- Much of your own volitional behaviour is revealed upon examination as mechanically programmed, conditioned responses whose volitional quality which is what makes it seem uniquely yours is merely an efficient mode of self-awareness - taking the intentional stance with respect to yourself. Where this complex system breaks down, producing errors, blocks, vacillations and ambivalences, is seen as further evidence for subjectivity - preserved in the 'unconscious' is lost to the conscious. The firs cause of volition remains unknown but is somehow equated to consciousness itself or to life, the two being seen as interchangeable. Perhaps the whole thing would not 'work' with out these misprisions, just as your own life would not had gotten underway without the various illusions and foolishnesses that you started out with.