The neural antecedents to voluntary action: Response to commentaries

Cognitive neuroscience must attend to the conceptual coherence of its hypotheses as well as to their empirical support. Examining the most influential studies of the neural antecedents to voluntary action, our Discussion Paper sought to identify the real-world consequences of neglecting the former in what we argued has been too narrow a pursuit of the latter. Though conceptual in form, our analysis is sharply empirical in its conclusions, revealing what have long been thought to be momentous experimental observations—such as the readiness potential—as the outcome of previously unidentified confounds that rob them of significance. Conversely, we suggested that experimental studies of two-way control, amongst other defining features of the voluntary, have been given less emphasis than the subject demands. Here, we ramify our analysis down the paths identified by others in the commentaries we received.