2022/07/28 by Denis Buehler · 12 citations
Neuroscience · Psychology · #Academic and Historical Perspectives in Psychology #Action (physics) #Agency (philosophy) #Appeal #Artificial intelligence #Cognitive psychology #Cognitive science #Computer science #Constitution #Control (management) #Economics #Embodied and Extended Cognition #Empirical research #Epistemology #Law #Management #Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies #Philosophy #Political science #Psychology #Social psychology #Social science #Sociology #Task (project management)
paper · open access · doi:10.1093/pq/pqac034
published in The Philosophical Quarterly 73(2), 379-413 (Oxford University Press)
openalex publication_date 2022/07/28 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Abstract How do individuals guide their activities towards some goal? Harry Frankfurt once identified the task of explaining guidance as the central problem in action theory. An explanation has proved to be elusive, however. In this paper, I show how we can marshal empirical research to make explanatory progress. I contend that human agents have a primitive capacity to guide visual attention, and that this capacity is actually constituted by a sub-individual psychological control-system: the executive system. I thus illustrate how we can explain exercises of individual-level guidance by appeal to its sub-individual constitution. This opens up a new avenue for explicating agency.