I use the word illusion when this happens I guess.
Why not just call them "mental concepts"?
There's a case for calling free will an illusion.
You can directly stimulate a neuron to get someone to move his arm up. If you then ask him why he moved his arm he will usually make up an explanation that explains his behavior. He will explain you why he made the free choice to move his arm. Behavior caused by posthypnotic suggestions produces the same effect. T
People makes up a plausible sounding justification for their behavior that's different from the true cause of their behavior if they aren't aware of the true cause. There's the illusion that the person could have made a choice to act differently.
As a result it makes some sense to call free will a cognitive illusion. I doesn't feel to me like "Money" is in the same class. Money is simply a concept. I don't feel on a very primal level that a dollar bill is money the way I feel like I'm having control over my own actions. I identify a dollar bill as money because I learned from someone else that it's money.
Given the history of money I don't think there strong enough evolutionary pressure to have a direct experience of money the way we have a direct experience of free will.
I doesn't feel to me like "Money" is in the same class. Money is simply a concept.
Agreed!
After I posted my great idea that "Determinism Is Just A Special Case Of Randomness" because "if not I don't see how there could be free will in a deterministic universe" I was positively guided by the LW community to read the Free Will Sequence so I am learning more about our biases and how we build illusions like free will and randomness in our minds.
But I don't see a list on LW or Wikipedia of a list of cognitive illusions and I think it would be great to have one of those just as it is useful for many people to visit the List Of Cognitive Biases page as a study reference or even to use in day to day life.
I think these are some cognitive illusions that are normally discussed as such:
- Free will
- Randomness/probability
- Time
- Money
There must be many more, but I don't find a list with summaries and that would great (to help me avoid writing posts like my "great idea" above!).
EDIT: The majority of comments below are about questioning if they are illusions or not and if they should be called cognitive illusions.
I guess there is no list of cognitive illusions because there is no academic agreement about these issues like in cognitive biases which are generally accepted as such!
Thx for the comments!