The flow construct has been influential within positive psychology, sport psychology, the science of consciousness, the philosophy of agency, and popular culture. In spite of its longstanding influence, it remains unclear [a] how the constituents of the flow state ‘hang together’—how they relate to each other causally and functionally—[b] in what sense flow is an ‘optimal experience,’ and [c] how best to describe the unique phenomenology of the flow state. As a result, difficulties persist for a clear understanding of the (...) flow state’s structure and function. After explicating the standard view of the flow construct, I articulate several basic questions regarding its nature and functional roles, and I argue that these questions are best answered by integrating flow within broader streams of research on the dynamics of thought, on cognitive control resource allocation, and on creative thought. (shrink)

Why would decision makers adopt heuristics, priors, or in short “habits” that prevent them from optimally using pertinent information—even when such information is freely-available? One answer, Herbert Simon’s “procedural rationality” regards the question invalid: DMs do not, and in fact cannot, process information in an optimal fashion. For Simon, habits are the primitives, where humans are ready to replace them only when they no longer sustain a pregiven “satisficing” goal. An alternative answer, Daniel Kahneman’s “mental economy” regards the question valid: (...) DMs make decisions based on optimization. Kahneman understands optimization not differently from the standard economist’s “bounded rationality.” This might surprise some researchers given that the early Kahneman, along with Tversky, have uncovered biases that appear to suggest that choices depart greatly from rational choices. However, once we consider cognitive cost as part of the constraints, such biases turn out to be occasional failures of habits that are otherwise optimal on average. They are optimal as they save us the cognitive cost of case-by-case deliberation. While Kahneman’s bounded rationality situates him in the neoclassical economics camp, Simon’s procedural rationality echoes Bourdieu’s “habitus” camp. To abridge the fault line of the two camps, this paper proposes a “two problem areas hypothesis.” Along the neoclassical camp, habits satisfy wellbeing, what this paper calls “substantive satisfaction.” Along the Bourdieu camp, habits satisfy belonging, love, and bonding with one’s environment, what this paper calls “transcendental satisfaction.”. (shrink)

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. (shrink)