Both free-will rescue theories falter through internal contradiction

Evidence

Why should an epiphenomenal factor that cannot affect behavior be held morally responsible for it? Faced with this functional impossibility, Wegner (2004) invested the illusory epiphenomenon with powerful casual properties that “can have influences galore.” The illusory self-view as a wrongdoer allegedly makes one feel guilty, prompts restitutive acts for the harm one has caused, and gets one to behave responsibly on future occasions. In Wegner’s conceptual model, the epiphenomenal self-view cannot do any of these moral things because it is structurally disconnected from the behavior system. The contradictory structural connection to the behavior system invests the nonfunctional epiphenomena with causal properties. Wegner’s selective abandon-ment of epiphenomenalism restores accountability for harmful behavior but raises thorny conceptual issues about why the causative self-view is restricted to moral behavior but remains disconnected from the behavior system in all other activity domains. As with Libet’s conscience veto, the effort to carve out an exception in epiphenomenal theory in which it operates causally in morality creates theoretical contradictions. So after Libet’s conscience veto and Wegner’s causal epiphenomenalism, it is back to the conceptual drawing board on how to make a conscious automaton morally accountable for its conduct. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 320

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 320