Source
Metzinger (2013), LIT-1942, pp. 2–7 and Box 1, read in NOTE-1495; Metzinger (2015), LIT-1941, pp. 276–280 and 292–295, read in NOTE-1497.
What was actually shown
The concept. M-autonomy is “the ability to control the conscious contents of one’s mind in a goal-directed way, by means of attentional or [cognitive agency]”. “What is crucial is the ‘veto component’: Being mentally autonomous means that all currently ongoing processes can in principle be suspended or terminated … the ability, the functional potential, is given and that the person has knowledge of this fact” (2013, p. 4). In 2015 it is the capacity for second-order mental action, of which veto is “the central semantic element” (pp. 276–278).
The identification. Unintentional mind-wandering is “an involuntary form of mental activity”; “As long as it is going on, we lack the ability to terminate or suspend it” (2013, p. 3). So it is a loss of M-autonomy by definition, once one grants that an episode cannot be stopped from inside it. Deliberate daydreaming, or mind-wandering while knowing one could stop (“tuning out”), keeps M-autonomy and does not count (2013, p. 3, note 4; 2015, p. 280).
The share. Both papers use the same minutes (2013, p. 6; 2015, pp. 292–294): waking 960 min, of which 40% mind-wandering, 384 min; REM 105 min × 81.9% reporting mentation, 86 min; NREM 375 min × 43%, 161 min. Conscious time is 1207 min, “about 84%” of the day, and “healthy adults are only M-autonomous for 9.6 h (576 min; or 40% of an average day)”. Both conclude “roughly two thirds” of conscious life without M-autonomy.
Recomputed. Non-autonomous conscious minutes are 384 + 86 + 161 = 631, and 631/1207 = 0.52. The 40% is 576 of all 1440 minutes in a day, not of conscious time. Two thirds would need the exclusions the papers name and do not count: childhood, old age, illness, intoxication, mind-blanking and insomnia. The figure also treats every waking minute not spent mind-wandering as M-autonomous, which is generous in the other direction.
What could have failed. Nothing in the papers could have: the identification is by definition and the share by arithmetic on others’ figures.
What this does not say
- That half or two thirds of conscious time is non-agentive in any measured sense. The 30–50% figures (Kane et al. 2007; Killingsworth and Gilbert 2010; Schooler et al. 2011, none read) count task-unrelated thought caught by probes. They do not separate intentional from unintentional episodes, so they can overcount losses of M-autonomy.
- That mind-wandering is dysfunctional. The papers say it may be adaptive, maintaining the autobiographical self-model (2013, p. 5) or supplying candidate thoughts (LIT-1945).
- That the ability itself is lost. The 2015 paper’s “moderate” reading is that its representation is lost (THEORY-1300).
- Anything about overt action. M-autonomy is control of mental processes; a person mind-wandering may be acting skilfully in the world.
Connections
- CLAIM-047 and CLAIM-027. Same structure, not shown same mechanism: a capacity of the agent, veto over its own mental processes, recurrently loses and regains efficacy. The support verdict is ARG-051.
- CLAIM-156. Meditation, “a systematic, formal practice of cultivating M-autonomy” (2013, p. 15), would act on this loss. The reading says nothing about valuation.
- THEORY-064. The self-model theory supplies the EAM, whose collapse marks each episode; this account does not test it.