Prospection by Any Other Name? A Response to Seligman et al. (2013)

We stand in agreement with Seligman et al. (2013, this issue) that prospection is an important psychological process, but we disagree that it has been neglected within the psychological literature. We further question some of the broader claims made by the authors regarding conscious decision making and free will. We argue that future-oriented cognition is fully consistent with deterministic accounts of cognition, including automaticity, and that prospection does little to advance the position of free will.