It is commonly held that implicit learning is based largely on familiarity. It is also commonly held that familiarity is not affected by intentions. It follows that people should not be able to use familiarity to distinguish strings from two different implicitly learned grammars. In two experiments, subjects were trained on two grammars and then asked to endorse strings from only one of the grammars. Subjects also rated how familiar each string felt and reported whether or not they used familiarity (...) to make their grammaticality judgment. We found subjects could endorse the strings of just one grammar and ignore the strings from the other. Importantly, when subjects said they were using familiarity, the rated familiarity for test strings consistent with their chosen grammar was greater than that for strings from the other grammar. Familiarity, subjectively defined, is sensitive to intentions and can play a key role in strategic control. (shrink)

The power to exercise control is a crucial feature of agency. Necessarily, if S cannot exercise some degree of control over anything - any state of affairs, event, process, object, or whatever - 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 my dissertation I reflect on the nature of control, and on the roles consciousness plays in its exercise. (...) I first consider the fragmented state of philosophical and empirical work on control. I argue that a mature philosophy of agency stands in need of a detailed personal-level account of control, and I begin by explicating a notion I call intentional control. On this explication, an agent J exercises intentional control in service of an intention X to the degree that behavior of J's for which X plays a (non-deviant) causal role approximates the representational content of X. With this explication in hand, I offer analyses of theoretically salient points along a degreed spectrum (covering, e.g., the exercise of minimal, successful, and perfect intentional control). Next, I develop an account of the degrees of intentional control's possession. This involves elucidation of ingredients of intentional control, i.e. those features of agents and environments that constitute an agent's causal potency and skill. It turns out that an agent's possession of control regarding an intention is intimately tied to her ability to repeatedly execute that intention across some specified (hypothetical) set of scenarios. Finally, I discuss a number of potentially fruitful applications of the account. In chapter three I confront a strong intuition, persistent in both philosophy and cognitive science, that consciousness is somehow intimately involved in the exercise of control. In this connection recent empirical work indicates the causal powers of consciousness remain poorly understood. I argue that Functional Agnosticism - the view that any claim regarding a function of consciousness for behavior is currently underdetermined by the data - is the wisest position on the causal powers of consciousness. Recognition of this unsatisfying state of affairs motivates reflection on what might enable progress beyond it. I argue that establishing a causal function for consciousness is facilitated by clarity on several issues. First, what is the sense of consciousness at issue? I isolate state consciousness, discuss the potential relevance of various types of conscious states, and distinguish between ambitious and modest approaches to the causal powers of state consciousness. In short, ambitious approaches seek to understand the causal contributions of a conscious mental state in virtue of the fact that the state is conscious; modest approaches seek to understand the causal contributions of conscious mental states, full stop. I argue that for various theoretical purposes, both approaches can be useful. Second, what is the sense of control at issue? I argue that for many important theoretical purposes, intentional control is the relevant sense. Finally, I illustrate the usefulness of clarity on these issues by examining recent work on the roles of conscious and unconscious vision for action. This work suggests that some important subset of our overt action is controlled by non-conscious processes. I apply insights developed earlier, noting common mistakes made in this literature, and highlighting important empirical possibilities these mistakes obscure. In later chapters I develop a novel account of conscious control. In chapter four I develop a central part of the account, which involves a view on the intentional structure of conscious trying. The leading view entails that conscious trying possesses a descriptive (or thetic) structure. Based on relevant empirical work concerning deafferented and paralyzed patients, I argue for the view that conscious trying is (at least) partially constituted by directive (or telic) structure. Finally, I argue that the exercise of conscious control is best understood as an exercise of intentional control for which the experience of trying plays a constitutive role. After presenting arguments for this view and defending the view against objections, I discuss the importance of conscious control for a mature philosophy of mind and agency. (shrink)

Understanding and controlling our minds is one of the most fascinating features of human cognition. It has often been assumed that this ability requires a theoretical understanding of psychological states. This assumption has recently been put under pressure by so called mindshaping approaches. We agree that these approaches provide us with a new way of self-understanding and that they enable a very powerful form of self-regulation which we label narrative control. However, we insist that there still is a crucial (...) role for a theoretical understanding of psychological states in human cognition. We argue that this is because a theoretical understanding is necessary for all intentional control of the mind. Keywords: mindreading; mindshaping; narrative control; manipulative control; folk psychology. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that, to make intentional actions fully intelligible, we need to posit representations of action the content of which is nonconceptual. I further argue that an analysis of the properties of these nonconceptual representations, and of their relation- ships to action representations at higher levels, sheds light on the limits of intentional control. On the one hand, the capacity to form nonconceptual representations of goal-directed movements underscores the capacity to acquire executable concepts of (...) these movements, thus allowing them to come under intentional control. On the other hand, the degree of autonomy these nonconceptual representations enjoy, and the specific temporal constraints stemming from their role in motor control, set limits on intentional control over action execution. (shrink)

This article reports an interesting link between the psychophysical property of intentional control of perceptual switching and the underlying neural activities. First, we revealed that the timing of perceptual switching for a dynamical dot quartet can be controlled by the observers' intention, without eye movement. However, there is a clear limitation to this control, such that each animation frame of the stimulus must be presented for a sufficiently long time length; in other words, the frequency of the (...) stimulus alternation must be sufficiently slow for the control. The typical stimulus onset asynchrony for a 50% level of success was about 275 ms for an average of 10 observers. On the basis of psychophysical property, we designed three experiments for investigating the neural process with a magnetoencephalography. They revealed that: (1) a peak component occurring about 300 ms after a reversal was stronger when the direction of perceived motion was switched intentionally than when it was not switched, and (2) neural components about 30–40 ms and 240–250 ms after the reversal of the stimulus animation were stronger when perception was altered intentionally than when it was switched unintentionally. The 300 ms component is consistent with a previous study about passive perceptual switching (Struber and Herrmann [2002]: Cogn Brain Res 14:370–382), but the intentional effect was seemed to be a different component from the well-known P300 component. (shrink)

Skill or control is commonly regarded as a necessary condition for intentional action. This received wisdom is challenged by experiments conducted by Joshua Knobe and Thomas Nadelhoffer, which suggest that moral considerations sometimes trump considerations of skill and control. I argue that this effect (as well as the Knobe effect) can be explained in terms of the role normative reasons play in the concept of intentional action. This explanation has significant advantages over its rivals. It involves (...) at most a conservative extension rather than a radical revision of what we tend to believe about intentional action, and it fits better with the way we conceive of the relation between intentional action and moral responsibility. (shrink)

This chapter challenges the assumption of attention functioning as a means of preventing consciousness from getting overloaded, and also challenges the assumption of any relationships between management of scarce resources and the original biological function of attention. It emphasizes that attention is directly derived from mechanisms governing the control of basic movements. The author establishes the theoretical stage through discussions on the implications of the brain’s preference to stimulus events and action plans in a feature-based manner and processing information (...) through different mechanisms. The chapter also discusses many empirical findings supporting the conception of action planning and action control having the potential to determine perception and attention. (shrink)

Intentional action is, in some sense, non-accidental, and one common way action theorists have attempted to explain this is with reference to control. The idea, in short, is that intentional action implicates control, and control precludes accidentality. But in virtue of what, exactly, would exercising control over an action suffice to make it non-accidental in whatever sense is required for the action to be intentional? One interesting and prima facie plausible idea that we (...) wish to explore in this paper is that control is non-accidental in virtue of requiring knowledge – either knowledge-that or knowledge-how (e.g., Beddor and Pavese 2021; cf., Setiya 2008; 2012 and Habgood-Coote 2018). We review in detail some key recent work defending such knowledge-centric theories of control, and we show that none of these accounts holds water. We conclude with some discussion about how control opposes the sort of luck intentional action excludes without doing so by requiring knowledge (that- or how). (shrink)

Intentional action is, in some sense, non-accidental, and one common way action theorists have attempted to explain this is with reference to control. The idea, in short, is that intentional action implicates control, and control precludes accidentality. But in virtue of what, exactly, would exercising control over an action suffice to make it non-accidental in whatever sense is required for the action to be intentional? One interesting and prima facie plausible idea that we (...) wish to explore in this paper is that control is non-accidental in virtue of requiring knowledge—either knowledge-that or knowledge-how (e.g., Beddor and Pavese 2021; cf., Setiya 2008; 2012 and Habgood-Coote 2018). We review in detail some key recent work defending such knowledge-centric theories of control, and we show that none of these accounts holds water. We conclude with some discussion about how control opposes the sort of luck intentional action excludes without doing so by requiring knowledge (that- or how). (shrink)

This paper considers a view according to which there are certain symmetries between the nature of belief and that of intention. I do not defend this Symmetry View in detail, but rather try to adjudicate between different versions of it: what I call Evaluative, Normative and Teleological versions. I argue that the central motivation for the Symmetry View in fact supports only a specific Teleological version of the view.

In this chapter I defend a novel view of the relationships among intention for the future, self-control, and co-operation. I argue that when an agent forms an intention for the future she comes to regard herself as criticizable if she does not act in accordance with her intention and as praiseworthy if she does. In forming intentions, then, agents acquire dispositions to have reflexive evaluative attitudes. In contexts where the agent has inclinations that run contrary to her unrescinded intention, (...) these evaluative attitudes help her to resist these inclinations. Intentions have, in other words, a built-in mechanism for self-control. I go on to argue that this mechanism can also function as a mechanism for co-operative behaviour. Sometimes a common species of co-operation just is the exercise of self-controlled behaviour in a social context. If this is on the right track, agents like us are not just equipped to formulate and abide by plans for the future, we are also thereby equipped for exercising self-control and participating in co-operative ventures. (shrink)

Can one be fooled into believing that one intended an action that one in fact did not intend? Past experimental paradigms have demonstrated that participants, when provided with false perceptual feedback about their actions, can be fooled into misperceiving the nature of their intended motor act. However, because veridical proprioceptive/perceptual feedback limits the extent to which participants can be fooled, few studies have been able to answer our question and induce the illusion to intend. In a novel paradigm addressing this (...) question, participants were instructed to move a line on the computer screen by use of a phony brain–computer interface. Line movements were actually controlled by computer program. Demonstrating the illusion to intend, participants reported more intentions to move the line when it moved frequently than when it moved infrequently. Consistent with ideomotor theory, the finding illuminates the intimate liaisons among ideomotor processing, the sense of agency, and action production. (shrink)

Common-sense folk psychology and mainstream philosophy of action agree about decisions: these are under an agent's direct control, and are thus intentional actions for which agents can be held responsible. I begin this paper by presenting a problem for this view. In short, since the content of the motivational attitudes that drive deliberation and decision remains open-ended until the moment of decision, it is unclear how agents can be thought to exercise control over what they decide at (...) the moment of deciding. I note that this problem might motivate a non-actional view of deciding?a view that decisions are not actions, but are instead passive events of intention acquisition. For without an understanding of how an agent might exercise control over what is decided at the moment of deciding, we lack a good reason for maintaining commitment to an actional view of deciding. However, I then offer the required account of how agents exercise control over decisions at the moment of deciding. Crucial to this account is an understanding of the relation of practical deliberation to deciding, an understanding of skilled deliberative activity, and the role of attention in the mental action of deciding. (shrink)

The ascription of intentional states to the self involves knowledge, or at least claims to knowledge. Armed with the working definition of knowledge as 'the ability to do things, or refrain from doing things, or believe, or want, or doubt things, for reasons that are facts' [Hyman, J. Philos. Quart. 49:432—451], I sketch a simple competence model of acting and believing from knowledge and when knowledge is defeated by un-experienced changes of state. The model takes the form of three (...) concentric circles. The 'periphery' is analogous to Fodor's [(1983), The modularity of mind. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA] input systems. The 'core' contains copies of peripheral representations, and between these representations there is executive competition. At the 'nucleus', operations are performed on the core representations of, at least, negation and recursion. I argue that this provides a fruitful way in which to conceptualise why theory-of-mind tasks challenge pre-school children, how some degree of first-person authority is mental state attribution is possible, and how executive inhibition is achieved. (shrink)

We investigate flexibility and problem solving in skilled action. We conducted a field study of mountain bike riding that required a learner rider to cope with major changes in technique and equipment. Our results indicate that relatively inexperienced individuals can be capable of fairly complex 'on-the-fly' problem solving which allows them to cope with new conditions. This problem solving is hard to explain for classical theories of skill because the adjustments are too large to be achieved by automatic mechanisms and (...) too complex and rapid to be achieved by cognitive processes as they are usually understood. A recent theory, Mesh, can explain these results because it posits that skill-specific cognitive abilities develop during skill learning and that control typically involves an interplay between cognitive and automatic mechanisms. Here we develop Mesh further, providing a detailed explanation for these problem solving abilities. We argue that causal representation, metacognitive awareness and other forms of performance awareness combine in the formulation and control of action strategies. We also argue that the structure of control present in this case is inconsistent with Bratman's model of intentions, and that, in the face of high uncertainty and risk, intentions can be much more labile than Bratman recognises. In addition, we found limitations and flaws in problem solving which illuminate the representations involved. Finally, we highlight the crucial role of social and cultural learning in the development of complex skills. (shrink)

We present a novel, sophisticated intention‐based control system for a mobile robot built from an extremely inexpensive webcam and radio‐controlled toy vehicle. The system visually observes humans participating in various playground games and infers their goals and intentions through analyzing their spatiotemporal activity in relation to itself and each other, and then builds a coherent narrative out of the succession of these intentional states. Starting from zero information about the room, the rules of the games, or even which (...) vehicle it controls, it learns rich relationships between players, their goals and intentions, probing uncertain situations with its own behavior. The robot is able to watch people playing various playground games, learn the roles and rules that apply to specific games, and participate in the play. The narratives it constructs capture essential information about the observed social roles and types of activity. After watching play for a short while, the system is able to participate appropriately in the games. We demonstrate how the system acts appropriately in scenarios such as chasing, follow‐the‐leader, and variants of tag. (shrink)

This abstract presents a novel brain-computer interface (BCI) framework to control a prosthetic leg, for the rehabilitation of patients suffering from locomotive disorders, using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). fNIRS signals corresponding to walking intention and rest are used to initiate and stop the gait cycle and a nonlinear proportional derivative computed torque controller (PD-CTC) with gravity compensation is used to control torques of hip and knee joints for minimization of position error. The brain signals of walking intention and (...) rest tasks are acquired from primary motor cortex in the left hemisphere for nine subjects. After acquiring brain signals, in order to remove motion artifacts and physiological noises, the performance of six different filters i.e. Kalman, Wiener, Gaussian, hemodynamic response filter (hrf), Band-pass and finite impulse response, is evaluated. Afterwards, six different features are extracted from oxygenated hemoglobin signals and their different combinations were used for classification. The classification performance of five different classifiers i.e. artificial neural network, quadratic discriminant analysis, linear discriminant analysis (LDA), Naïve Bayes and support vector machine (SVM) is used. The classification accuracies obtained from SVM using hrf filter are significantly higher (p < 0.005) than the other combinations of classifier and filters. These accuracies are 77.5%, 72.5%, 68.3%, 74.2%, 73.3%, 80.8%, 65%, 76.7%, and 86.7% for all nine subjects. The control commands generated using classifier initiate and stop the gait cycle of the prosthetic leg whose knee and hip torques are controlled using PD-CTC to minimize position error. The proposed scheme can be effectively used for neurofeedback training and rehabilitation of lower limb amputation of paralyzed patients. (shrink)

Many theorists writing about moral responsibility accept that voluntary control is necessary for responsibility. Call such theorists volitionists. Recently, volitionism has been called into question by theorists I call nonvolitionists. Yet neither volitionists nor nonvolitionists have carefully articulated a clear volitionist thesis, nor have they sufficiently explained the concept of voluntary control that somehow seems connected to volitionism. I argue that attempts to explain the volitionist thesis, voluntary control, and their relation are more problematic than have previously (...) been recognized. Instead, I recommend understanding volitionism in terms of intentional actions and omissions. This understanding has several benefits. It clarifies the debate and its parameters, it avoids the problematic notion of voluntary control while relying on the clearer notion of intentional action, and it highlights that the debate between volitionists and nonvolitionists essentially concerns the nature and scope of obligations. As a result, understanding volitionism in terms of intentional actions and omissions can help breathe new life into the volitionist debate. (shrink)

On the surface, it seems intuitively plausible that if an agent luckily manages to perform a desired action (e.g., rolling a six with a fair die or winning the lottery), the performance of which is not the result of any relevant skill on her part, we should not say that she performed the action intentionally. This intuition suggests that our concept of intentional action is sensitive to considerations of skill, luck, and causal control. Indeed, some philosophers have claimed (...) that in order for an action to be performed intentionally it must be performed with a relevant amount of skill or control - i.e., an intentional action cannot simply be the result of luck. On this view, skill and control are necessary conditions of our everyday concept of intentional action. In this essay, I discuss empirical evidence that challenges this claim. After briefly setting the stage, I examine Al Mele and Paul Moser's thorough analysis of intentional action - paying particular attention to some of the interesting scenarios they offer in support of their position. Next, I discuss the results of some simple psychological experiments that show that people's judgments concerning whether actions are intentional can often be affected by the moral features of these actions - features that may trump considerations of skill, luck, and control. Finally, I conclude that if this is correct, philosophers who claim that skill and control are necessary conditions of the folk concept of intentional action appear to be mistaken. One can test attempted philosophical analyses of intentional action partly by ascertaining whether what these analyses entail about particular actions is in line with what the majority of non-specialists would say about these actions if there is a widely shared concept of intentional action, such judgments provide evidence about what the concept is, and a philosophical analysis of intentional action that is wholly unconstrained by that concept runs the risk of having nothing more than a philosophical fiction as its subject matter. (Mele, 2001, p. 27). (shrink)

In the late preschool years children acquire a "theory of mind", the ability to ascribe intentional states, including beliefs, desires and intentions, to themselves and others. In this paper I trace how children's ability to ascribe intentions is derived from parental attempts to hold them responsible for their talk and action, that is, the attempt to have their behavior meet a normative standard or rule. Self-control is children's developing ability to take on or accept responsibility, that is, the (...) ability to ascribe intentions to themselves. This is achieved, I argue, when they possess the ability to hold an utterance or rule in mind in the form of a quoted expression, and second, when they grasp the causal relation between the rule and their action. The account of how children learn to ascribe intention to themselves and others will then be used to explore the larger question of the relations amongst language, intentional states and the ascription and avowal of those states. (shrink)

Promoting the use of contact tracing technology will be an important step in global recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. Across two studies, we assessed two messaging strategies as motivators of intended contact tracing uptake. In one sample of 1117 Australian adults and one sample of 888 American adults, we examined autonomy-supportive and controlling message framing and the presence or absence of information safety as predictors of intended contact tracing application uptake, using an online randomized 2 × 2 experimental design. The (...) results suggested that the provision of data safety assurances may be key in affecting people’s intentions to use contact tracing technology, an effect we found in both samples regardless of whether messages were framed as autonomy-supportive or controlling. Those in high information safety conditions consistently reported higher intended uptake and more positive perceptions of the application than those in low information safety conditions. In Study 2, we also found that perceptions of government legitimacy related positively to intended application uptake, as did political affiliation. In sum, individuals appeared more willing to assent to authority regarding contact tracing insofar as their data safety can be assured. Yet, public messaging strategies alone may be insufficient to initiate intentions to change behavior, even in these unprecedented circumstances. (shrink)

Previous research into the perception of agency has found that objects in twodimensional displays that move along non-inertial-looking paths are frequently attributed intentional agency, including beliefs and desires. The present experiment re-addressed this finding using a tangible, interactive, electromagnetic puzzle. The experimental manipulation was whether or not participants controlled the electromagnet that moved the marbles along unexpected trajectories. Thirty-one college undergraduates participated. Participants who lacked control over the movement of the marbles were significantly more likely to attribute agency (...) to the marbles. Participants in control of the display rarely attributed intentional agency to the marbles. Implications are discussed for the identification of agents in the real world. (shrink)

The growing body of whistleblowing literature includes many studies that have attempted to identify the individual level antecedents of whistleblowing behavior. However, cross-cultural differences in perceptions of the ethicality of whistleblowing affect the judgment of whistleblowing intention. This study ascertains how Chinese managers/professionals decide to blow the whistle in terms of their locus of control and subjective judgment regarding the intention of whistleblowing. Hypotheses that are derived from these speculations are tested with data on Chinese managers and professionals. Statistical (...) analysis largely supports the hypotheses, which suggests that an individual''s locus of control does moderate the relationship between ethical judgment and whistleblowing. (shrink)

A higher level of intelligence can improve adolescents’ interactions with intelligent online services, although overemphasizing intelligent online services may nullify their sense of autonomy and in turn affect their acceptance intention. Enterprises have therefore focused on the best ways through which to provide intelligent online services. Based on the technology acceptance model, this study constructs a theoretical model of the impact of perceived control and power on adolescents’ acceptance intention of intelligent services. Through a scenario experiment involving an intelligent (...) online recommendation service, 195 participants were obtained to test the model. The results show that the adolescents’ perceived control affects their acceptance intention of intelligent online services through their perceived usefulness. The adolescents’ sense of power moderates the influence of perceived control on perceived usefulness. This study supplements the research on intelligent online services and provides a reference for online merchants seeking to design such service processes. (shrink)

There is a conceptual knot at the intersection of moral responsibility and action theory. This knot can be expressed as the following question: What is the relationship between an agent’s openness to moral responsibility and the intentional status of her behaviour? My answer to this question is developed in three steps. I first develop a control-backed account of intentional agency, one that borrows vital insights from the cognitive sciences – in the form of Dual Process Theory – (...) in understanding the control condition central to the account, and demonstrate that this account fares at least as well as its rivals in the field. Secondly, I investigate the dominant positions in the discussion surrounding the role of control in moral responsibility. After consideration of some shortcomings of these positions – especially the inability to properly account for so-called ambivalence cases – I defend an alternative pluralist account of moral responsibility, in which there are two co-extant variants of such responsibility: attributability and accountability. The latter of these will be shown to have a necessary control condition, also best understood in terms of a requirement for oversight, and in terms of the workings of the dual system mechanism. I then demonstrate how these two accounts are necessarily related through the shared role of this kind of control, leading to my answer to the original question: if an agent is open to moral accountability based on some activity or outcome, this activity or outcome must necessarily have positive intentional status. I then apply this answer in a consideration of certain cases of the use of the Doctrine of Double Effect. (shrink)

The study extends the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) in a cross-cultural setting, incorporating ethical judgments and locus of control in a comparison of Taiwanese and US businesspersons. A self-administered survey of 698 businesspersons from the US and Taiwan examined several hypothesized differences. Results indicate that while Taiwanese respondents have a more favorable attitude toward a requested bribe than US counterparts, and are less likely to view it as an ethical issue, their higher locus externality causes ethical judgments and (...) behavioral intentions to conform to normative influences of in groups and superiors. In the Taiwanese sample, locus externality effectively functions as a countervailing pressure against the unethical behavior in the scenario. No such effect is found in the US sample. A path model fitted to the data shows that locus internals exhibit more consistency among attitudes, judgments, and behavioral intentions than locus externals. Implications for managers and researchers are discussed, and suggestions and precautions for development of efficacy-enhancement programs are offered. (shrink)

Based on Pacherie’s dynamic theory of intentions, this study investigated how the way an intention is formed and sustained affects action performance and the experience of control during acting. In Experiment 1, task-irrelevant verbal commands were given while participants responded to stimuli in a two-choice reaction time task. The commands referred to an action goal congruent or incongruent with the actor’s current intention, or ordered the initiation or abortion of the action. In Experiment 2, the same commands were given (...) as participants freely chose between two actions. The distractors affected performance in the reactive task only. In both experiments, feelings of control were based on movement parameters as well as perceived matches between distractors and intended actions. These findings suggest that the way an intention is implemented affects how well it can be shielded against external perturbations and how much one feels in control. (shrink)

The book presents the first comprehensive survey of limits of the intentional control of action from an interdisciplinary perspective. It brings together leading scholars from philosophy, psychology, and the law to elucidate this theoretically and practically important topic from a variety of theoretical and disciplinary approaches. It provides reflections on conceptual foundations as well as a wealth of empirical data and will be a valuable resource for students and researchers alike. Among the authors: Clancy Blair, Todd S. Braver, (...) Michael W. Cole, Anika Fäsche, Maayan Davidov, Peter Gollwitzer, Kai Robin Grzyb, Tobias Heikamp, Gabriele Oettingen, Rachel McKinnon, Nachschon Meiran, Hans Christian Röhl, Michael Schmitz, John R. Searle, Gottfried Seebaß, Gisela Trommsdorff, Felix Thiede, J. Lukas Thürmer, Frank Wieber. (shrink)

Beliefs are held to norms in a way that seems to require control over what we believe. Yet we don’t control our beliefs at will, in the way we control our actions. I argue that this problem can be solved by recognising a different form of control, which we exercise when we revise our beliefs directly for reasons. We enjoy this form of attitudinal control not only over our beliefs, but also over other attitudes, including (...) intentions—that is, over the will itself. Closely tied to our capacity for reasoning, attitudinal control is in important respects more fundamental than the voluntary control that we exercise over our actions. In the course of developing this account I respond to two objections recently raised against an earlier version of it by Booth. (shrink)

Intentional action involves both a series of neural events in the motor areas of the brain, and also a distinctive conscious experience that ''I'' am the author of the action. This paper investigates some possible ways in which these neural and phenomenal events may be related. Recent models of motor prediction are relevant to the conscious experience of action as well as to its neural control. Such models depend critically on matching the actual consequences of a movement against (...) its internally predicted effects. However, it remains unclear whether our conscious experience of action depends on a precise matching process, or a retrospective inference that ''I'' must have been responsible for a particular event. We report an experiment in which normal subjects judged the perceived time of either intentional actions, involuntary movements, or subsequent effects (auditory tones) of these. We found that the subject's intention to produce the auditory tone produced an intentional binding between the perceived times of the subject's action and the tone. However, if the intention was interrupted by an imposed involuntary movement, followed by the identical tone, no such binding occurred. The phenomenology of intentional action requires an appropriate predictive link between intentions and effects, rather than a retrospective inference that ''I'' caused the effect. (shrink)