The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy and Implicit Cognition

Humans think of ourselves as acting according to reasons that we can typically articulate and acknowledge, though we may be reluctant to do so. Yet some of our actions do not fit this mold—they seem to arise from motives and thoughts that appear outside of our control and our self-awareness. Rather than treating such cases as outliers, theorists now treat significant parts of the mind as operating implicitly or ‘behind the scenes’. Mental faculties like reasoning, language, and memory seem ...