Mindfulness and Agential Control

Mindfulness meditation seems to generate the following puzzle: On one hand, mindfulness reveals to the meditator that many of their thoughts are outside of their control and leads to a diminished sense of self; on the other, regular mindfulness practice is supposed to lead to greater self-awareness and self-control. In this article, the author develops an agent-causal account of agential control that explains both claims. It is suggested that the work of phenomenologist Hans Reiner shows us why the feeling of agency extends further than that which is directly controlled; this provides a way of addressing the puzzle above, while also explaining why many beginner meditators are surprised that much conscious thought is uncontrolled. The author then extends the account by appealing to William James’s notion of the fringe of consciousness, a notion that has been extensively developed by thinkers in the phenomenological tradition, in particular, Aron Gurwitsch. Inspired by Bruce Mangan’s use of the fringe in service of “explanatory phenomenology,” the author argues that Gurwitsch’s model of awareness suggests that the fringe makes possible a distinctive type of choice. This facilitates an account of agency that can explain the types of control possessed during different stages of mindfulness practice.