Causalism and Antireductionism

Abstract

One key to the mystery of intentional action is control — intentional action involves control by the agent over her body and over the attainment of a goal. A popular — some might say wildly popular — way of characterizing such control is in terms of mental events causing bodily movements. These are “causal” theories of intentional action. This approach will be discussed in Section 2.1. A less popular kind of approach that poses a serious challenge to causalism, and does more justice, perhaps, to the teleological (goal-directed) nature of intentional action, denies the reducibility of intentional action to such a causal nexus between mind and body. This kind of approach will be discussed in Section 2.3.