Source
Metzinger (2017), LIT-1945, §§3.2–3.4, pp. 11–17, read in NOTE-1496.
What was actually shown
The hypothesis. “Could there be something like an exclusively internal affordance competition? Let me propose that mind wandering … may be exactly this — the creation of a constant flow of possible mental actions … Call this the ‘cognitive affordance hypothesis’” (p. 11). “Every spontaneously occurring ‘task-unrelated’ mental event is a potential task in itself, a cognitive affordance … The mind wandering network sets up this task domain, and sometimes frontal regions of the brain latch onto the best candidate, and create a transient functional integration with the EAM” (p. 12). “Put differently, if conscious perception can be described as a form of controlled hallucination, conscious thinking is a process of controlled mind wandering” (p. 12). With M-autonomy the system can “not only … ‘reactively pick up currently available affordances’ … but … actively sculpt its own internal affordance landscape” (pp. 12–13).
The analogy behind it. A sleep-walker who “briefly ‘comes to’” and takes control, then returns to autopilot: “first we are mental sleep-walkers; then we episodically turn into genuine mental agents by ‘seizing control’” (p. 11). Mind-wandering is “model-free epistemic self-control”, mental agency “model-based” (p. 15).
The open clause. “on one end of the spectrum we might treat the EAM as a mere epiphenomenon devoid of any functionally relevant properties; at the other end it could be exactly the missing computational element that constitutes epistemic, model-based predictive control on the mental level. An intermediate position could be that most mental actions begin without an EAM … but end by transiently culminating in a conscious model of agentive second-order knowledge. Here, the EAM would not constitute, but represent. It might causally enable relevant second-order functional properties like veto control … Currently available empirical data do not help to decide between these three metaphysical options” (pp. 13–14).
What could have failed. Nothing is tested. H1–H4 (pp. 14–15) are proposed tests; the chapter cites Axelrod et al. (2015) and Broadway et al. (2015) as “early examples of relevant studies” for H1, not read here.
What this does not say
- What makes a candidate “best”. Selection could follow the candidates’ own epistemic value (content) or relations that govern which may be taken up. The chapter does not say, and its goal, epistemic value (p. 17), is a property of the candidates.
- That mind-wandering exists for this. “a central function”, among others the chapter lists: incubation, memory consolidation, maintaining the autobiographical self-model (p. 3).
- How attentional action begins. “we may have a model of action initiation for CA, but not for AA” (p. 22).
- That the 2015 principle holds. LIT-1941 states that an ability is deliberately exercised only when represented (THEORY-1300). This chapter leaves open whether the representation does anything.
Connections
- CLAIM-027. Same structure, not shown same mechanism: candidate mental processes compete and something other than their content decides which is pursued, if “best” is not content. The chapter does not settle that, so the reading is a shape, not support. ARG-051 holds the verdict.
- CLAIM-484. The same chapter’s account of mental effort (p. 10) as the “collision” of top-down precision control with “an automatically arising precision prediction error” defines a claim and a grant apart from the felt mark; it is speculation.
- THEORY-882. A predictive-processing account of awareness in which precision is set at every level by a hyper-model and agency is not required; here agency is the special case where precision is controlled under a self-model.
- QUESTION-367 takes the open clause as the record’s question.