Exploring the structure of mental action in directed thought

ABSTRACT

While the general topic of agency has been collaboratively explored in philosophy and psychology, mental action seems to resist such an interdisciplinary research agenda. Since it is difficult to empirically access mental agency beyond externally measurable behavior, the topic is mainly treated philosophically. However, this has not prevented philosophers from substantiating their arguments with psychological findings, but predominantly with those which allegedly limit the scope and conscious controllability of mental action in favor of automated subpersonal processes. By contrast, the call for a methodological extension through introspective access is particularly noticeable among proponents of a wider significance of mental action. Taking this up, it is shown how an empirical-introspective methodology can obtain a differentiated structure of mental activities occurring in directed thought. The empirical results gained under replicable conditions with 32 participants lead to insights about mental activity regarding (1) immanent causation, (2) content-free intention, (3) active receptivity and (4) its selective openness to mental content, and (5) different levels of observational awareness. These arguments speak for assigning an agentive status to the activities studied and hence for a more significant role of mental action in cognitive processes.

KEYWORDS:

• Mental action
• empirical-introspective methodology
• immanent causation
• content-free intention
• action-state theory

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Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. To prevent misunderstanding, this is not intended to make any metaphysical claim since it is only about the limited scope of physical explanation (e.g., Bennett & Hacker, 2003). See also G. Seli’s slippery-slope argument that neuro-reductionism would ultimately entail the extinction of actions of any kind (Seli, 2017).

2. Typical examples of mental micro-gestures which cannot be reduced to content delivery can be found in meditation, such as detaching from mental content, removing of an affective state, or regulation of the attentional focus (Upton & Brent, 2019). These mental acts can be considered ”content-free” in the sense that they do not aim at propositional or perceptual content, but rather refer to the (self-) modification of mental activity. Content-free does not mean a completely empty consciousness, or an unconscious state, but the independence and autonomy of mental activity with respect to other mental content.

3. This is what seems to be meant by Seli’s argument that “the representation [of the mental act one wants to perform, J.W.] is causally relevant to the occurrence of the event” (Seli, 2017, p. 104).

4. “When the task requires an experience to be broken down and carefully analyzed […] the re-representational processes associated with verbalization can be benign or even helpful” (Schooler, 2002, p. 342).

5. Here, Mele’s (2009) sleep-example is telling, as it already presupposes the mentioned demarcation between what can be consciously intended and what cannot. To fall asleep means to lose consciousness, and it seems paradoxical to consciously intend to lose consciousness. In the case of our examination of the 7-animal task it is exactly the other way round, namely that consciousness can apparently be awakened for a process which normally runs like in deep sleep: one’s own thinking.

6. To further clarify, mental actions are not understood to be composed of non-actions. Rather, pre-reflective cognitive processes that are initially considered non-actional can be brought under conscious control to some extent and thus acquire an actional status. Then, the consciously monitored and controlled parts of the cognitive process reveal their intrinsic actional nature and thus are mental actions in the proper sense. The more a mental process can be traced back to conscious mental micro-actions or micro-gestures, the more the entire process can be considered a mental action. In this light, the idea that actions might be composed of non-actions seems to contradict a strict agent-causal account of (mental) action.