Non-Conscious Goal Pursuit and the Effortful Control of Behavior

We haven’t really solved the problem of consciousness until that executive is itself broken down into subcomponents that are themselves clearly just unconscious underlaborers which themselves work (compete, interfere, dawdle,…) without supervision (Dennett, 2001, p. 228) A significant proportion of human behavior is determined by non-conscious goal pursuits. This assertion is easily derived from two well-established and highly consensual observations about human nature. First, much of human behavior is purposeful, or goal directed. Our goals range from very trivial (e.g., to make a cup of coffee) and a little less so (e.g., to get to work), through more complex (e.g., to write an interesting chapter) to extremely difficult ones (e.g., to be a good parent). It is not completely unlikely that goals direct behavior at virtually every moment of our lives. Second, our consciousness is very – but very – limited in its processing resources. Memorize simple cooking instructions, count the number of knives you put on the table, or just think a simple thought – and your conscious capacity drops substantially.