Anorexia nervosa: Illusion in the sense of agency

This paper first identifies and then provides a novel analysis of a feature of anorexia nervosa (AN) that has gone overlooked in the philosophy of psychiatry literature. This feature is the discrepancy between first-personal experiences of anorexic food restriction and the clinical descriptions of these same behaviors at the level of agentive awareness. I develop a positive account of the sense of agency in AN that accommodates current empirical findings while also providing valuable insight into how it is that anorexics can sincerely report feeling fully in control over their food restriction.