Are Our Conscious Intentions Causally Effective? On Scientific Epiphenomenalism

Tomáš Marvan

Cyklus Trattenbach-Jilská

What, if any, is the causal role of a conscious intention to perform an action? Some recent scientific theories of action purportedly claim that our conscious mental states are causally idle. I will focus on the most well-known example of such “scientific epiphenomenalism”, Daniel Wegner’s “theory of apparent mental causation”. I will be arguing that Wegner’s theory is often misread. His aim was not to attack the causal effectiveness of conscious mental states. Rather, he attempted to show that our subjective sense of agency is not a completely reliable indicator of the actual causality of action. My second claim will be that there is currently no evidence that conscious mental states are causally ineffective.