Abstract:Necessarily, if S lacks the ability to exercise (some degree of) control, S is not an agent. If S is not an agent, S cannot act intentionally, responsibly, or rationally, nor can S possess or exercise free will. In spite of the obvious importance of control, however, no general account of control exists. In this paper I reflect on the nature of control itself. I develop accounts of control’s exercise and control’s possession that illuminate what it is for degrees of control—that is, the degree of control an ag… Show more
“…In my view, an agent exercises a higher degree of control over an instance of behaviour B to the extent that B more closely matches the representational content of the mental state(s) guiding B, and so long as the causal pathways producing B involve no deviant causation (I offer an analysis of non-deviant causation in Shepherd, 2014). Paradigmatically, the relevant mental state will be an intention, but 9 It is important to note that this way of conceptualising conscious control makes no commitments to the function of consciousness, as that term is normally conceptualised.…”
The extensive involvement of nonconscious processes in human behaviour has led some to suggest that consciousness is much less important for the control of action than we might think. In this article I push against this trend, developing an understanding of conscious control that is sensitive to our best models of overt (that is, bodily) action control. Further, I assess the cogency of various zombie challenges—challenges that seek to demote the importance of conscious control for human agency. I argue that though nonconscious contributions to action control are evidently robust, these challenges are overblown.
“…In my view, an agent exercises a higher degree of control over an instance of behaviour B to the extent that B more closely matches the representational content of the mental state(s) guiding B, and so long as the causal pathways producing B involve no deviant causation (I offer an analysis of non-deviant causation in Shepherd, 2014). Paradigmatically, the relevant mental state will be an intention, but 9 It is important to note that this way of conceptualising conscious control makes no commitments to the function of consciousness, as that term is normally conceptualised.…”
The extensive involvement of nonconscious processes in human behaviour has led some to suggest that consciousness is much less important for the control of action than we might think. In this article I push against this trend, developing an understanding of conscious control that is sensitive to our best models of overt (that is, bodily) action control. Further, I assess the cogency of various zombie challenges—challenges that seek to demote the importance of conscious control for human agency. I argue that though nonconscious contributions to action control are evidently robust, these challenges are overblown.
“…The general understanding of control has not advanced too far since then. Instead, as Joshua Shepherd (Shepherd ) observes, most writers on control are far more interested in types of control—managerial, guidance, voluntary, direct, indirect, cognitive, and so on—than in explaining control simpliciter. Shepherd notes that the common thread tying these various subtypes together is that one's degree of control has to do with one's rate of success in executing one's intentions, and offers a rare definition of general control:An agent J exercises control in service of an intention I to degree D in some token circumstance T if and only if (a) J's behavior in T approximates the representational content of I to (at least) degree D, (b) J's behavior in T is within a normal range for J, where the normal range is defined by J's behavior across a sufficiently large and well‐selected set of counterfactual circumstances C of which T is a member, (c) the causal pathway producing J's behavior in T is among those normally responsible for producing J's successes at reaching the level of content‐approximation represented by D across C. (Shepherd , 410)…”
mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…An agent J exercises control in service of an intention I to degree D in some token circumstance T if and only if (a) J's behavior in T approximates the representational content of I to (at least) degree D, (b) J's behavior in T is within a normal range for J, where the normal range is defined by J's behavior across a sufficiently large and well‐selected set of counterfactual circumstances C of which T is a member, (c) the causal pathway producing J's behavior in T is among those normally responsible for producing J's successes at reaching the level of content‐approximation represented by D across C. (Shepherd , 410)…”
mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…The general understanding of control has not advanced too far since then. Instead, as Joshua Shepherd (Shepherd 2014) observes, most writers on control are far more interested in types of control-managerial, guidance, voluntary, direct, indirect, cognitive, and so on-than in explaining control simpliciter. Shepherd notes that the common thread tying these various subtypes together is that one's degree of control has to do with one's rate of success in executing one's intentions, and offers a rare definition of general control:…”
This essay argues that current theories of action fail to explain agentive control because they have left out a psychological capacity central to control: attention. This makes it impossible to give a complete account of the mental antecedents that generate action. By investigating attention, and in particular the intention-attention nexus, we can characterize the functional role of intention in an illuminating way, explicate agentive control so that we have a uniform explanation of basic cases of causal deviance in action as well as other defects of agency (distraction), explain cases of skilled agency and sharpen questions about the role of thought in agency. This provides for a different orientation in the theory of action.
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