Imagination, endogenous attention, and mental agency
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences April 21, 2023 DOI: 10.1007/s11097-023-09909-y via OpenAlex
Summary
Basic mental agency—the ability to voluntarily direct one's own thoughts—is grounded in two core capacities: endogenous attention and imagination. This paper argues that these capacities share five key features: both are driven by currently prioritized goals that are or can become conscious; both deliver their outputs to working memory; both operate on conceptual content; both are guided by norms or habits; and both activate rather than inhibit mental content. Together, these similarities suggest that basic mental agency is fundamentally the power to summon conceptual content and hold it in working memory.
Study at a glance
| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Philosophy of mind |
| Keywords | Agency philosophy Power physics Cognitive psychology Content measure theory |
| Citations | 3 |
| Key finding | Basic mental agency is essentially the power to call for conceptual content and hold it within working memory, as shown by five shared features of endogenous attention and imagination. |
Abstract
Abstract This paper develops a mechanistic account of basic mental agency by identifying similarities between two of its major exemplars: endogenous attention and imagination. Five key similarities are identified: (i) that both capacities are driven by currently prioritised goals that are either person-level or apt to become person-level. (ii) that both deliver their outputs to the working memory (iii) that both range across all and only conceptual contents; (iv) that both proceed under the guidance of norms and/or habits; and (v) that both directly activate rather than inhibit content. These five features are consolidated by proposing that basic mental agency is essentially the power to call for conceptual content and hold it within our working memories.