Uncertainty and the act of making a difficult choice

Abstract

ABSTRACT A paradigmatic experience of agency is the felt effort associated with the act of making a difficult choice. The challenge of accounting for this experience within a compatibilist framework has been called ‘the agency problem of compatibilism’ (Vierkant, 2022, The Tinkering Mind: Agency, Cognition and the Extended Mind, Oxford University Press, 116). In this paper, I will propose an evolutionarily plausible, actional account of deciding which explains the phenomenology. In summary: The act of making a difficult choice is triggered by a metacognitive decision to intentionally stop deliberating, despite ongoing uncertainty. This decision is the output of a metacognitive cost–benefit computation, which weighs the value of uncertainty reduction against the costs of ongoing deliberation. Strikingly, contemporary theories of effort suggest that this cost–benefit computation is also the source of the feeling of mental effort, which tracks the costs of that decision. If this account is correct, the agency problem of compatibilism has been solved. The act of making a difficult choice and the associated paradigmatic experience of agency, felt effort, both follow from the metacognitive evaluation. Implications are explored.