Narrators and comparators: the architecture of agentive self-awareness

Abstract

This paper contrasts two approaches to agentive self-awareness: a highlevel, narrative-based account, and a low-level comparator-based account. We argue that an agent's narrative self-conception has a role to play in explaining their agentive judgments, but that agentive experiences are explained by low-level comparator mechanisms that are grounded in the very machinery responsible for action-production.

How does it feel to act together?

“…There is now a growing consensus that the motor prediction view and the cognitive reconstruction view are not mutually exclusive but complementary and that intrinsic cues (cues provided by the motor system) and extrinsic cues (such as cognitive primes) both contribute to the sense of agency (Bayne & Pacherie, 2007;Gallagher, 2007;Knoblich & Repp, 2009;Pacherie, 2008;Sato, 2009;Synofzik, Vosgerau, & Newen, 2008;Moore, Wegner and Haggard;Moore & Fletcher, 2012).…”

“…One way to try and combine the two approaches is to appeal to the distinction between prereflective experiences or feelings of agency and reflective judgments of agency proposed by several authors (Bayne & Pacherie, 2007;Gallagher, 2007;Haggard & Tsakiris, 2009;Synofzik, Vosgerau, & Newen, 2008) and to argue that while motor processes contribute mainly to feelings of agency, interpretive processes contribute mainly to judgments of agency.…”

Towards a definition of efforts.

“…This account, anticipated by Dilthey (2010), found its first technical formulation in von Holst and Mittelstaedt's (1950) description of the efference-copy mechanism, and has since been constantly refined (see Frith, 2012 for an overview). Comparator-based models have been widely used to explain the phenomenology of agency as well as various related delusions and pathologies (see, e.g., Bayne, 2011;Bayne & Pacherie, 2007;Blakemore, Wolpert, & Frith, 2002;Haggard, 2005;Pacherie, 2008). More to the point, comparator-based models have been used to understand the feeling of effort (Jeannerod, 1983;Lafargue & Franck, 2009).…”

Causally efficacious intentions and the sense of agency: In defense of real mental causation.

“…It is widely agreed that the sense of agency is a complex and graded phenomenon, and it is now common to distinguish between a basic sense of agency and post-act judgments about one's agency (Marcel 2003, Bayne & Pacherie 2007, Gallagher 2007, and Synofzik et al 2008 Wakefield & Dreyfus 1991, Horgan et al 2003, and Bayne 2006. Instead, when I am acting, or when I am about to act, my conscious awareness is usually focused on the parts of the world that I have to change in order to attain my goals (Gallagher 2006 It is a further question whether or not the performance of basic actions is itself accompanied by a sense of agency that represents a causal relation.…”