Self delusions.

• Position: Letter to the Editor

Julian Sanchez's well-reasoned review of Owen Flanagan's The Problem of Soul ("Self Delusions,"January) may be further developed on two crucial fronts.

First, Flanagan's general contention (as summarized by Sanchez) that "it would not count as an act of free will if some nondeterministic quantum fluctuation" causally contributed to an eventual action (an argument long rehashed since the advent of quantum physics) presupposes a myopic view of "freedom" and "self-authorship."

As posited by the Oriental doctrine of wu wei, one may freely--and quite literally--open one's mind to random neurophysiological inputs and still claim personal responsibility for that act of openness, if not sole authorship for its consequences. On this nontraditional account of free will, we retain self-authorship by virtue of freely deciding to initiate an undetermined "value experiment."

Second, even without a libertarian free will we are still, as Sanchez highlights, left with the option of being more or less reflective with respect to determined actions. In this sense, the real "problem of the soul" may turn out to be that we have been focusing on free will rather than free consciousness.

Christian P. Erickson

San...