Selected Publications

Agentive Phenomenology

• “The Experience of Agency” (with Joshua Shepherd) for Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Consciousness, ed. Uriah Kriegel, Oxford University Press, 2020
  • Abstract: In this chapter we reflect on questions about the nature and sources of agentive phenomenology – that is, the set of those experience-types associated with exercises of agency, and paradigmatically with intentional actions. Our discussion begins with pioneering work in psychology and neuroscience that dates to the early 80s (section 1). As we will see, much of the current work on agentive phenomenology in both psychology and philosophy draws motivation from this work, and the questions it raises.1 After discussing empirical work relevant to agentive phenomenology, we turn to consideration of its nature. We cover questions about the scope of agentive phenomenology, about its relationship to other types of experiences (section 2.1), about the best way to characterize aspects of agentive phenomenology, and about the function of various types of agentive experience (section 2.2).
• “A Cognitive Account of Agentive Awareness” Mind & Language, 32(5), 545-563, 2017.
  • Abstract: Agentive awareness is one’s awareness of oneself as presently acting. Dominant accounts in cognitive science take agentive awareness to be grounded in the states and processes underlying sensorimotor control. In this paper, I air concerns for this approach and develop an alternative. Broadly, on the approach I defend one is agentively aware in virtue of intending to act. I further argue that agentive awareness is not constituted by intentions themselves, but rather first-personal thoughts that are formed on the basis of them. I develop this proposal, highlight some of its theoretical advantages, and show how it successfully meets various challenges.
• “Agentive Awareness Is Not Sensory Awareness” Philosophical Studies,172(3), 761-780, 2015.
  • Abstract: In this paper, I argue that the conscious awareness one has of oneself as acting, i.e., agentive awareness, is not a type of sensory awareness. After providing some set up in Sect. 1, I move on in Sect. 2 to sketch a profile of sensory agentive experiences (SAEs) as representational states with sensory qualities by which we come to be aware of ourselves as performing actions. In Sect. 3, I critique two leading arguments in favor of positing such sensory experiences: the argument from pathology and the argument from cognitive impenetrability. Since neither of these arguments succeeds, the case for positing SAEs is dealt a significant blow. I proceed in Sect. 4 to advance my positive argument against SAEs. The argument runs as follows: If SAEs exist, then they must exist in some sensory modality or set of sensory modalities. Either the relevant sensory modalities are ones that we already recognize, or they are novel sensory modalities. I will argue that neither of these options is workable, and so we have nowhere to locate SAEs. Agentive awareness is not sensory awareness.

Skill

• “Editorial: Skilled Action Control” (with Elisabeth Pacherie), Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 12, 469-480.
• “Beyond Automaticity: The Psychological Complexity of Skill” (with Elisabeth Pacherie), Topoi 40,649–662, 2021.
  • Abstract: The objective of this paper is to characterize the rich interplay between automatic and cognitive control processes that we propose is the hallmark of skill, in contrast to habit, and what accounts for its flexibility. We argue that this interplay isn’t entirely hierarchical and static, but rather heterarchical and dynamic. We further argue that it crucially depends on the acquisition of detailed and well-structured action representations and internal models, as well as the concomitant development of metacontrol processes that can be used to shape and balance it.
• “Self-Control as Hybrid Skill” in Surrounding Self-Control, ed. Al Mele (pp. 81-100), Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2020.
  • Abstract: One of the main obstacles to the realization of intentions for future actions and to the successful pursuit of long-term goals is lack of self-control. But, what does it mean to engage in self-controlled behaviour? On a motivational construal of self-control, self-control involves resisting our competing temptations, impulses, and urges in order to do what we deem to be best. The conflict we face is between our better judgments or intentions and “hot” motivational forces that drive or compel us to act in opposing ways. In contrast, on an executive construal of self-control, the emphasis is not on overcoming temptation, but on overriding or inhibiting “cold” automatically triggered routines and habits that are at odds with what we intend to do. Our general aim in this chapter is to contribute to the development of an overarching theory of self-control by exploring ways in which these two apparently competing frameworks can be reconciled. We propose that self-control is best understood as a hybrid set of skills.  We draw on recent work on expert motor skill to highlight important ways in which experts differ from novices in the capacities they deploy and the ways in which they deploy them. We consider analogies (and disanalogies) between the domain of sports expertise and the domain of self-control. We end by considering how such a hybrid approach can help us reconcile a motivational and an executive approach to self-control.
• “The Intelligence of Motor Control” in Routledge Handbook of Skill and Expertise eds. Ellen Fridland and Carlotta Pavese, London, UK: Routledge Press, 2020.
  • Abstract: The puzzle of skilled action is that of explaining how it is that it displays robust intelligence despite being largely governed by motor control processes that are often characterized as brute, reflex-like, and paradigmatically unintelligent. In this chapter, I argue that a solution to this puzzle takes the form of an extension to existing hybrid views of skilled action, according to which its intelligence is to be accounted for in terms of the combined contributions of intentions and other propositional attitude states, as well as the representations and processes involved in motor control (see, e.g., Fridland 2014, 2017; Christensen et al. 2016; Levy 2017; Shepherd 2017). I further argue that, though such views are on the right track, they sometimes take an overly narrow view of the motor system’s intelligence, such that it must be derived from intention, rather than inherent in its own operations. I make the case that in order to properly understand the intelligence of the motor system, we must recognize the complexity of the representational structures it utilizes in the control of skilled behaviour, and that this complexity forms the basis for the difference in intelligence between expert and novice performance, and points us towards a solution to the puzzle of skilled action.

Cognition-Action Interface

• “The Modularity of the Motor System” Philosophical Explorations, 24, 376-393, 2021.
  • Abstract: In this paper, I make a case for the modularity of the motor system. I start where many do in discussions of modularity, by considering the extent to which the motor system is cognitively penetrable, i.e., the extent to which its processing and outputs are causally influenced, in a semantically coherent way, by states of central cognition. I present some empirical findings from a range of sensorimotor adaptation studies that strongly suggest that there are limits to such influence under certain conditions. These results cry out for an explanation. In the remainder of the paper, I provide one: The motor system is cognitively penetrable, but nonetheless modular along broadly Fodorian lines, insofar as it is informationally encapsulated. This means that its access is limited to its own proprietary database in computing its function from input to output, which does not include the information stored in central cognition. I then offer a model of action control, from distal intention to action outcomes, that further helps to illustrate this picture and can accommodate the target empirical findings.
• “Oops! I Did It Again: The Psychology of Everyday Action Slips” Topics in Cognitive Science, Online First, 2021.
  • Abstract: We have all had the experience of everyday mistakes like distractedly pouring orange juice into our cereal bowl rather than the milk, or inadvertently continuing on our regular route home rather than stopping at the store as we’d planned. These so-called “action slips” (Reason 1984a) are characterized as failures to execute one’s intention arising in habitual or highly-learned action sequences. This paper argues that a proper understanding of slips, and thus action more generally, requires an understanding of the control structure that implements an agent’s guiding intentions. Central to this structure are motor representations that are active downstream of intention and attentional processes that ensure that they reliably implement the intentions they serve.
• “Intentions: The Dynamic Hierarchical Model Revisited” (with Elisabeth Pacherie) WIREs Cognitive Science, 10(2), e1481, 2019.
  • Abstract: Ten years ago, one of us proposed a dynamic hierarchical model of intentions that brought together philosophical work on intentions and empirical work on motor representations and motor control (Pacherie, 2008). The model distinguished among Distal intentions, Proximal intentions, and Motor intentions operating at different levels of action control (hence the name DPM model). This model specified the representational and functional profiles of each type of intention, as well their local and global dynamics, and the ways in which they interact. A core insight of the model was that action control is the result of integrated, coordinated activity across these levels of intention. Since the proposal of the model, empirical and theoretical works in philosophy and cognitive science have emerged that would seem to support and expand on this central insight. In particular, an updated understanding of the nature of sensorimotor processing and motor representations, as well as of how the different levels of intention and control interface and interact, allows for the further specification and precisification of the original DPM model.
• “Intentions and Motor Representations: the Interface Challenge” (with Elisabeth Pacherie) Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 8(2), 317-336, 2017.
  • Abstract: A full account of intentional action must appeal not only to propositional attitude states like beliefs, desires, and intentions, but also to motor representations, i.e., non-propositional states that are thought to represent, among other things, action outcomes as well as detailed kinematic features of bodily movements. This raises the puzzle of how it is that these two distinct types of state successfully coordinate, exhibiting as they do different representational formats. We examine this so-called “Interface Problem”. First, we clarify and expand on the nature and role of motor representations in explaining intentional action. Next, we characterize the respective functions of intentions and motor representations, the differences in representational format and content that these imply, and the interface challenge these differences in turn raise.  We then evaluate Butterfill & Sinigaglia’s (2014) recent answer to this interface challenge, according to which intentions refer to action outcomes by way of demonstrative deference to motor representations. We present some worries for this proposal, arguing that, among other things, it implicitly presupposes a solution to the problem, and so cannot help to resolve it. Finally, we suggest that we may make some progress on this puzzle by positing a “content-preserving causal process” taking place between intentions and motor representations, and we offer a proposal for how this might work.