Salvaging the “sense of agency”: Metacognitive feelings for flexible behavioral control

This paper targets a key question for the philosophy and sciences of the mind: what does consciousness contribute to the guidance of action? I begin by focusing on a construct that seems initially promising in this connection – the sense of agency. I argue that work on the sense of agency is beset by conceptual problems. But, I argue, the sense of agency can be fruitfully re-conceived, treated as the product of metacognition, and placed in a promising framework for understanding the flexible control of behavior. On this reconception, the sense of agency results from monitoring two aspects of action control processes, action quality and action cost. This monitoring undergirds metacognitive feelings connected to action quality (fluency, control, or reliability) as well as action cost (effort, or straining). And these feelings are in turn embedded in the role of cognitive control in guiding and driving motor planning and execution.