Topics — What a work is about. Nucleation holds whatever reading the owner files here, whether or not an Anthology of the SOTA topic could also hold it; instruction for ML practice belongs to the anthology (ADR-048). The words are seeded from the clusters the reading-time triage of 2026-09-25 found, and grow by decision.
Self-governance — governing oneself by standards that are one’s own — identification and wholeheartedness, planning agency and policies, self-constitution, autonomy and authenticity, and the empirical psychology of self-endorsed motives. One of four unities kept apart (group: philosophy; ADR-024).
20 of 1352 THEORY documents. Back to the full index.
| # | Title | Summary | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| THEORY-029 v5 | A higher-order attitude cannot make a motive the agent’s own by its order alone: any attitude specified without presupposing the agent’s participation can itself be disowned, and any specified to include it presupposes what it was meant to explain | Velleman (1992), LIT-295: every candidate for the agent’s standpoint in a hierarchical account (second-order desire, Watsonian value, decisive commitment) is either disownable or question-begging. Buss & Westlund (LIT-296) state the regress as their own argument; McKenna & Coates (LIT-291) and Dryden (LIT-297) credit it to Watson 1975, which the record has not read. Frankfurt’s own 2004 lectures (LIT-293) never address it. The dilemma is argued by examples, not proved, and it does not show that higher-order structure is irrelevant to agency. | Proposed |
| THEORY-040 v5 | A condition on free agency stated only in present psychological structure is met by a manipulated agent, so the account must count that agent free or add a historical condition, and no historical condition in the record’s readings is shown to escape | McKenna & Coates, LIT-291: every “mesh” compatibilism can be installed by a manipulator, and Frankfurt is quoted (2002, second-hand) accepting that a manipulated character leaves a person responsible. Dryden (LIT-297) and Buss & Westlund (LIT-296) make the same point against hierarchical autonomy. Historical supplements are reported to face “loading-in” and a circularity worry; neither is argued in full in the record. The claim says what the account must choose between, not which choice is wrong. | Proposed |
| THEORY-047 v2 | A regulation taken in under controlling conditions is introjected rather than integrated, so the social history of how a value was acquired shapes how autonomous acting on it is | Deci and Ryan (LIT-558) and Ryan and Deci (LIT-559): supports for relatedness and competence are enough to get a value internalized, but only as an introject or a compartmentalized identification; integration also needs autonomy support. The experimental evidence is Deci et al. (1994), as reported: the same amount of internalized behaviour correlated positively with felt freedom and enjoyment under autonomy support and negatively under control. Field studies on parenting, religion and medical training agree, correlationally. This is a historical condition on autonomy of the kind THEORY-040 asks about, with empirical support, but it has not been tested against matched present endorsement or applied to manipulation. | Proposed |
| THEORY-049 v2 | Whether an external event lowers or raises intrinsic motivation depends on whether it is experienced as controlling or as information about competence | Cognitive evaluation theory, as tested by Deci, Koestner and Ryan (1999, LIT-557) and summarized by Ryan and Deci (LIT-559) and Deci and Ryan (LIT-558): rewards, feedback, deadlines and choice affect intrinsic motivation through their “functional significance”. Controlling events shift the perceived locus of causality outward and undermine it; informational ones affirm competence and enhance it, but only with a sense of autonomy. The meta-analytic pattern fits, and controlling versus informational positive feedback differ by d = −0.78 in four studies. Mediation by felt control is untested for rewards. Its rival, Cameron, Banko and Pierce’s account (LIT-562), finds rewards tied to a score or to beating others do not undermine. Neither side has tested mediation. | Proposed |
| THEORY-054 v3 | A regulation is autonomous to the degree it is integrated with one’s other values and needs: autonomy is graded, and is not set by the order of the attitude that endorses it | Self-determination theory orders motives on a continuum from external through introjected and identified to integrated regulation and intrinsic motivation. Ryan and Deci (LIT-559) and Deci and Ryan (LIT-558) place autonomy in integration, “congruence with one’s other values and needs”, and report a quasi-simplex structure and an experiment in which integrated and introjected internalization behave differently. Ryan and Deci (LIT-560) align this with hierarchical accounts but grade it. It is the empirical counterpart of THEORY-029’s negative claim. It is not shown that integration can be measured apart from endorsement, and it does not escape Velleman’s dilemma. | Proposed |
| THEORY-065 | The unity that makes a movement an agent’s action is achieved by conformity to the constitutive norms of agency, not given by the causal unity of a mind, so collective agents are agents in the same sense as individual ones | Korsgaard (2014), LIT-587: an action is a movement “backed by the agent as a whole”, and ordinary attribution implies that the agent was active and that the action expresses who she is. Following the categorical and hypothetical imperatives gives action the form of self-determined efficacy; the content of the maxims chosen under that form constitutes practical identity. Self-consciousness of one’s own attitudes breaks the unity an animal is given, and reason is the work of rebuilding it, so unity of agency “is an achievement, not a given”, and people can act together “in the most literal sense”. The Tanner Lectures (LIT-564) supply the reflective structure the chapter assumes. Argued, with the Kantian premise assumed and the collective mechanism stated in a paragraph. | Proposed |
| THEORY-074 | Implicit accessibility of the true self-concept is not what self-report scales of authenticity or of need satisfaction measure, though those two self-reports are not shown to be separate constructs | Schlegel, Hicks, Arndt & King (2009), LIT-606: true-self accessibility, the speed of “me” judgments for traits a person takes to be her true self, correlated .05 with AI-3 authenticity and .20 with basic need satisfaction (N = 124), and each predicted meaning in life independently. The authors read this as showing the constructs differ, and concede the difference is confounded with method, reaction time against self-report. The two self-reports correlated .52, and felt autonomy was only one third of the need-satisfaction composite, whose autonomy items include “I can pretty much be myself”. So the paper separates the implicit measure from both self-reports, and does not separate authenticity from autonomy. Proposed: one sample for the correlations, method unresolved. | Proposed |
| THEORY-075 | Obligation is the reflective rejection of what would violate the agent’s practical identity, and moral obligation follows only because valuing any practical identity commits the agent to valuing her humanity | Korsgaard (1992), LIT-564: because human consciousness is reflective, an agent must act on reasons, and so must identify with some law, a “practical identity”: “a description under which you value yourself”. “Your reasons express your identity, your nature; your obligations spring from what that identity forbids.” Obligation is “the reflective rejection of a threat to your identity”, unconditional where violation would be worse than death. Identities are a “jumble” and differ across social worlds, so this much yields no morality. Moral obligation enters because valuing any identity requires valuing one’s humanity, the source of all one’s reasons. “The Normative Constitution of Agency” (LIT-587) later makes practical identity the content of maxims chosen under the formal norms. Argued, with the key steps flagged by their author as sketchy; the commentaries and reply are unread. | Proposed |
| THEORY-076 | Diachronic self-governance is constituted by cross-temporal links of intention that are intrapersonal analogues of shared intention, not by narrative unity and not by intertemporal bargaining | Bratman (2018), LIT-567: an agent governs herself over time when she is self-governing at each time along a planned activity and her intentions at those times interlock as the intentions of people acting together do, so that she acts “together” with herself. Her standpoints include a conditional, reflexive end of her own diachronic self-governance, which is what lets resolve against temptation be self-governed while following through on Kavka’s toxin is not. He rejects the bargaining model (McClennen, Ainslie) in two sentences and calls narrative unity less basic in one. A philosophical model argued from cases; the analogy is partial by its author’s account and its terms come from a book the record has not read. | Proposed |
| THEORY-077 v2 | Goals pursued for identified or intrinsic reasons receive more sustained effort, which carries their better attainment, and attaining them raises well-being more than attaining goals pursued under pressure | Sheldon & Elliot (1999), LIT-589: a goal is self-concordant to the degree its reasons are identified or intrinsic rather than external or introjected. In two semester-long student samples, self-concordance predicted sustained effort, and effort fully carried its link to attainment (self-concordance β = .02 and .08, ns, with effort in the model). In the same two samples attainment raised well-being more when goals were self-concordant (interaction β = .11, .23), partly through accumulated daily experiences of autonomy, competence and relatedness. Everything is self-report and correlational, and the structural models fit only after revision. It is evidence for the autonomous end of SDT’s continuum, not for integration as distinct from identification. | Proposed |
| THEORY-120 | A motive is the agent’s own, and she acts of her own free will, when she identifies with it, and that is all the freedom moral responsibility requires: identification is the conformity of the effective desire to a decisive higher-order volition (1971), and later wholehearted acceptance with no conflict at any higher order | Frankfurt’s hierarchical, or endorsement, account, from his own texts: the 1971 paper (LIT-692, read) and the 2004 Tanner Lectures (LIT-293, read). A person’s will is the desire that moves him to act; he identifies with a desire by wanting it to be his will, decisively, and he acts of his own free will when the will that moves him is the will he wants. In 2004 the condition is “volitional unanimity” with no conflict “at any higher order”, and identification is “willing acceptance”, which may be resigned. Acting of one’s own free will is what responsibility requires, and alternatives and history are irrelevant. The 1987 and 1992 revisions are held only by report. | Proposed |
| THEORY-121 v4 | Moral responsibility requires guidance control, moderate reasons-responsiveness of the agent’s own actual-sequence mechanism, and not regulative control over alternative possibilities, so responsibility is compatible with causal determinism | Fischer and Ravizza, in their own précis (LIT-728, read): moral responsibility requires guidance control, not regulative control over alternatives. Guidance control is acting from a mechanism one has made one’s own by taking responsibility for it, which is moderately reasons-responsive: regularly receptive to reasons, some moral, and at least weakly reactive. Fischer’s 1987 paper (LIT-687, read) is the weak-responsiveness origin. The view is compatible with causal determinism. | Active |
| THEORY-122 | Moral responsibility requires the normative competence to recognise and act on the True and the Good, which identification with one’s own motives does not supply | Susan Wolf’s Reason View, reported second-hand: the primary texts are unread. McKenna and Coates (LIT-291, §4.3) report that for Wolf free will is the ability to act in accord with the True and the Good, an anchor outside the agent’s psychology. Talbert (LIT-691, §§3.1.1, 3.2) reports her case against deep-self or Real Self views and the JoJo case: JoJo identifies wholly with the cruel values his father raised him in, yet is not responsible, because he cannot appreciate that they are wrong. The claim is a necessary condition. It does not by itself say whether the ability must include being able to do otherwise; that is THEORY-118. | Proposed |
| THEORY-219 v2 | Agency in the sense that bears on responsibility needs a standpoint that settles and carries forward revised evaluative standards when its inherited ones break down, and planning, autonomy, memory and coordination do not supply one | Kahl (2026), LIT-1033, read in NOTE-723. “Continuity pressure” arises where an inherited evaluative frame no longer settles how to go on, and the revision must be carried forward by the same standpoint rather than imposed from outside, escaped by rollback, or chosen by a fixed higher-order rule. Representative agentic systems ordinarily fail it because their failures are corrected from outside. A necessary condition for attributive agency only, argued from cases and never measured; the line between settling a frame and selecting under an antecedent rule is not made precise. | Proposed |
| THEORY-590 | The self whose governance makes action autonomous is not the self whose persistence is personal identity: governance by an essence of volitional necessities would make action authentic, not autonomous; losing a defining care costs one’s grasp of who one is, not one’s existence; and wholeheartedness won by extruding a desire is a defence, not health | Velleman (2002), LIT-292, read in NOTE-268. A critique of Frankfurt’s late (1990s) view that autonomy is governance by the essential character of the will, an essence that is also the condition of one’s identity. It argues by counterexample (Winnicott’s False Self, the Agamemnon sequel), from Freud’s Rat Man, and by debunking genealogy. The positive view, that “self” marks reflexivity and that autonomous action is motivated in part by the understanding, is stated “briefly” and argued elsewhere. Frankfurt’s reply is unread. | Proposed |
| THEORY-904 v2 | Gollwitzer and Sheeran (2006) conclude, narratively from a handful of studies that measured or manipulated the goal intention, that implementation intentions affect performance only when the goal intention they serve is strong and activated, so the planned response is not elicited mechanically by its cue; in 2024, across eight tests, plan effects were larger with strong, activated or self-concordant goal intentions than with weak, unactivated or self-discordant ones (d = .79 for the difference), and in 31 physical-activity tests split at the median of intention, planning helped with strong intentions (d = .31) and had no effect with weak ones (d ≈ 0) | Gollwitzer & Sheeran (2006), LIT-1497, read in NOTE-1124, answer the worry that if-then plans make action rigid: plan effects appear only when the goal intention is strong and activated (p. 103), from four or five studies cited, not pooled. Sheeran, Listrom & Gollwitzer (2024), LIT-1488, read in NOTE-1131, find the pattern across tests. Neither tests what happens when the planned response becomes the wrong one. | Active |
| THEORY-1118 | McKenna and Coates argue, with Dryden and with Buss and Westlund, that a condition on free agency stated only in the agent’s present psychological structure is met by an agent whose structure a manipulator installed, so a mesh account must count that agent free or add a historical condition; Frankfurt, read first-hand, takes the first option | The manipulation argument as its sources make it, split from THEORY-040 by the tenth status review on THEORY-1110’s pattern, so that a claim needing only the argument’s first half can stand on it. All five sources were read in full (NOTE-270, NOTE-266, NOTE-267, NOTE-545, NOTE-264). Whether any historical condition escapes the argument stays THEORY-040’s question, Proposed. | Active |
| THEORY-1165 | Kahl proposes that agency in the sense that bears on responsibility needs a standpoint that settles and carries forward revised evaluative standards when its inherited ones break down, which is absent where revision is imposed from outside, escaped by rollback or chosen by a fixed higher-order rule; that allocating authority among a system’s own components coordinates execution without authoring its governing frame; and that planning, autonomy, memory and coordination do not supply that standpoint | What the paper proposes, split from THEORY-219 by the twelfth status review on THEORY-1110’s pattern, so that a claim needing only the proposal can stand on it. The paper was read in full (NOTE-723), so the reading of what it proposes is held. Whether the condition is right, which turns on a line between settling a frame and selecting under an antecedent rule that the paper does not draw precisely, and on a positive case it does not give, stays THEORY-219’s question, Proposed. | Active |
| THEORY-1176 | Implementation intentions affect performance only when the goal intention they serve is strong and activated, so the cue-triggered response is gated by the goal and does not fire on the cue alone | The wide form THEORY-904 held before the tenth status review narrowed it, kept as a Proposed reading by the ADR-047 kind-1 sweep of 2026-10-30: the source asserts it, and THEORY-904, Active, is its evidence. The title is the old title’s general clause; its evidence clause read the 2024 moderator (d = .79) as a plan effect, a mis-statement left with THEORY-904’s note. | Proposed |
| THEORY-1331 | Deci and Ryan’s General Causality Orientations Scale measures autonomy, control and impersonal orientations as three separately scored and largely independent dispositions, reliable and stable over two months, whose validity rests on correlations with self-report measures in small samples, with behaviour its weakest support | Deci and Ryan (1985), LIT-1955, read in NOTE-1531 from the scan on the SDT site. Active as a statement of what the scale is and what its founding paper showed: α .69–.74 and near-independent subscales in 636 students, retest .71–.78 in 51, and a nomological table in samples of 42 to 87. It does not say that orientations cause behaviour, or that the orientations parallel the three kinds of event of cognitive evaluation theory, which the paper asserts and its data only suggest. | Active |