Accepted Manuscript

Presuppositions about the role of consciousness in the Agent Causation con-

ception of agents and the problem of the Disappearing Agent

Beatriz Sorrentino Marques, Osvaldo Frota Pessoa Jr.

PII: S1389-0417(16)30077-8
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cogsys.2016.12.003
Reference: COGSYS 532

To appear in: Cognitive Systems Research

Received Date: 8 May 2016

Revised Date: 2 November 2016
Accepted Date: 29 December 2016

Please cite this article as: Sorrentino Marques, B., Frota Pessoa, O. Jr., Presuppositions about the role of
consciousness in the Agent Causation conception of agents and the problem of the Disappearing Agent, Cognitive
Systems Research (2017), doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cogsys.2016.12.003

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Title Page

Title: Presuppositions about the role of consciousness in the Agent Causation conception of

agents and the problem of the Disappearing Agent

Corresponding author:

First author

Beatriz Sorrentino Marquesa1

a
Universidade de São Paulo, Av. Prof. Luciano Gualberto, 315, sala 1007, CEP 05508-010 - São

Paulo, SP, Brazil, biasorrentino@usp.br

Second author

Osvaldo Frota Pessoa Jr.b

b
Universidade de São Paulo, Av. Prof. Luciano Gualberto, 315, sala 1007, CEP 05508-010 - São

Paulo, SP, Brazil, opessoa@usp.br

1
Present address: Av. Fernando Corrêa da Costa, 2367, Departamento de Filosofia, ICHS, Campus
Universitário, Boa Esperança, Cuiabá - MT, 78068-600, Brazil.
Title: Presuppositions about the role of consciousness in the Agent Causation conception of

agents and the problem of the Disappearing Agent

Abstract

Well-known theories of Agent Causation rely on a conception of agency that expects that agents play a

role in the production of their action, a conscious role. According to this conception of agents, the

requirement of consciousness provides ground for these theories to pose the Disappearing Agent

objection to the Causal Theory of Action. In a similar way, Wegner (2002, 2008) holds that without

the conscious will playing a role in the production of actions we are not agents. In this sense, the

elements that ground the Disappearing Agent objection resemble Wegner’s conclusion that it is an

illusion that we are agents. I will argue that the objection raised by Agent Causation theories equates

lack of consciousness with lack of control and, consequently, of agential role in the production of

action. This will show that the issue is grounded on a specific conception of what an agent is, and what

her role in producing actions should be. I, however, defend the claim that this conception of agency

should be revised, as well as the objection that springs from it, because if we accept that consciousness

does not always play a relevant role in the production of actions, then human agents cannot fulfill the

requirements in question.

Keywords: consciousness; regulative control; disappearing agent; action.

1. Introduction

The agent’s role in the production of her action has been a point of debate in the Philosophy of

Action. Does the agent play an irreducible role in this production, or can her role be reduced to the role

played by the causally participating mental states? The answer to this question varies according to the

theory at hand; I will argue that it depends on the conception of agents held by each theory, which

2
grounds the expectations of how she produces her actions. The more robust the conception of agent,

more expectations will be laid on her causal powers to produce action. Finally, theories that hold a

robust conception of agents will find that any explanation of actions offered by theories that hold a less

robust conception of agents is not good enough, because the former will have a higher expectation

about the role the agent plays in the production of her action. The present paper focuses on a critical

discussion of the presuppositions about agency held by anti-reductive theories of action.

In the second section, the disagreement between competing theories of action and how this

disagreement produces the problem of the Disappearing Agent will be presented. In the third section, it

will be shown that regulative control and consciousness are requirements for agency in Agent

Causation’s (AC) conception of agents. In section four, I claim that the problem of the Disappearing

Agent is in fact an objection to the acceptance of a less robust conception of agents; i.e., it is a refusal

to accept a different conceptual framework, but I hold that, in spite of this objection, a less robust

conception of agents should be preferred. In section five, I sketch a revision of the concept of agents,

but the revision will remain only programmatic since it is meant as an alternative way of thinking

about agency. Finally, in section six, I discuss a possible objection to my solution.

2. The competition to explain action and the disappearing agent

Certain presuppositions underlying different explanations of action are fundamental to of the

problem of the Disappearing Agent. This paper will be focused on these presuppositions. Different

theories compete to offer an account of human action; the present discussion is focused on two of

them, the Causal Theory of Action (CTA) and Agent Causation (AC). Roughly, it could be said that

CTA offers an account of action in which the agent’s mental states causally contribute (not necessarily

in a deterministic2 way) to the production of her action—well-known CTA theories were proposed by

Davidson (1980) and Mele (1992, 2003). On the other hand, AC offers an account in which the agent

2
Roughly, determinism can be understood as the idea that every event in the universe is causally determined by
previous events in a way that, given the laws of physics and knowledge of all the events in the universe, all
future events could, in principle, be predicted.
3
is said to play an irreducible role in the production of her action. How the agent’s irreducible role is

characterized may vary according to the version of AC, but the main idea is that the agent is the direct

source of her action (O’Connor, 2000; 2013; Steward, 2008).

CTA is accused of not accounting for the agent’s role in the production of her action

(Chisholm, 1978; Nagel, 1986, p. 110–11; Steward, 2012; Velleman, 1992), since the theory defends

that the agent’s mental states play the causal role in it, allegedly leaving no role for the agent to play

herself, hence CTA is said to produce the problem of the Disappearing Agent. Velleman (1992, p.

461) has offered an informative image of the problem: according to him, it is as if the agent was the

arena where her mental states causally produce the action, while the agent herself does nothing.

Wegner (2002) makes a related point in his The Illusion of Conscious Will. He claims that it

seems like we are agents, but, in fact, we are not: “The fact is, it seems to each of us that we have

conscious will. It seems we have selves. It seems we have minds. It seems we are agents. It seems we

cause what we do. Although it is sobering and ultimately accurate to call all this an illusion, it is a

mistake to conclude that the illusory is trivial” (Wegner, 2002, p. 341-42).

According to Wegner’s theory, “[…] conscious will is an illusion. It is an illusion in the sense

that the experience of consciously willing an action is not a direct indication that the conscious

thought has caused the action” (Wegner, 2002, p. 02).

Wegner’s claim is close to the problem of the Disappearing Agent in the sense that the

conception of agency that he seems to be taking into consideration, at least to reject it, is similar to the

conception of agency which AC holds; in the sense that AC considers consciousness fundamental to

the production of action. Since Wegner defends the claim that the conscious will does not participate

in the production of human action, then, if I am correct about the kind of conception of agents that he

holds, he must reject that humans can be agents in light of his theory. In this sense, Wegner’s theory is

in the opposite extreme in relation to AC, because it accepts a conception of agents similar to AC

while proposing a theory in which there is no room for such agents. The theory endorses the

disappearance of the agent as she is conceived by AC. This point is important, because the discussion I

propose weighs heavily on how agency is conceived.

4
3. Regulative Control and Consciousness

Looking closer at AC one can see that the Disappearing Agent is not simply an issue about

whether the role of the agent is reducible to her mental states; it is about what AC is trying to preserve

by denying its reducibility. AC theories require that the agent should have a sort of control that would

guarantee that she could have acted otherwise than she did, and this kind of control is what would

guarantee that she plays a role in the production of her action (Chisholm, 1978; O’Connor, 2000;

Steward, 2012) which will lead to the further requirement of a conscious role in the production of

action. Even theorists who do not endorse AC, but are concerned about the issue of the Disappearing

Agent, seem to endorse these requirements. In this section, I will list a few claims about agency in

anti-reductionist theories,3 as well as Velleman’s reductionist theory, in order to make salient what is

fundamental to this way of seeing actions and how it contributes to the issue at hand. It should become

clear that regulative control and, consequently, consciousness are fundamental to this view of agency.

This kind of control, which allows the possibility of the agent having done otherwise, is what

Fischer (1994) has called regulative control, and it seems to depend on the agent’s conscious

supervision over her actions. In this sense, it is a kind of conscious control, and it is taken to be

relevant by AC theories, because if the agent cannot control her action it will amount to her not having

a role in its production (O’Connor, 2000; Steward,2012).

An important defender of AC, Chisholm (1978), expresses these concerns when he discusses

the possibility of reducing the agent’s role in the production of her action. The issue is whether agent

causation could be reduced to event causation in a way that the action would not lose its meaning in

the midst of statements about events as causes in which the agent would have no originating role. In

order to be successful, Chisholm holds that this kind of reduction would have to leave open that the

agent could have done otherwise, so that she would have control over her action. One may conclude

3
The theories that claim that the agent’s role is irreducible to parts of the agent, such as mental states.
5
that the right sort of control, regulative control, is what will keep the agent from disappearing in the

case of a successful reduction, if one accepts Chisholm’s theory.

The concern expressed by Chisholm is a concern about giving an account of action in which

the agent would not be lost in the production of her action. According to Chisholm, this would be

assured by allowing her control over the production, which can be translated into the ability to do

otherwise. This is interesting to the present investigation, because what Chisholm holds that an

account of action needs in order to guarantee that the agent plays a role in producing her action—i.e.,

to guarantee that she does not disappear— is exactly the same regulative control that other AC

accounts require.

Without regulative control some AC theorists consider the action unfree,4 as if the action was

produced by external forces that were not the agent’s; in this sense, the conception of freedom that

requires regulative control is relevant for AC to consider that the agent played a role in the production

of her action. One example of such a theory is O’Connor’s (2000) theory; he does not accept that an

agent may be ignorant (not conscious) of her intention because that could mean that she would not

have control over it:

What of the limiting case—total conscious ignorance of one’s intention in

acting? Here, I think, the agency theorist must say—what is independently
plausible—that one does not act freely. I, at any rate, am unable to conceive
an agent’s directly controlling his own activity without any awareness of
what is motivating him (O’Connor, 2000, p. 88).

In O’Connor’s theory, in order to control one’s own action, one must be conscious of some of

the mental states that motivate the action. So if there was lack of consciousness of these motives,

involved in the agent causing her action, it would result in lack of control by the agent. This is an

example of the assumption that control is tied to conscious production of action, because lack of

freedom in acting is associated to something other than the agent producing the action, since she

allegedly did not have control over it. So, any account of action that does not require consciousness or

4
A conception of Free Will that requires that the agent must have been able to do otherwise is being assumed.
6
regulative control is at risk of running into the problem of the agent not playing a relevant role in the

production of her action, if one accepts AC and AC’s notion of agency.

It may be claimed that this requirement is part of a common sense view of agency, since even

theorists who do not endorse AC seem to hold the same view. Lowe (2008) defends a broader sense of

agent causation (substance causation), which fits with his volitionist5 theory. In this sense, it is

possible to claim that what is being said here about AC’s requirements for agency can be restated as

the anti-reductionist6 requirements for agents. He endorses the idea that freedom means that the agent

has control over her action: “According to libertarianism, it is precisely because we have a power of

choice which we can exercise freely—that is, a power of choice whose exercises are not determined by

prior events—that we have control over our actions” (Lowe, 2008, p. 196).

Choice, according to Lowe (2008, p. 158), is a rational power that allows the agent

alternatives; even if the agent’s hand, for instance, was strapped in a way that allowed her only to

move her finger, the power of choice would allow her at least the alternative between acting and not

acting, thus signaling that being in control is for the agent to have alternatives. Lowe also claims that

choice is by nature not blind, in the sense that when the agent choses a course of action, she is aware

of reasons for so choosing (2008, p. 195), from which one may conclude that Lowe accepts that

choices are consciously made.

This may cast doubts on whether automatic actions fit this requirement for the agent’s role in

action production. For instance, when an agent brakes before she even notices that a cat ran into the

street—let’s suppose that it all happened so fast that she could not have prevented herself from doing

so—because of her training as a driver that has automatized that she shall brake at the vaguest sign of

any creature running into the road. Her action is faster than her consciously noticing that it was a cat.

So, even if she has an unhealthy hatred for cats and would have preferred running it over, she would

have braked before she could have noticed that it was a cat.

5
Roughly, volitionism claims that the agent’s action is an uncaused volition, which causes action effects in the
world.
6
This is the case because volitionism also proposes an account of actions that does not reduce the agent’s role to
her mental states.
7
 In the example, according to the theories being discussed, the driver would need to have been

able to not brake by consciously vetoing her braking action, so that it could be said that she had

control over it. This makes apparent that regulative control is required by anti-reductionists, and not

having control makes it seem like something external to the agent was in control. I believe this is at the

heart AC’s concern about the Disappearing Agent. Regulative control is not required by CTA, because

the mental states that play a causal role in the production of the action, according to the theory, are

already the agent’s; though the theory may require control of another kind7 in order to attribute

responsibility to the agent for her action.

Velleman (1992) is a reductionist and does not endorse AC; nonetheless, he agrees with AC’s

objection to CTA. He argues the claim that an explanation of actions that involves only the agent’s

mental states causing the action, in the way that CTA does, cannot account for the distinctive

characteristic of a full-blooded action. The issue pointed out is the reduction issue; i.e., whether the

agent’s role in producing her action can be reduced to her mental states, but the fact that a reductionist

can be concerned about the issue hints that the core of the problem is not reduction itself. If this was

the case, Velleman would have to give up a reductionist solution. He accepts that the agent’s mental

states contribute to the causal production of her action, but he also endorses the objection of the

Disappearing Agent posed against CTA, because he claims that there must be something more to the

agent’s role. For instance, he states the following about a case in which a person severs a friendship

when taken over by strong emotions without realizing that she wanted to end the friendship all along:

When my desires and beliefs engendered an intention to sever the friendship,

and when that intention triggered my nasty tone, they were exercising the
same causal powers that they exercise in ordinary cases, and yet they were
doing so without any contribution from me. Hence what constitutes my
contribution, in other cases, cannot be that these attitudes are manifesting
their ordinary causal powers. (p. 465)

Velleman believes that: (1) since there can be actions that are caused by motives and

intentions in the normal way (mental states causally producing the action) that the agent does not
7
Guidance control may be deemed important in CTA in order to assure that the agent was responsible for her
action. An agent is considered to have guidance control over her action if the mechanisms that issue in the action
respond to reasons of the agent to some extent (Fischer, 1994).
8
identify herself with; (2) while she identifies with other actions produced in the same way; (3) the

agent’s role in her action is not due simply to motives and intentions causally contributing to the

production of the action, even if the causation goes in the normal way. The agent must add something

to her motivational influence in order to identify with her action.

According to Velleman, the distinction that makes actions full-blooded, which I will take here

to mean actions in which the agent is said to play a role in its production, is that the agent’s desire to

act according to reasons plays a role in it. It contributes to her motivations in tipping the balance in

favor of the reason that provides the strongest reason to act, which amounts to the agent exercising

control over what she does, because the desire to act according to reasons plays the agent’s role in

tipping the balance. “We say that the agent turns his thoughts to the various motives that give him

reason to act; but in fact, the agent's thoughts are turned in this direction by the desire to act in

accordance with reasons” (Velleman, 1992, p. 479).

The desire would perform the agent’s function in producing the action and it would turn the

agent’s thought (presumably conscious thought) to her motives. This second order desire is important

because it is said to be the agent’s endorsement, but then why would it be necessary that the agent turn

her conscious thought to her motives? I think that Velleman introduces thought here because, given

the friendship case, it is the agent’s conscious thought that is actually expected to play her role

functionally in the production of the action; after all, it is consciousness of her motives that he makes

clear is missing from the severed friendship story. Allegedly, only subconscious intentions played a

role in the production of the agent’s actions in the story, which made the agent seem absent to

Velleman.

It seems it is the conscious endorsement of the agent’s strongest reasons to act that guarantees

that she does not disappear from the production of her action. Furthermore, the concern about

regulative control has not been abandoned by more recent versions of AC. A prominent version of AC,

put forth by Steward (2012), also involves the concern about the agent having meaningful control over

her action (as will be discussed in the next section). In this sense, the relevant control that Steward is

concerned with would be the kind that would allow the agent to choose to execute or not her actions,

9
or to execute a different action. This is what has been called regulative control. I believe that the

difference is that Steward makes clearer the relevance of consciousness in her theory. What is at stake

is the agent’s ability to have done something else, meaning that she could, at some point of the

production of her action, have altered which action she would produce. This leads us to the question:

what sort of entity would have such ability? What is the concept of agent that AC is implicitly

holding?

An overview of some representative anti-reductionist theories has been offered in order to

investigate what is at the bottom of the Disappearing Agent objection. What the theories discussed in

this section have in common is not so much the kind of causation or causal processes involved in the

production of the action, but the importance given to the agent having regulative control over the

production of her action. I believe this is the case because the kind of causation defended by AC aims

at preserving regulative control. Interestingly, along with control is the supposition that the agent must

be conscious or at least aware8 that she is producing her action in order for her to be considered to

have a role in producing it. This fits with Wegner’s conclusion that if actions are causally produced by

nonconscious activities, then there is no agency.

4. What is an agent and what is her role in action production

It is odd to claim that the agent has no role in producing her action if such action is causally

produced by the agent’s mental states. The Disappearing Agent objection springs from AC’s

expectation that action production should involve a conscious role of the agent and, consequently, her

having regulative control over her action, which CTA does not grant.

If, nevertheless, it is said that the agent does not play a role in CTA’s account, it must be clear

what is being considered an agent and what her role might be in the production of her action. Her role

must be something different from her mental states causally contributing to this production. What

could it be? The role expected of her depends on what counts as an agent. Therefore, the disagreement
8
Depending on the conception of consciousness that one may hold.
10
about what counts as an action of the agent and what makes her, allegedly, disappear is due to a more

fundamental disagreement between AC and CTA: a disagreement about what is considered an agent.

Since the agent must have regulative control according to AC theories, the agents’ role is associated to

consciousness; thus, AC takes the risk of disconsidering activities that are not under the agent’s

conscious governance, suggesting that the agent only plays a relevant role in her action production

when she’s conscious of this production.

4.1. The requirements applied to agency

At this point of the investigation it becomes necessary to understand the concept of agent at hand. The concept of agent accepted

by AC will match the theory’s expectations about how the agent produces her action. Steward suggests:

What makes it right, it seems to me, to attribute the movements to me—what

makes them voluntary movings by me rather than, say, reflex responses over
which I have no meaningful control—is that the relevant systems are
ultimately subordinated to personal-level, conscious ones in a well-
integrated hierarchy whose purpose generally is to ensure that they function
overall to serve my conscious aims, although of course it may happen on
individual occasions that there is no point or purpose to a given individual
output from such a system. The subordination has many aspects. I can
choose at any time to make the workings of the relevant subordinate systems
the focus of conscious will. (Steward, 2012, p. 51)

In order to have this sort of control, according to Steward (2012, p. 17-18), the agent must be

integrated with her body in a way that she plays an irreducible role in the organism’s motor activity,

which should involve the capacity for top-down determination of her movement over the processes

going on inside the organism that eventuate in the movement of the body. The top-down determination

proposed by Steward would presumably be done by a centralized system that consciously determines

the movements performed in a manner that the agent may consciously alter her action production,

which amounts to having the sort of control that AC considers relevant in agency.

11
 What one has learned so far is that Steward’s version of AC relies on a centralized conscious

personal-system for supervising action production. Additionally, in Steward’s AC theory, the agent

cannot be reduced to parts of herself:

The crucial determinant, for me, of whether a creature truly can be said
genuinely to be a self-mover has to do with whether there is any irreducible
role to be played in the explanation of that organism’s motor activity by a
certain kind of integration which I believe is part and parcel of the
functioning of most animals of a certain degree of complexity, a type of
integration which I shall be attempting to characterize towards the end of this
book. (Steward, 2012, p. 17)

In Steward’s conception of agency, the agent must play an irreducible role in the production of

action. The agent keeps her action production processes in track with her conscious aims. Even if the

movement is not consciously done it must be a part of the system under potential conscious

supervision in order for the agent to have a role in it. The action-producing systems are subordinate to

a conscious hierarchy that coordinates that actions achieve conscious goals of the agent.

One may conclude that the conscious personal-level system plays a big part in guaranteeing

that the agent plays a role in the production of her action in Steward’s theory, because it aims at

guaranteeing regulative control over the action. The agent’s movements are not under her control in

the sense that she consciously and directly originates each movement, but in the sense that she could

directly and consciously change the course of her movements.9 One could understand this ability as

what Chisholm has called the ability to do otherwise.

It is not clear, however, whether one should think that whenever a bodily movement falls out

of this scope of control the agent would disappear. Some movements are not under conscious

supervision, like muscle reflexes, automatic action, heart beat or peristaltic movements. Most of these

are not considered intentional actions, but I believe that most people consider many automatic actions

intentional, such as typing one’s e-mail password as soon as the web mail site loads, or shifting gears

while driving a car. If we are to follow Steward’s criteria, then automatic actions would not be

9
Consciousness is not one of the criteria Steward (2012) explicitly puts forward for agency (see chapter 4);
however, given the theory she proposes, it is safe to conclude that consciousness is relevant to her notion of
agency.
12
considered actions in which the personal-level conscious system plays a role. Of course, Steward

grants that there are automatic actions (2012, p. 246-47), but it is not clear how they are to be seen in

the light of the control that her theory presupposes: “It is I who allows, or not, the relevant sub-

personal systems to go into operation in the first place” (Steward, 2012, p. 52).Would the agent

disappear in automatic action? What about action that the agent does absentmindedly, such as walking

to work, or typing the password to one’s e-mail account?

It would be odd to claim that automatic actions cannot be attributed to the agent, for some

automatic actions become automatic because the agent has rehearsed them persistently in order to

make them automatic, or at least, overlearned. For instance, let’s picture a middle school boy, Sam,

who has become accustomed to a distasteful “prank” that his classmates like to play whenever juice is

served in a cup at lunch hour. The children will try to hit his cup at the bottom, to make the cup turn

and the drink spill on him. Sam knows he must not be distracted while holding a cup in his hands; he

even devised a plan. Whenever one of his classmates approaches him while he is holding his cup of

juice, Sam gets ready and throws the content of the cup on his attacker as soon as the other child

moves her hand towards him. After a while Sam becomes so well trained in his technique that the

movement is automatized, if anyone moves their hand towards Sam’s cup he acts immediately. His

training has come to a point that, if he wished to abort the action, for instance, because the Principal

was approaching, he might throw the juice before he can stop himself from doing so. Sam’s classmates

no longer bother him when he is having lunch, and he is pleased.

On Steward’s account, however, Sam could not be considered to play a relevant role in the

production of his action—in her words, the action cannot be attributed to Sam—because he would lack

the conscious control considered important in her theory, even though it was an action that Sam

trained himself to be able to perform very quickly and precisely, and it seems to be in conformity with

his wishes and plans (whether we consider his action praiseworthy is a different issue). Since he has

worked hard to automatize his movements, it would seem odd to consider that he does not play enough

of a role in its production just because he may lack the ability to modify it while it is in the process of

13
being produced and executed. After all, the situation triggers a fast response, as Sam has planned that

it should.

If, in order to attribute an action to the agent, Steward’s conception of agents requires

regulative control and personal-level consciousness allows the operation of the mechanisms that

produce action, then it seems to leave out actions that are too much of a result of her own training to

be lacking a role of hers. Actions that are too rooted in her values, desires, and plans to be considered

lacking her role.

Even though I do not claim that all AC theories hold a consensual conception of agents, I

believe that these requirements that AC makes in order for the agent to play a role in her action are at

least some of the theory’s implicit necessary requirements for agency. This indicates that the

conception of what an agent is shapes in which actions the agent is said to play a role, and according to

which criteria. Steward and O’Connor give good hints of what these requirements are. This is why AC

theories cannot accept CTA’s explanation of action, because the latter theory presents actions under a

different conception of agents that does not require the kind of control that relies on consciousness.

Thus, it has different criteria for what the agent’s role would be in producing action.

4.2. Are we not agents?

Wegner seems to hold a similar conception of what the role of the agent should be. In his

view, conscious will is an illusion, and therefore we are not agents. So, one can conclude that if his

theory is correct, and if there were agents, then agents would be the sort of entity whose experience of

consciously causing actions would not be an illusion; i.e., conscious will would in fact originate

actions. This is the requirement for agency.

His view on agency is similar to AC’s view in the sense that conscious participation in action

is considered fundamental for agency. On the other hand, Wegner does not have a problem with what

14
is called the Disappearing Agent objection; i.e., he does not seem to view his conclusion that we are

not agents as problematic.

So, Wegner is not concerned with control in the sense that AC is, nevertheless both theories

are concerned with consciousness in action production. For this reason, Wegner claims that there are

no agents, nor agency, since he defends the claim that conscious will plays no role in producing action.

The problem is that he raises the bar for agency too high, as does AC. This is even more apparent in

Wegner’s theory, because he raises the bar to a point that the criteria are unreachable in his own

theory. We have more reasons to think that his conception of agency is mistaken than to think that

human beings are not agents and never cause what they do, because if we do not fulfill the criteria for

agency, then I don’t know what kind of entity does. If we wish to claim that people act, then we must

be agents, which implies acceptance of a weaker conception of agents. Perhaps Wegner just means

that there are no agents if the concept of agents is something similar to AC’s conception of agents.

I have added Wegner’s take on agency to the discussion because he is also addressing lack of

agency or lack of a role for the agent. I believe that Wegner’s theory is relevant to help sort out what is

missing for all these theories—anti-reductionist AC and Volitionism, Velleman, Wegner—when it is

claimed that the agent disappears: conscious control. This is the case because these theories hold

similar presuppositions about agency.

4.3. Why not accept AC’s conception of agents?

One may conclude that AC setting the bar for agency higher than CTA is what originates the

problem of the Disappearing Agent. Nonetheless, the role AC expects the agent to play is unrealistic,

as one can notice when automatic actions, habitual actions, and absentmindedness are taken into

consideration. Moreover, if Wegner’s theory (2002) is correct, consciousness may not have such a

prominent role in the production of actions as AC claims.

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 Wegner describes many cases of automatisms, and some automatic action discussed in the

scientific literature. He calls automatisms the actions the agent is not conscious of producing and even

some actions that the agent is not conscious that she produced. Wegner interprets such automatisms as

showing that the conscious will is not a key component in the production of human action and that it

actually may not be relevant to its production at all. One needs not accept Wegner’s interpretation, but

surely one can accept that some automatic actions are cases of actions (many of which people would,

in general, consider intentional) in which no conscious mental state appears to be involved in their

production, and that there are at least some human actions that are produced in such manner.

Therefore, there may not be a conscious role of the agent, as expected by AC, in these actions.

Of course, it is open to the AC theorist to claim that the agent does not play a relevant role in

all her actions, and automatic actions would be such a case, but then it is up to the AC theorist to

explain why there would be such a distinction, and how the actions that the agent does not play a

relevant role in producing are in fact produced. It is also interesting to point out, that AC can be

understood as doing exactly what it believes to be the source of CTA’s issues: it is reducing the

agent’s role. I claim that it is a reduction in the sense that it reduces the agent, or agential control, to a

conscious aspect of the production of action; for instance, a personal-level conscious system.

The conception of agency accepted by AC is a mistaken conception that originates the

problem of the Disappearing Agent. AC claims that the agent disappears in CTA’s account because

the agent is conceived by AC in a way that requires an unattainable conscious role.

5. A programmatic concept revision

I will not argue here for a specific conception of agents, but I would like to put forward a brief

sketch of a conception that will rely on less demanding presuppositions about agency. The

investigation and debate about human action in philosophy has a long history, and we may have some

new relevant information about actions that has entered the debate and that philosophy should not

ignore. It is informative to take into consideration, for instance, the data that neuroscience has brought
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to the discussion in order to better understand the production of human actions. After all, how actions

are produced seems relevant to what is considered to be an agent.

I defend the claim that the philosophical investigation of agency itself should be flipped.

Instead of holding a conception of human agents and then, from that conception, trying to explain

human action in accordance to how the agent is conceived the reverse should be done. An

investigation concerned about agents and their actions should first grasp an understanding of human

action. Once a basic understanding of actions is reached, then we may be closer to knowing what

characterizes agency, and human agents. In this sense, the proposal is programmatic.

A more modest conception of agents would probably help at this point. What this means is that

most of us would agree that, roughly, agents are characterized by their ability to act. As Mele put it:

“to be a human agent is to be a human being who acts” (2003, p. 216), at least sometimes. Mele’s

definition allows the investigation of agency to turn to the explanation of action. Therefore a theory of

action should not set out to explain actions starting from a specific and demanding conception of

agency such as the idea that human agents are entities who have an irreducible power and that they

consciously control their actions. I doubt that a specific conception of agents, put forward based on

intuitions about agency, can be a trustworthy guideline for the explanation of actions.

Perhaps it will prove more instructive to adopt a less demanding conception of what an agent

is while trying to explain how humans produce their actions; for instance, a concept of agents

characterized by actions and their account. Additionally, I believe that the notion of control is relevant

to agency. Imagine an agent who plans an evening out with her friends, and ends up sitting on her door

steps contemplating the vastness of the universe for no reason for which she can account, instead of

going to meet her friends. One might say that she does not have enough control to follow through with

an action plan. Or an agent who intends to grab the frying pan to make some scrambled eggs, but can’t

help grabbing a mug in spite of her efforts. One might say that she does not have enough control to

guide her action. I doubt that one would easily accept that these should be considered regular cases of

agency.

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 A simple kind of control may be enough for agency, the sort of control agents have when their

actions agree with their action plans, intentions, and motivations; which does not mean that her

motivations to act cannot conflict with some of her plans, such as in cases of weakness of will. Agents

act, and human agents produce their actions according to their action plans, intentions, and

motivations. Some may even claim that some amount of conscious planning may be relevant to human

agency, in order to coordinate plans and not allow them to conflict. This may be the case, especially

for complex actions and plans that stretch in time; however, I do not claim that it is necessary for all

human actions. I doubt that my action of stretching my arms just before I wrote this sentence involved

much conscious planning.

What ought to be clear is that, even though, I am only proposing a programmatic conception

of agency, some points stand out. It has become clear that the conception of agency depends on how

one accounts for actions, not on conscious control. Explaining action, nonetheless, is the subject for

further investigation. I do admit that the notion of control over one’s action is relevant to agency, but

the control in question does not have to be regulative control, nor does it have to depend on

consciousness. I hope it is clear, though, that these are much more modest suggestions than what I

have claimed to be AC’s requirements for agency.

6. A brief objection

It could be objected that CTA makes the agent disappear independently of whether conscious

or unconscious states are said to causally produce the action, therefore consciousness and regulative

control would not actually be the real issues behind the Disappearing Agent problem. An explanation

of actions according to which the action is caused by conscious mental states still has no role for the

agent in it, according to this objection, because the agent’s role is allegedly irreducible.

In fact, CTA does not attribute the role of the agent’s control over her action to consciousness.

This is the reason why it does not matter if the mental states involved in the production of action are

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conscious or not, its account of action would still lack the regulative control that AC considers so

important to the agent’s role, independently of matters of reducibility. So, the Disappearing Agent

objection would apply all the same, because in AC theories, agents are only considered to have a role

in the production of action if they have regulative control over it. However, my concern is whether this

presupposition is correct; i.e., whether agents can really have this kind of regulative control.

It has been argued above that the requirement of regulative control is part of a conceptual

framework in which the agent is seen as consciously governing her actions. Even if CTA’s explanation

involves conscious mental states in its explanation of action, it still does not involve regulative control.

However, what is being put into question here is exactly AC’s conception of agents that requires this

sort of control. The real issue comes to light when it is made clear that AC and CTA are both relying

on their particular conceptual framework in their explanation of actions. So, the issue of the

Disappearing Agent only arises if one accepts AC’s conceptual framework from the very start. The

real issue is why one should prefer one framework to the other.

If it is agreed that AC’s explanation of actions, involving conscious control in action

production, is too high a requirement, to the point that it leaves out actions that have become habits, or

automatic actions, and if we accept that not all human actions are consciously produced, then we may

rather accept that AC’s conception of agents sets the bar too high for anyone to be an agent. Therefore,

the conception of agents as entities that play a conscious role in actions needs to be revised.

7. Conclusion

The discussion presented here contributes to make clear how AC and Wegner conceive of

agents. Even though Wegner does not agree that conscious regulative control of action has an

important role in the production of action, as AC requires, Wegner does seem to share AC’s

conception that if there are agents, and if they play a prominent role in the production of their actions,

then they must be consciously involved in the production of their actions. I have argued that the
19
requirement in question, presupposed by Wegner and AC’s conception of agents, is too high a bar for

agency while it is also a reduction of the agent’s role, which means that the conception of agents that

assumes such requirement should be revised.

Acknowledgements

This paper was made possible by grants 2011/21030-0 and 2014/02558-1, São Paulo Research

Foundation (FAPESP). I would like to thank Eduarda Calado, Larissa Gondim, Ana Paula Pereira,

Sara Kolms, Joshua Turkewitz, and both reviewers for their comments on a previous version of this

paper.

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