Source
Metzinger (2015), LIT-1941, pp. 289–292, read in NOTE-1497; Metzinger (2013), LIT-1942, pp. 4–5 and 11, read in NOTE-1495; Metzinger (2017), LIT-1945, pp. 6 and 20–21, read in NOTE-1496.
What was actually shown
The hypothesis. “the re-emergence of an EAM, really triggered by unconscious events, may necessarily involve a confabulatory element (‘I generated this insight myself!’) in order to ensure the coherence of the autobiographical self-model over time. In order to be able to conceive of myself as an autonomous mental agent again, I simply must have been a mental agent in the preceding conscious moment too, because I had the ability, the potential, all the time. The transition must have been self-caused, because a ‘representational bridge’ has to be built to earlier instances of M-autonomy” (2015, p. 291). “If this is true, an illusory phenomenology of self-causation will be a necessary neurocomputational fiction in the construction of any new EAM” (pp. 291–292).
The epistemic point. “the phenomenology of M-autonomy does not justify the claim that the functional property of M-autonomy was actually present” (2015, p. 290). A meditator’s “I have just realized that I was daydreaming and redirected my attention” “may be false” as a description of what did the work: it “may sometimes not be a personal-level event at all, but a shift in the subpersonal self-model that is then misdescribed” (2013, p. 4; 2015, p. 289).
The evidence offered. Schooler et al. (2011, Box 1), after Wegner (2002): “regaining meta-awareness may be accompanied by an illusion of control” (2013, p. 11; 2015, p. 291). Neither was read here.
The generalization. In 2017 the sense of origination in any agency is “the activation of an internal self-model trying to explain away the surprise involved in suddenly achieving autonomous self-control”, and the adult’s model of self-causation “could therefore be an enculturated post-hoc confabulation”, installed by caregivers who ascribe veto and origination to children before autobiographical memory begins (pp. 6, 20–21).
What could have failed. The argument from coherence could have allowed the self-model to represent an outside cause; it does not, because it cannot “consciously simulate myself as having unconsciously known about my ability” (2015, p. 291). That is an argument about what the model can represent, not an observation.
What this does not say
- That every return is confabulated. “at least in many such cases” (2015, p. 291); which cases is not said.
- That the person never ends an episode. On the 2015 reading the ability is kept throughout (THEORY-1300); the claim is about the attribution of a particular return.
- That the confabulation is harmful. It is “functionally adequate”, a condition of a coherent self-model over time.
- That experience is unreal, or anything about phenomenal consciousness. The misdescription is of a cause.
Connections
- CLAIM-355. This is a proposed case of the misdescription CLAIM-355 needs: a unified self-model attributing to the person a control event the person’s control system did not cause. It is a hypothesis with no case recorded, so it does not meet CLAIM-355’s note of 2026-10-29.
- CLAIM-022. Attribution and efficacy come apart here in one mind: who is represented as having acted is fixed by the self-model’s need for continuity, not by what was effective.
- CLAIM-156. Self-reports of noticing an impulse as an impulse are the kind of report this account says may misdescribe its cause, so they cannot by themselves show CLAIM-156’s mechanism.
- THEORY-064. It applies the self-model theory’s transparency: the self-model presents its own reconstruction as what happened.