Talking to Our Selves ends on the note “Afterwards.” The note encapsulates the picture developed in the book, based on abundant references to fascinating empirical findings with implications for our status as morally responsible agents and selves. As he concludes, Doris (Reference Doris2015b, p. 199) enjoins us not to see ourselves as “little gods with big brains,” but as “social animals that endlessly explain themselves to one another” in ways that resort much less to “the rarefied sort of [cognition] called Reason” (p. 199) than philosophers of a Kantian or Frankfurtian bent have suggested (Doris Reference Doris2015b, pp. 7, 18–19; Shoemaker Reference Shoemaker and Doris2015). The empirical evidence shows that “the mental is rather a mess” (Doris Reference Doris2015b, pp. 3–5); in particular, messier than reflectivists, who emphasize the importance of reason for agency, could tolerate. “Minds, we're, told are uncertain conglomerations of systems and subsystems – ‘modules’ on one influential family of theories – cobbled together by natural selection with little regard for the people toting them about” (Doris Reference Doris2015b, p. 3).

On the face of such a “disintegrated” picture of the mind, with competing processes yielding incongruent outputs, one could either become a skeptic regarding agency and conclude that we rarely are bona fide agents, or attempt to discount the empirical evidence. Doris elects a third path: He ambitiously presents an account of moral agency and responsibility that is empirically informed: “As a philosopher of morals, I don't think [the picture of mental disintegration is] sufficiently enriching; with human beings, I want to find a there there – a person, rather than a haphazard muddle of cognitive systems” (Doris Reference Doris2015b, p. 3). His concluding note comes at the end of an important and ingenious piece that builds on an enduring worry (see Doris Reference Doris2009). This piece is another crucial building block in Doris's project of developing an empirically adequate moral psychology, one that complements his work on character. Like his previous work, it promises to reshape the debate with which it engages.

The author's starting point is the “individualist,” “reflectivist” notion that “the exercise of human agency consists in judgment and behavior ordered by self-conscious reflection about what to think and do” by the individual, and its corollary, that “the exercise of human agency requires accurate reflection” by the individual (précis, sect. 3, para. 1, emphasis in the original). Doris lays out the reasons to believe that individualist reflectivism fails and proposes an anti-reflectivist, collaborativist account in its stead.

As he did for character (Doris Reference Doris2002), the author's objective is to recalibrate the debate. He puts collaborativism center stage, but does not fully exclude individual, reason-based agency. We may sometimes act in ways that approximate reflectivist, individualist agency, but it is neither the most common nor the optimal form of agency (Doris Reference Doris2015b, pp. 22–23, 103 sqq.). Doris's account includes a valuational component as well: “it locates the exercise of agency in the expression of a person's values” (p. x). Through this valuational component, the account has implications for moral responsibility and for the (synchronic and diachronic) unity of our selves. The identity and continuity of a person is tied to her subjective values. Moreover, “attribution of agency and responsibility may be warranted when a pattern of cognition, rationalization, and behavior emerges, and that pattern is best explained as involving” the expression of her values (p. 164).

We focus here – as does Doris – on the opposition between individualist reflectivism and collaborativist anti-reflectivism (Doris Reference Doris2015b, pp. 110 sqq.) and concentrate on the collaborativist aspect. We first characterize the account along two dimensions, before turning to what we call the problem of bad company.

The first dimension is entanglement: The solution to the skeptical challenge is that agency and cognition are not fully internal to the agent or, in philosophers' patois, intrinsic affairs. They are, most commonly and when optimal, entangled in a social context. “If reflectivism engenders skeptical difficulty, individualism obscures the best avenue of escape. Ameliorating skepticism about agency will require rejecting both reflectivism and individualism” (Doris Reference Doris2015b, p. 110). So, most common and optimal forms of agency are collaborativist – they are embedded in a “dialogic” relation with others (pp. 146–48). We can resist skepticism if we abandon the idea that we have an instance of agency only when we have a rational agent reflecting self-consciously in a condition of “freedom from [social] influence.” Instead, we need to embrace “mutual influence” (p. 148).

Entanglement also applies to selves: We are socially embedded beings, the synchronic and diachronic unity of which is “contingent on” social context (Doris Reference Doris2015b, pp. 191–92, 196). What is distinctive to the account here is not contingency. Rather, it is the idea that a self is and remains itself not solely in virtue of intrinsic considerations. Her identity and continuity is dependent on extrinsic factors located in her social environment (Ch. 8). This claim may seem unsurprising, but we should note that the dependence defended by Doris (Reference Doris2015b) is strong: It is not only that individuals need social context as a “precondition” to develop and sustain their identities. It is also a deeper claim of “causal entanglement” (pp. 191–92). Cognition, agency, continuity, and identity do not simply require social context; they are characteristically social (pp. 115, 191–92).

This social nature is key to responding to the skeptical challenge. Through the exchange of rationalizations and social negotiation of our “biographies” (Doris Reference Doris2015b, pp. 143 sqq.), we can exercise agency in our lives by behaving in ways expressing our values:

Notably, we are often deluded regarding the causes and reasons for our actions and our degree of control over our behavior. But these embellishments, both sustained and limited by appropriate social context, in fact, favor agency (Doris Reference Doris2015b, pp. 146 sqq.).

The second dimension along which we characterize Doris's account is disentanglement. Indeed, one might wonder if the emphasis on collaborativism does not leave us with agents and selves, the boundaries of which are unclear. The author refrains from claiming we are “extended selves,” incorporating (as parts) elements of their social context – even though he confesses a certain temptation to do so (Doris Reference Doris2015b, pp. 191–92). However, the stronger the evidence for skepticism about individualist reflectivism, the stronger the case for a substitutive account. And as the evidence for such skepticism accumulates, the more Doris's substitutive account needs to emphasize collaborativism, the “best avenue of escape” from skepticism (p. 110).

If agency and persons are socially embedded so profoundly, we could wonder: How are we still individually responsible agents and distinct selves? The valuational component of the theory plays a key role in this respect. For Doris (Reference Doris2015b), a criterion to identify what is internal to the self is (the expression of) the actor's values (pp. 24–25). He calls behavior that expresses the actor's values “self-directed,” and such self-directedness is necessary for agency and responsibility. These values, although socially contingent, individuate selves: “A person has the identity they do partly by virtue of having the values they do: who I am has much to do with what matters to me” (p. 188).

According to our characterization of Doris's theory, the entanglement dimension helps respond to skepticism, while the disentanglement dimension licenses the anchoring of agency and responsibility in distinct actors. Let us now consider a thought experiment and present a potential issue: the problem of bad company.

Imagine Cleo contemplates a life-defining choice – say Cleo is deciding between philosopher and clinical psychologist careers. She has purposely isolated herself for days from all external influences, such as that of her philosopher friends and psychologist parents, who tend to sway her in one direction or another. Cleo wants her career-related behavior to be the result of reflection and to originate from herself. Cleo is a reflectivist individualist about agency. She wants her choice to be made in a condition of “freedom from influence.”

According to collaborativism, however, social dialogue – through explicit or implicit pathways – might help her behave in the manner that expresses her values the most appropriately. Instead of seeing influence as a corrupting force, we could see it as a positive fixture of agency. For example, sociality could mitigate some “goofy influences” (Doris Reference Doris2015b, p. 64), that is, rationally irrelevant elements that seem to surreptitiously affect one's cognition and behavior. Assume, for the sake of example, that when Cleo listens to jazzy music, she feels drawn to philosophy and, conversely, that a taste of Anthony's freshly baked cookies tends to make her desire to help people by becoming a therapist (see Ch. 3; the example is inspired by Isen & Levin Reference Isen and Levin1972). Collaborativism seemingly advises Cleo and us: Don't worry too much about the relative lack of conscious, individual control on your behavior – self-ignorance and mutual influence is right for you! As Doris says, “ignorance is the life-blood of agency,” “the social formation of biography facilitates agency,” “relationships help people express their values in their lives, as they do in the right sort of friendships, romantic involvements, and institutions” (pp. 129, 146, 148).

Let us grant that, with mutual influence, we are better placed to express our values and that we should embrace our “weathervane-like” natures, marked by less conscious, individual control than reflectivist individualism assumes. Doris assures us that the winds are mostly propitious. They are fairly steady as well, bringing stability. Doris (Reference Doris2015b) speaks, for instance, of the social “scaffolding” or “mast” that our socially negotiated biographies constitute (pp. 129, 144). They support individual responsible agency and promote morality, thanks in part to “self-bullshitting,” (Shoemaker Reference Shoemaker and Doris2015) pace reflectivism (Doris Reference Doris2015b, pp. 143–45, Ch. 6; see also Alfano Reference Alfano2013a).

Yet, the troubling discovery that we are often clueless as to the determinants of our behavior, that we are like weathervanes, lingers. Thus, we could turn Doris's epistemological argument against reflectivism on its head and ask: Are we sure that the winds are at our backs? We do not need to search long before we find examples of human groups leading individuals to act in atrocious ways: socially sustained instances of slavery, genocide, and forms of nasty implicit and explicit “-isms” are unfortunately countless. Doris responds that, indeed, the type of social environment with which we surround ourselves matters – it must be “the right social milieu” (our emphasis). But how is Cleo, as an individual, to tell whether philosophers or psychologists are bad or good company? And can we not, as a community, err in a “self-ignorant” manner? Bad company appears abundant enough, but, even if one assumed that sociality most often supports individual responsible agency and bolsters morality, what if, sometimes, collaborativism sounds too much like collaborationism?

Doris (Reference Doris2015b) does note that “sociality . . . facilitated resistance to the Nazis” (p. 119) and that some moral emotions – often seen as social emotions – promote individual morality (pp. 121–22; on, e.g., shame, see Calhoun Reference Calhoun2004; Williams Reference Williams1993). But showing that there is good company or even that bad company is rare does not suffice. We need to rule out bad company, which is an analog to the “more moral than purely epistemic” defeaters (précis, sect. 2, para. 8) that plague individualist reflectivism (Doris Reference Doris2015b, pp. 64 sqq.). If we are so entangled in our milieu for cognition, agency, and our unity as selves, we appear badly placed to tell whether we should embrace or resist its influence. Should we be in bad company, we might need reflective, individualist humans sufficiently in touch with their values, and so able to disentangle themselves from social influence. If we may be so bold to suggest it, we might need humans of character.