Beyond the comparator model: A multi-factorial two-step account of agency
Consciousness and Cognition 17 (1):219-239 (2008)
| Abstract | There is an increasing amount of empirical work investigating the sense of agency, i.e. the registration that we are the initiators of our own actions. Many studies try to relate the sense of agency to an internal feed-forward mechanism, called the ‘‘comparator model’’. In this paper, we draw a sharp distinction between a non-conceptual level of feeling of agency and a conceptual level of judgement of agency. By analyzing recent empirical studies, we show that the comparator model is not able to explain either. Rather, we argue for a two-step account: a multifactorial weighting process of different agency indicators accounts for the feeling of agency, which is, in a second step, further processed by conceptual modules to form an attribution judgement. This new framework is then applied to disruptions of agency in schizophrenia, for which the comparator model also fails. Two further extensions are discussed: We show that the comparator model can neither be extended to account for the sense of ownership (which also has to be differentiated into a feeling and a judgement of ownership) nor for the sense of agency for thoughts. Our framework, however, is able to provide a unified account for the sense of agency for both actions and thoughts. | |||||||||
| Keywords | Sense of agency | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,865 |
| External links |
 |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesShaun Gallagher (2010). Multiple Aspects of Agency. New Ideas in Psychology.
Elisabeth Pacherie (2007). The Sense of Control and the Sense of Agency. Psyche 13 (1):1 - 30.
Glenn Carruthers (forthcoming). A Problem for Wegner and Colleagues' Model of the Sense of Agency. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 9 (3):341-357.
Gottfried Vosgerau & Albert Newen (2007). Thoughts, Motor Actions, and the Self. Mind and Language 22 (1):22–43.
Costas Pagondiotis & Spyros Petrounakos (2007). The Sense of Agency and the Naturalization of the Mental. The Proceedings of the Twenty-First World Congress of Philosophy 6:139-143.
Matthis Synofzik, Gottfried Vosgerau & Albert Newen (2008). I Move, Therefore I Am: A New Theoretical Framework to Investigate Agency and Ownership. Consciousness and Cognition 17 (2):411 - 424.
Tim Bayne & Elisabeth Pacherie (2007). Narrators and Comparators: The Architecture of Agentive Self-Awareness. Synthese 159 (3):475 - 491.
Glenn Carruthers (2009). Commentary on Synofzik, Vosgerau and Newen. Consciousness and Cognition 18 (2):515 - 520.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2009-11-30Total downloads22 ( #57,024 of 556,769 )Recent downloads (6 months)6 ( #13,000 of 556,769 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
