Voluntary Exertion of the Body: A Volitional Account

Abstract

The action of opening a door consists in the agent’s voluntarily exerting parts of her body — her arm and hand, let us suppose — in such a way that that action (the voluntary exertion of the body) causes the door to open. (By “voluntary” here I mean simply the opposite of “involuntary”: an exertion of the body is voluntary if and only if it is not involuntary. It is an exertion that occurs in the familiar way exertions do when they are experienced as directly controlled, whether or not they are deliberated ox freely willed or even intentional.) It is possible in principle to open a door without using any voluntary exertion to do so — conceivably a person’s brain could be so wired to a door that by merely saying mentally, “Open sesame!”, and without any exertion of her body, she could cause the door to open. There actually do occur other ways in which one can act on or with one’s body and thereby act on the surrounding world without engaging in any voluntary exertion. (For example, sexual arousal can be produced by forming appropriate mental images.) And our lives are filled with mental actions — mentally saying things, forming mental images, and the like — which, though they may affect the body, do not in themselves and in virtue of their very notion include any bodily event, whether voluntary exertion or other.