Guidance control and the anti-akrasia chip

Chris Ovenden

pp. 2001-2019

in: Gualtiero Piccinini (ed), Neuroscience and its philosophy, Synthese 195 (5), 2018.

Abstract

According to Fischer and Ravizza, an agent has guidance control over some action A, whenever A is issued from one of their own moderately reasons-responsive mechanisms. This involves two elements: (i) the process P leading to their action being suitably responsive to reasons-(moderately reasons-responsive); and (ii) their taking an attitude towards processes of kind P such that they see themselves as the agents of the behaviour those processes issue (what they call ‘taking responsibility’ for a mechanism). For the purposes of this paper, I assume that guidance control amounts to actually guiding some action. I present, and defend, a counterexample in which an agent intentionally acts via a suitably reasons-responsive process which they have taken responsibility for and yet, intuitively, does not actually guide their action. On this basis, I argue that taking responsibility for a moderately reasons-responsive mechanism is not sufficient for having guidance control.