Bodily awareness and action-effect anticipations in voluntary action
Research output: Contribution to journal › Comment/Debate › Contributed › peer-review
Contributors
Abstract
In his article "On the Necessity of Bodily Awareness for Bodily Action" in this volume of Psyche Hong Yu Wong challenges the claim that bodily awareness is a necessary precondition for being able to voluntarily act with one's body parts (the necessity thesis). Wong discusses empirical findings from studies of (i) deafferented patients, (ii) brain-computer interfaces and (iii) the automaticity of skilled movements, which constitute prima facie counterexamples against a strong version of the necessity thesis. While I consider Wong's arguments as generally convincing, in this commentary I put them in the wider context of psychological theories stressing the role of distal action effects in the control of voluntary action and the experience of agency. Moreover, I point to an ambiguity between first-and third-person readings of the necessity thesis.
Details
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 49-58 |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| Journal | Psyche : an interdisciplinary journal of research on consciousness |
| Volume | 15 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Publication status | Published - 2010 |
| Peer-reviewed | Yes |