William James: "What the Will Effects" Part 1

Summary: James begins his article by asserting that all animal activity belongs to reflex action; consciousness is simply an adjustment to the environment. Some reactions to the environment are voluntary and others are not. Surprisingly, James argues that the voluntary actions are derived from the involuntary. With involuntary action, the action is not mentally seen or understood until afterwards. In voluntary action properly called, the act is foreseen, the idea preceding its execution. Hence, no action can be voluntary the first time it is performed. Until we have done it, we have no idea of what sort of a thing it is like, and do not know in what direction to set our will to bring it about. We could not picture it, and one cannot will into the void. Once we get a sense for the feeling and what needs to be done, then we can train our voluntary power. Voluntary action is thus a secondary action, not of a primary sort. The consequence is that a creature with no memory can have no will, and that volitional utterances are built out of the automatic. James specifies that he does not mean a man cannot commit a murder voluntarily until he commits one involuntarily. Murder is a complex combination of movements, including crouching, springing, stabbing and the like. These elementary movements cannot voluntarily be performed unless already involuntarily performed.

Psychology’s second point is that our will needs nothing else but a recollection of how movements feel to execute its desires. They are sufficient conditions. All of us experience ideomotor actions. For example, while having a conversation we might become conscious of a pen on the floor, or of some dust on the sleeve. Without interrupting the conversation we brush away the dust or pick up the pen. No express resolve is made; the perception of the object and the fleeting notion of the act seem to bring the action about. James includes amongst these acts snacking on nuts when one is no longer hungry and they meet no express contradiction in the mind (if nothing stops it from having its way). With such actions, no separate fiat of the will is required. James generalizes his claim: anywhere and everywhere the sole known cause for the execution of a movement is the bare idea of the movement’s execution, and that if the idea occurs in a mind empty of other leading ideas, an attempted movement will fatally and infallibly take place. James suggests this is why the hypnotic subject passively acts out nearly every suggestion his operator makes. When ideas harmonize they reinforce a movement, but when they conflict, they block the path of its discharge and inhibit its motor efficacy. James urges that all our thoughts correspond to processes in the cerebral hemispheres. We know that certain thoughts conflict with others and that certain acts are only possible so long as objections to them do not arise. In fact, James thinks that most of our activity is not best described by a creative architectural volition, but by a nodding consent. Most of the time (James gives an arbitrary 75%) our conduct consists in taking off the brakes, and letting ideas and impulses have their way. Volition would in these cases lie in refusing consent. This refusal need not always be energetic either. Either consent or inhibition may require energy, but not as much as we think.

The ideas that most inhibit muscular activity, keep us quiet, are those of pains and pleasures. Think of the paralyzing effects of the bed’s warmth and of the cold in the room when you awaken. Pains and pleasures most urge us to action or to avoid an action. However, James denies psychological egoism: he declares it is absolutely false that pain and pleasure are the only possible or rational inciters to voluntary action. We can act from abstract goods and duties. Thus pleasure/pain regulates, but need not operate; steers, but need not propel. James believes experience alone can decide which ideas have power, and innumerable objects stimulate us. Ninety‐nine times out of a hundred we no more act for the pleasure connected with the action, than we do for the pleasure of the frowning, or blush for the pleasure of the blush. Often blind reactive impulses are there. A drunkard cannot often tell why so often falls prey to temptation. His nerve‐centers are unlocked by every passing conception of a bottle and a glass. He does not thirst for the beverage; the taste of it may even appear repugnant; and he perfectly foresees the morrow’s remorse. But when he thinks of or sees liquor, he finds himself preparing to drink and does not stop himself; more than this he cannot say. James summarizes his thoughts: We are mobile organisms placed in environments full of things that pull and clamp the triggers of our muscular machinery in various pre‐appointed ways. This is the involuntary life. But these involuntary actions form likenesses in images and pleasure‐pain consequences (amongst others). These images in turn incite to new discharges and reinforce and inhibit each other like the originals. This is the volitional life of consent.