The Philosophy of Mind-Wandering

Abstract

This chapter provides an introduction to the philosophy of mind-wandering. It begins with a philosophical critique of the standard psychological definitions of mind-wandering as task-unrelated thought or stimulus-independent thought. Although these definitions have helped bring mind-wandering research onto center stage in psychology and cognitive neuroscience, they have substantial limitations. They do not account for the dynamics of mind-wandering, task-unrelated thought that does not qualify as mindwandering, or the ways in which mind-wandering can be task-related. The chapter reviews philosophical accounts that improve upon the current psychological definitions, in particular an account of mind-wandering as "unguided thinking." It critically assesses the view that mind-wandering can be defined as thought lacking meta-awareness and cognitive agency, as well as the view that mind-wandering is disunified thinking. The definition of mind-wandering as unguided thinking not only is conceptually and phenomenologically precise, but also can be operationalized in a principled way for empirical research. mind-wandering, psychology, neuroscience, cognition, task-unrelated thought, stimulusindependent thought, mental action Not anymore. Indeed, some researchers have dubbed our time "the era of the wandering mind" (Callard, Smallwood, Golchert, & Margulies, 2013). Nevertheless, because the cognitive science of mind-wandering is so young, foundational questions remain unanswered. In particular, there is no consensus about how to define mind-wandering (Christoff, 2012; Irving, 2015), although recent philosophical work on mind-wandering has addressed this foundational issue