The Normativity of Automaticity

While the causal contributions of so-called automatic processes to behavior are now widely acknowledged, less attention has been given to their normative role in the guidance of action. We develop an account of the normativity of automaticity that responds to and builds upon Tamar Szabo Gendler's account of alief, an associative and arational mental state more primitive than belief. Alief represents a promising tool for integrating psychological research on automaticity with philosophical work on mind and action, but Gendler errs in overstating the degree to which aliefs are norm-insensitive.