nucleation

THEORY-1300: In mind-wandering the capacity for veto over one's own mental processes is kept and its representation in the self-model is lost, and on Metzinger's principle a capacity can be deliberately exercised only while it is so represented; the loss of M-autonomy is then the loss of a condition of the capacity's efficacy, not of the capacity

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Properties5
StatusProposed
Tagsagency, self, cognition
SourceLIT-1941 — M-Autonomy, LIT-1942 — The myth of cognitive agency: subpersonal thinking as a cyclically recurring loss of mental autonomy, LIT-1945 — The Problem of Mental Action: Predictive Control without Sensory Sheets
Bears onQUESTION-367 — Is an agent's representation of its own capacity to control a process a condition of that capacity's efficacy, and so one of the relations a will-organization maintains, or only its accompaniment, and what intervention would tell the two apart?
Cited as “grounds” byARG-051 — Mind-wandering, read as Metzinger reads it, is an individual-scale case in which a capacity the agent keeps, veto over its own mental processes, loses and regains efficacy through a change in a condition of efficacy and not in the competing processes, so it is a further instance of the conditions of efficacy governing which regime acts, the first in the record for suspension in one mind

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Source

Metzinger (2015), LIT-1941, pp. 280–283, 290–291 and 296, read in NOTE-1497. Metzinger (2013), LIT-1942, p. 3 note 4, p. 5 and p. 13, read in NOTE-1495. Metzinger (2017), LIT-1945, pp. 13–14, read in NOTE-1496.

What was actually shown

The capacity is kept. “It would perhaps be tempting to say that during such periods we have altogether lost the functional ability to control our own thought. I want to defend a more moderate, nuanced position: what we have lost is a specific form of knowledge, and not the ability itself, namely, conscious knowledge of our potential for second-order mental action. We are still persons, because we have the relevant potential. But we currently lack an explicit and globally available representation of an existing functional ability for active epistemic self-control — because we have not epistemically appropriated it” (2015, p. 282). The conclusion restates it: “not in terms of a complete loss of the relevant ability, but only as an epistemic deficit … an absence of representation that is not represented as an absence” (p. 296).

Representation as a condition of exercise. “Call this the principle of ‘Autonomy by Phenomenal Self-Representation’: one can only deliberately and autonomously exert an ability if that ability is explicitly represented in one’s phenomenal self-model” (2015, p. 280). The 2013 paper had it in a note: “As long as the EAM still represents the ability to become an active attentional or cognitive agent, we have M-autonomy” (p. 3, note 4).

Why it seems otherwise. “we confuse our abstract, retrospective, and purely intellectual knowledge that, in principle, we had the critical mental ability all along with what actually was the case on the level of concrete, inner phenomenology: the absence of an EAM” (2015, pp. 282–283).

The return. “in most cases the re-emergence of an EAM will have to be caused by an unconscious event, perhaps by chance, perhaps based on an implicit knowledge about the relevant potential” (2015, p. 283).

What could have failed. Nothing in the papers tests it. The argument is from the conceptual point that the person remains a person across lapses and from the phenomenology of the return.

What this does not say

  • That the representation causes the control. The 2017 chapter lists three options, the EAM as “a mere epiphenomenon”, as “exactly the missing computational element that constitutes” control, or as an intermediate that does “not constitute, but represent” and “might causally enable relevant second-order functional properties like veto control”, and says “Currently available empirical data do not help to decide” (pp. 13–14). The principle is compatible with the third and the second; on the first it would be false or true only by definition.
  • That control is impossible without the representation. “Successful inhibition can be an entirely subpersonal process” (2013, p. 13). The principle concerns deliberate, autonomous exercise, and “deliberately” may be defined by the representation, which would make the principle analytic.
  • How the kept ability would be shown to be kept. No measure of the ability during an episode is proposed.
  • Anything about overt action or valuation.

Connections

  • CLAIM-047. Same structure, not shown same mechanism: a regime (here, second-order mental control) possessed and not effective. CLAIM-047 says the two differ; this account names a candidate for what makes the difference, the capacity’s representation in the self-model.
  • CLAIM-027 and TERM-023. If the representation is a condition of efficacy, it is a relation of the kind TERM-023 lists, closest to accessibility, and it changes without any change in the competing mental processes. ARG-051 holds the analogy, Proposed.
  • QUESTION-367 asks whether representing a capacity is a condition of its efficacy or its accompaniment, which this account asserts and the 2017 chapter withholds.
  • CLAIM-355. The account keeps the effective capacity and its representation apart and lets them come apart in time, which is the split CLAIM-355 draws between real organization and a represented owner.
  • THEORY-064. The EAM is a layer of the transparent self-model that account describes.

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