The skill of self-control

Synthese 199 (3-4):6251-6273 (2021)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Researchers often claim that self-control is a skill. It is also often stated that self-control exertions are intentional actions. However, no account has yet been proposed of the skillful agency that makes self-control exertion possible, so our understanding of self-control remains incomplete. Here I propose the skill model of self-control, which accounts for skillful agency by tackling the guidance problem: how can agents transform their abstract and coarse-grained intentions into the highly context-sensitive, fine-grained control processes required to select, revise and correct strategies during self-control exertion? The skill model borrows conceptual tools from ‘hierarchical models’ recently developed in the context of motor skills, and asserts that self-control crucially involves the ability to manage the implementation and monitoring of regulatory strategies as the self-control exercise unfolds. Skilled agents are able do this by means of flexible practical reasoning: a fast, context-sensitive type of deliberation that incorporates non-propositional representations into the formation and revision of the mixed-format intentions that structure self-control exertion. The literatures on implementation intentions and motivation framing offer corroborating evidence for the theory. As a surprising result, the skill of self-control that allows agents to overcome the contrary motivations they experience is self-effacing: instead of continuously honing this skill, expert agents replace it with a different one, which minimizes or prevents contrary motivations from arising in the first place. Thus, the more expert you are at self-control, the less likely you are to use it.

Other Versions

No versions found

Similar books and articles

Self-control as hybrid skill.Myrto Mylopoulos & Elisabeth Pacherie - 2020 - In Alfred R. Mele, Surrounding Self-Control. Oxford University Press, Usa. pp. 81-100.
Self-control modulates information salience.Polaris Koi - 2022 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 45:e230.
The sense of agency and its role in strategic control for expert mountain bikers.Wayne Christensen, Kath Bicknell, Doris McIlwain & John Sutton - 2015 - Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice 2 (3):340-353.
Willpower as a metaphor.Polaris Koi - 2024 - In David Shoemaker, Santiago Amaya & Manuel Vargas, Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility Volume 8: Non-Ideal Agency and Responsibility. Oxford University Press.
Virtue and Self-Control.John Arthur Elia - 2004 - Dissertation, The University of Texas at Austin

Analytics

Added to PP
2021-01-27

Downloads
1,374 (#14,564)

6 months
200 (#20,935)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Juan Pablo Bermúdez
University of Southampton

References found in this work

Intention, plans, and practical reason.Michael Bratman - 1987 - Cambridge: Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Dual-Process Theories of Higher Cognition Advancing the Debate.Jonathan Evans & Keith E. Stanovich - 2013 - Perspectives on Psychological Science 8 (3):223-241.
Willing, Wanting, Waiting.Richard Holton - 2009 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.
Motivation and agency.Alfred R. Mele - 2003 - New York: Oxford University Press.

View all 46 references / Add more references