Consciousness and Action

Summary

Classical epiphenomenalism holds that conscious mental events never cause physical effects; contemporary versions instead claim consciousness lacks causal efficacy only for certain actions. This chapter examines two empirical challenges to conscious mental causation: Libet's experiments, which suggest neural activity initiating voluntary actions occurs before conscious willing, implying conscious will does not cause those actions; and Milner and Goodale's studies, where visual consciousness and motor action dissociate, questioning the assumption that visual consciousness guides visually based motor actions.

Study at a glance

Abstract

In its classical form, epiphenomenalism is the view that conscious mental events have no physical effects: while physical events cause mental events, the opposite is never true. Unlike classical epiphenomenalism, contemporary forms do not hold that conscious mental states always lack causal efficacy, only that they are epiphenomenal relative to certain kinds of action, ones we pre-theoretically would have thought consciousness to causally contribute to. Two of these contemporary, empirically based challenges to the efficacy of the mental are the focus of this chapter. The first, originating in research by Libet, has been interpreted as showing that the neural events initiating voluntary actions precede our conscious willing of them, meaning the conscious will cannot be what causes them. The second challenge, originating in studies by Milner and Goodale, consist of instances in which the content of visual consciousness and motor action dissociate, casting doubt on the intuitive view that visual consciousness guides visually based motor action.