ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and Its Disorders, Macquarie University Sydney, NSW, Australia.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2014 Jun 23;8:434. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00434. eCollection 2014.
Existing accounts of the sense of agency tend to focus on the proximal causal history of the feeling. That is, they explain the sense of agency by describing the cognitive mechanism that causes the sense of agency to be elicited. However, it is possible to elicit an unconscious representation of one's own agency that plays a different role in a cognitive system. I use the "occasionality problem" to suggest that taking this distinction seriously has potential theoretical pay-offs for this reason. We are faced, then, with a need to distinguish instances of the representation of one's own agency in which the subject is aware of their sense of own agency from instances in which they are not. This corresponds to a specific instance of what Dennett calls the "Hard Question": once the representation is elicited, then what happens? In other words, how is a representation of one's own agency used in a cognitive system when the subject is aware of it? How is this different from when the representation of own agency remains unconscious? This phrasing suggests a Functionalist answer to the Hard Question. I consider two single function hypotheses. First, perhaps the representation of own agency enters into the mechanisms of attention. This seems unlikely as, in general, attention is insufficient for awareness. Second, perhaps, a subject is aware of their sense of agency when it is available for verbal report. However, this seems inconsistent with evidence of a sense of agency in the great apes. Although these two single function views seem like dead ends, multifunction hypotheses such as the global workspace theory remain live options which we should consider. I close by considering a non-functionalist answer to the Hard Question: perhaps it is not a difference in the use to which the representation is put, but a difference in the nature of the representation itself. When it comes to the sense of agency, the Hard Question remains, but there are alternatives open to us.
现有的关于主体感的理论往往侧重于该感觉的近端因果历史。也就是说，它们通过描述引起主体感的认知机制来解释主体感。然而，有可能引出一个人自身能动性的无意识表示，它在认知系统中扮演着不同的角色。我使用“偶发性问题”来暗示，认真对待这种区别，从这个角度来看，可能会有理论上的收获。我们面临着这样一种需要，即区分主体意识到自身能动性的自身能动性表示的实例，以及主体没有意识到自身能动性的实例。这对应于丹尼特所说的“难题”的一个具体实例：一旦表示被引出，那么会发生什么？换句话说，当主体意识到自身能动性时，它如何在认知系统中使用自身能动性的表示？这与自身能动性的表示仍然是无意识的情况有何不同？这种表述为“难题”提供了一种功能主义的答案。我考虑了两个单一功能假设。首先，也许自身能动性的表示进入了注意力的机制。这似乎不太可能，因为一般来说，注意力不足以产生意识。其次，也许当主体能够进行口头报告时，他们就会意识到自身的能动性。然而，这似乎与类人猿具有能动性感觉的证据不一致。尽管这两种单一功能观点似乎是死胡同，但全局工作空间理论等多功能假设仍然是我们应该考虑的可行选择。最后，我考虑了“难题”的一种非功能主义答案：也许不是表示的用途不同，而是表示本身的性质不同。在主体感方面，“难题”仍然存在，但我们有其他选择。
