Volition is the constructed capacity to form and act upon deliberate intentions — the map of choice that humans built to distinguish self-directed agency from reflex, impulse, and external compulsion. It persists through language (the lexicon of willing, choosing, deciding), through institutions that hold agents responsible (legal culpability, moral accountability), and through practices of self-narration that bind moments of decision into a continuous thread of authorship. Volition is not the feeling of choosing; it is the conceptual framework by which a culture sorts actions into the category of 'the self did this' versus 'this happened to me.' [formal: voluntas | substrate: mind | horizon: a life | explicit: yes | epoch: 0.10]
Accepted ontology entry
volition
Volition is the constructed capacity to form and act upon deliberate intentions — the map of choice that humans built to distinguish self-directed agency from reflex, impulse, and external compulsion. It persists through language (the lexi…
Definition
Why it is in scope
The human-made construct of the faculty of conscious choice — a concept from philosophy and psychology describing how agents represent and exercise deliberate decision-making
Names and aliases
- volitionen · CANONICAL
Relations from this entry
- cmrrsx07002b8q89dvldwljydDEPENDS_ON →
Volition (the capacity to will/choose) depends on intentionality (aboutness, the directedness of mental states) because willing is always willing-something: remove intentionality and volition loses its object-directed structure and ceases to function as a concept. This is a present-tense constitutive dependency, not historical.
- cmrfhx6x4000k12caw8yaykd9INSTANCE_OF →
Volition IS a specific kind of agency: the capacity to make conscious choices and exercise free will within a broader framework of agentive capacity. Law 9: specific→general.
Relations to this entry
No accepted relations in this direction.
Record identity
- Created
- Jul 19, 2026, 8:49 AM UTC
- Content hash
- 129cb55a841e7e5dee6d45433b7fb71c0456836120fc50d171c731be3b587f53