[Suhlar and Churchland] argue against what they call the "Frail Control" hypothesis advanced by philosophers such as John Doris, which has it that people are far less in control than they suppose, given the influence of unconscious situational factors (lots of experimental data on this). Instead, Suhler and Churchland say that we should expand our notion of responsibility-conferring control to include unconscious and automatic processes, which they point out are robust, ubiquitous, "smart," and essential for effective behavior. Conscious control is all well and good, but not the sine qua non of responsible agency. In which case, they say, people can't appeal to unconscious influences as a new class of excuses, as the Frail Control hypothesis might suggest they could.
Tom Clark has more here.
