Epiphenomenalism is the thesis that though physical events may cause mental events, those mental events never cause physical events. In this paper, I will be concerned with the claim that our thoughts, intentions, and awareness play no causal role in producing actions. Though epiphenomenalism has been defended with a priori philosophical arguments, the majority of the support that it has gained in recent years has come from advances in neuroscience. At the center of these experiments is the Libet paradigm that (...) aims to show that our actions are initiated by unconscious brain processes prior to our awareness of the intention or decision to perform the corresponding actions. It has been widely suggested that these studies support the view that consciousness is epiphenomenal, and if Libet-style experiments support this conclusion, the results have direct implications for free will. I argue by way of a dilemma that any study that relies on reports of subjects’ awareness in its methodology cannot be used to support epiphenomenalism because the experimenters would have to rule out the possibility that consciousness plays a causal role in order to do so. (shrink)

Some physicalists (Balog 2012, Howell 2013), and most dualists, endorse the acquaintance response to the Knowledge Argument. This is the claim that Mary gains substantial new knowledge, upon leaving the room, because phenomenal knowledge requires direct acquaintance with phenomenal properties. The acquaintance response is an especially promising way to make sense of the Mary case. I argue that it casts doubt on two claims often made on behalf of physicalism, regarding parsimony and mental causation. I show that those who endorse (...) the acquaintance response face special obstacles to invoking parsimony in an argument for physicalism. And I show how acknowledging the phenomenon of acquaintance can ease the dualist’s problems with mental causation, by dispelling three key objections to epiphenomenalism. The most challenging of these objections is that epiphenomenalism blocks an evolutionary explanation of the so-called “hedonic/utility match”. I propose that pleasures and pains, while themselves epiphenomenal, can nonetheless explain positive and negative associations with stimuli, associations that can contribute to fitness. (shrink)

Neuroscientists have located brain activity that prepares or encodes action plans before agents are aware of intending to act. On the basis of these findings and broader agency research, activity in these regions has been proposed as the neural realizers of practical intention. My aim in this paper is to evaluate the case for taking these neural states to be neural representations of intention. I draw on work in philosophy of action on the role and nature of practical intentions to (...) construct a framework of the functional profile of intentions fit for empirical investigation. With this framework, I turn to the broader empirical neuroscience literature on agency to assess these proposed neural representations of intention. I argue that while these neural states in some respects satisfy the functions of intention in planning agency prospective of action, their fit with the role of intention in action execution is not well supported. I close by offering a sketch of which experimental task features could aid in the search for the neural realizer of intention in action. (shrink)

Research suggests that the explicit reasoning we offer to ourselves and to others is often rationalization, that we act instead on instincts, inclinations, stereotypes, emotions, neurobiology, habits, reactions, evolutionary pressures, unexamined principles, or justifications other than the ones we think we’re acting on, then we tell a post hoc story to justify our actions. I consider two benefits of rationalization, once we realize that rationalization is sincere. It allows us to work out, under practical pressure of rational consistency, which are (...) good reasons to act on. Rationalization also prompts us to establish meaningful patterns out of merely permissible options. (shrink)

Here, I review work from three lines of research in cognitive science often taken to threaten free will and moral responsibility. This work concerns conscious deciding, the experience of acting, and the role of largely unnoticed situational influences on behavior. Whether this work in fact threatens free will and moral responsibility depends on how we ought to interpret it, and depends as well on the nature of free and responsible behavior. I discuss different ways this work has been interpreted and (...) argue that though work on conscious deciding and the experience of acting presents no real threat, work on situational influences is more difficult to dismiss. This work may present a real threat, and it may require us to revise our commonsense understanding of free and responsible behavior. But this work may also present ways to augment free and responsible behavior. Determining whether and how advancing science threatens, enhances, or simply describes free will is an ongoing task for scientists and philosophers alike. (shrink)

Much recent work in neuroscience aims to shed light on whether we have free will. Can it? Can any science? To answer, we need to disentangle different notions of free will, and clarify what we mean by ‘empirical’ and ‘testable’. That done, my main conclusion is, duly interpreted: that free will is not a testable hypothesis. In particular, it is neither verifiable nor falsifiable by empirical evidence. The arguments for this are not a priori but rather are based on a (...) posteriori consideration of the relevant neuroscientific investigations, as well as on standard philosophy of science work on the notion of testability. (shrink)

Midwest Studies In Philosophy, EarlyView.

Mental events enter into causal relations with bodily events. The philosophical task is to explain how this is possible. Descartes’ dualism of mental and material substances ultimately founders on the impossibility of pairing mental events with physical events as causes and effects. This is what I have called “the pairing problem.” Many contemporary views also fail to explain mental causation. In the end, we are left with a dilemma. If mental phenomena are irreducible to physical phenomena, then mental phenomena lose (...) their causal efficacy. However, if mental phenomena are reducible to physical phenomena, then casts doubt on the very existence of mental phenomena. (shrink)