The Tinkering Mind

Epistemic agency is a crucial concept in many areas of philosophy and cognitive sciences. But what is it? The Tinkering Mind argues that epistemic agency has two distinct, incompatible definitions - intentional mental action, or a distinct non-voluntary form of evaluative agency, both of which lead to surprising, counterintuitive consequences.

Tillmann Vierkant is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences (PPLS) at the University of Edinburgh. His research interests are centred around mental actions and epistemic agency. He has worked extensively on topics relating to free will and voluntary action in an interdisciplinary context. He has also written on willpower, the extended mind, implicit bias, self-knowledge and an X phi paper exploring folk intuitions on freedom and responsibility. Currently, he is part of an interdisciplinary project on the neuro-philosophy of free will, and a project on responsibility in autonomous systems.

1: Introduction, Core Argument and Methodology
2: The Simple Argument
3: Objections to the Simple Argument
4: Extending and Shrinking Agents
5: Metacognition
6: Willpower and Epistemic Agency
7: How Choices can be Actions
8: Diachronicity: Intentional or Rational?
9: At the Very End