What you Don't Know Can Hurt You: Situationism, Conscious Awareness, Control

The thesis of situationism says that situational factors can exert a signi cant in uence on how we act, o en without us being consciously aware that we are so in uenced. In this paper, I examine how situational factors, or, more speci cally, our lack of conscious awareness of their in uence on our behavior, a ect di erent measures of control. I further examine how our control is a ected by the fact that situational factors also seem to prevent us from becoming consciously aware of our reasons for action. I argue that such lack of conscious awareness decreases the degree of control that agents have. However, I propose that while being in uenced by situational factors in such ways may impair and diminish one’s control, it (typically) does not eradicate one’s control. I further argue that being in uenced by situational factors, in the way set out above, also decreases one’s degree of moral responsibility.