The self-regulating mind

A system which is to count as minded must represent its environment and must act in pursuit of its goals as those representations make it right to act; or at least it must do this in favourable conditions. But a system may comply with representation-related constraints, simply because that is how it is designed at the subpersonal level to function. Or it may comply for that reason together with the additional fact that it has a special, personal-level ability to represent certain constraints as constraints and to regulate its performance so as to make their satisfaction more likely. This paper argues that the human mind belongs in the second category and then goes on to explore the implications of its being a self-regulating system.