Shaping Our Mental Lives

Abstract

This chapter considers the value of one’s ability to “shape one’s own mental life”; more specifically, it considers axiological implications of the claim that subjects sometimes can and do engage in “mental self-regulation,” that is, that subjects sometimes can be, and sometimes are, actively involved with their own mental lives in a goal-directed way. The phenomenon of mental self-regulation is interesting from a philosophical perspective because it seems crucial to understand this phenomenon in any attempt to understand the nature of one’s mental life fully. However, one’s ability to engage in mental self-regulation is also of great interest from an axiological perspective, and the chapter considers the phenomenon from this latter perspective. It asks in which respects a subject’s ability of mental self-regulation might be of value.