The myth of cognitive agency: subpersonal thinking as a cyclically recurring loss of mental autonomy.
Frontiers in Psychology 2013 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00931 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Meditation |
| Keywords | Cognitive phenomenology Epistemic agency Mental autonomy Mind wandering Self-consciousness Subpersonal processes |
| Citations | 165 |
| Key points | Argues that most conscious thought is an automatic, subpersonal process and that personal-level cognition is the exception, not the rule. |
Abstract
This metatheoretical paper investigates mind wandering from the perspective of philosophy of mind. It has two central claims. The first is that, on a conceptual level, mind wandering can be fruitfully described as a specific form of mental autonomy loss. The second is that, given empirical constraints, most of what we call "conscious thought" is better analyzed as a subpersonal process that more often than not lacks crucial properties traditionally taken to be the hallmark of personal-level cognition - such as mental agency, explicit, consciously experienced goal-directedness, or availability for veto control. I claim that for roughly two thirds of our conscious life-time we do not possess mental autonomy (M-autonomy) in this sense. Empirical data from research on mind wandering and nocturnal dreaming clearly show that phenomenally represented cognitive processing is mostly an automatic, non-agentive process and that personal-level cognition is an exception rather than the rule. This raises an interesting new version of the mind-body problem: How is subpersonal cognition causally related to personal-level thought? More fine-grained phenomenological descriptions for what we called "conscious thought" in the past are needed, as well as a functional decomposition of umbrella terms like "mind wandering" into different target phenomena and a better understanding of the frequent dynamic transitions between spontaneous, task-unrelated thought and meta-awareness. In an attempt to lay some very first conceptual foundations for the now burgeoning field of research on mind wandering, the third section proposes two new criteria for individuating single episodes of mind-wandering, namely, the "self-representational blink" (SRB) and a sudden shift in the phenomenological "unit of identification" (UI). I close by specifying a list of potentially innovative research goals that could serve to establish a stronger connection between mind wandering research and philosophy of mind.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on meditation, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mindfulness: A proposed operational definition. | 2004 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Mechanisms of mindfulness | 2005 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| How Does Mindfulness Meditation Work? Proposing Mechanisms of Action From a Conceptual and Neural Perspective | 2011 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for depression | 2006 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-transcendence (S-ART): a framework for understanding the neurobiological mechanisms of mindfulness | 2012 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
Citations in the library
Cited by 31
- Dynamical Relations in the Self-Pattern Frontiers in Psychology May 11, 2018
- Self-Boundary Dissolution in Meditation: A Phenomenological Investigation. Brain Sciences June 21, 2021
- Meditation training influences mind wandering and mindless reading. Psychology of Consciousness Theory Research and Practice March 1, 2016
- How deep is the rift between conscious states in sleep and wakefulness? Spontaneous experience over the sleep–wake cycle Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences December 13, 2020
- The varieties of selflessness Philosophy and the Mind Sciences March 24, 2020
and 26 more in the library
Cites 44
- A default mode of brain function Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences January 16, 2001
- How Does Mindfulness Meditation Work? Proposing Mechanisms of Action From a Conceptual and Neural Perspective Perspectives on Psychological Science October 14, 2011
- Experience sampling during fMRI reveals default network and executive system contributions to mind wandering. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences May 26, 2009
- Interoceptive inference, emotion, and the embodied self Trends in Cognitive Sciences October 12, 2013
- An Interoceptive Predictive Coding Model of Conscious Presence Frontiers in Psychology 2012
and 39 more in the library