How do Deep Self theorists mediate disputes between alternative ac- counts of the relevant deep self mental states? Although not every Deep Self theorist is explicit about how they answer this question, most argue that the tokens of only one particular type of mental state or another are invariably “internal.”37 A mental state is internal iff the agent is identified with the state in such a way that it cannot legitimately be taken to be a mere occurrence that does not belong to the agent since it is an “alien” force.38 I follow Agnieszka Jaworska here in distinguishing internality in this ontological sense from subjective active identification that is based on whether the agent perceives aspects of her psychology as being her own. These senses are perhaps not wholly unrelated, however, as non-self- deceptive subjective identification might be able to provide us with defea- sible evidence of internality. While there is a possible view on which the ontological category of internal mental states with which an agent can rightly be identified amounts to nothing more than the states with which the agent takes herself to be identified with, such a view would require an argument.
The concept of an internal state is usually given a gloss as the kind of state from which an agent cannot be alienated. Whether explicitly or im- plicitly, something like this idea seems to play some role in explaining the
37 Internality may play a less central role in how these disputes are mediated when the subject is approached from the H-Tradition.
proposed authority of the particular kind of deep self mental states on every major Deep Self view.
On the endorsing view, as put forth by Harry Frankfurt, the relevant deep self mental states are higher-order volitions.39 On this view, agents have the ability to influence their actions via the formation of second- order desires, which are desires about what the agent wants to desire to do. Second-order volitions are desires not just about which desires an agent endorses having but about which one of these desires the agent wants to actually act on at a given moment in time. So an agent’s action is attributable iff it is caused by a desire to ϕ that meshes with the agent’s further desire to act on the desire to ϕ. Frankfurt seems to understand the expression relationship that needs to hold between second-order volitions and first-order desires in semi-causal terms. Either the first-order desire is not by itself sufficient to motivate the agent and she needs the ‘push’ con- ferred to it from her second-order volition, or her second-order volition to act on a desire to ϕ accompanies a desire to ϕ that is already sufficient to motivate her to action, and so her endorsement amounts to over- determining or at least “okay-ing” the fact that she will be led to action by such a desire.
An agent’s second-order volitions, for Frankfurt, have the authority to speak for the agent because they are the output of an endorsement pro- cess, the goal of which is to confer the status of internality on first-order desires. In forming a desire to act on one of her first-order desires, an agent identifies herself with her first-order desire because, for Frankfurt, the process of endorsement is the process of identification and a state is in- ternal iff the agent identifies with it.40
39 Frankfurt (1971).
40 One much-discussed serious problem for Frankfurt is that it seems arbitrary that se- cond-order desires, rather than say third or fourth-order desires have special agential au- thority. The way Frankfurt thinks of the role of internality in the theory is part of what generates the problem. If first-order states are granted the authority to speak for the
On the valuing view, the conception of agential architecture is quite different.41 On this model, agential psychology is divided between valuing and mere desiring parts, and each has its own ability to motivate the agent. The relevant deep self mental states are evaluative, although im- portantly they do not consist merely in the pure cognitive judgment that some course of action is best, but rather in the agent’s setting ends for her- self. An agent is attributionally-responsible for her action iff what she does is controlled by her evaluative system, which prescribes the overall best course of action. She is not attributionally-responsible when what she does is controlled by mere desires that do not flow from what she truly values. Supporters of the valuing view argue that valuing states are invar- iably internal by explicitly pointing to the following evidence that no agent can truly be alienated from her values: when an agent comes to re- pudiate one of her values it is always from the perspective of some contra- ry value, and so the initial valuing state will fails to exist for her as a value for her. In this way, an agent’s own values are guaranteed to always be in- ternal since she cannot be alienated from them.
agent due to the fact that a second-order process can confer such authority, we might think that the second-order states involved in the process need to get their authority from a similar sort of even higher-order process. In order to solve this problem, Frankfurt later concluded that the sequence must terminate in some sort of special kind of state or pro- cess of identification, like a decision, that is invariably internal. See Frankfurt (1987, 1992). These views face a larger worry, however, in that guaranteeing internality through a special sort of identification process they fail to be reductionist naturalistic views. Since I take part of the motivation for identifying deep self mental states to be to give a reduc- tionist story of the conditions for attributional-responsibility, in this dissertation I will largely draw on Frankfurt’s earlier second-order volition view. (While I do not address it head on, many of my comments on the commitmental aspects of caring views apply to Frankfurt’s even later view, on which identification amounts to passive commitment [Frankfurt (2006)]).
On the planning view, as proposed by Michael Bratman, the proposed deep self mental states are personal self-governing policies about how one will act in various circumstances.42 In many cases these plans are set by what the agent values, but in cases of normative silence in which agents take there to be no distinct best course, they commit to personal policies that apply also to similar situations in the future. An agent’s action is at- tributable to her iff it is in line with her plans, and in this way plans confer internality on motivational states that are instrumental or realizer desires of these plans. Bratman proposes that plans are invariably internal for agents like us because they partially constitute our diachronic agency. We as agents cannot be alienated from our plans, not just because we set them, but because they tie us together as coherent agents over time.
Proponents of the caring view offer a notably different picture on which “identification is, for the most part, a passive process, garnering its authority for self-determination from one’s nexus of cares.”43 For Shoe- maker (2003) these caring states are conceptual frames for clusters of emo- tional dispositions that respond to the whims and woes of one’s cared for object. For example, if an agent cares about the Phillies, she will experi- ence anxiety over a potential loss, joy at a win, and despair if they don’t make it to the playoffs. Sripada goes one step further and proposes that cares are sui generis kinds of mental states with distinctive functionally specifiable motivational, commitmental, cognitive, and emotional pro- files.44 In addition to a suite of emotional responses, if an agent cares about X she will be intrinsically motivated to perform actions that promote the achievement of X, be disposed to form judgments that cast X in a favora- ble light, and will want to go on caring about X. An agent is attributional- ly-responsible for her action iff, during the operation of the action-directed
42 See Bratman (2003). 43 Shoemaker (2003). 44 Sripada (2016).
psychological mechanisms that are involved in the etiology of the action, her care exerts motivational influences (of sufficient strength) in favor of acting as she does. Like plans on the planning view, cares are proposed to play a crucial role in constituting diachronic agency via their commit- mental aspect, which in turn helps to explain the fact that an agent cannot be alienated from her cares. Since the motivational strength of cares stems from the very thing that constitutes the agent as an agent over time, she cannot be alienated from cares: they make up who she is as an agent.
One further option on offer for those who are worried that the other accounts fail to establish a necessary condition on moral responsibility is to hold an ecumenical, or disjunctive view. David Shoemaker currently defends a view on which an agent either has to act in accordance with her cares or with her values (or both) in order for her to be attributionally- responsible for her action.45 If the fact that they are both thought to be in- variably internal is what makes cares and values good candidates to act as deep self mental states, then the role of internality in an ecumenical view is clear.46 In principle, any combination of deep self mental state types could be combined to form an ecumenical view just as long as the ways in which the states are taken to confer internality on first-order motivational states are compatible sorts of explanations and both ways of conferring in- ternality on resultant actions can coexist.