result, makes it is easier to predict people’s behavior.
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