Abstract

Neuroscience challenges our beliefs about agency and autonomy because it seems to imply that we have no control of our behavior: most brain processes are not transparent to us, we have no direct access to the efferent system, and we only experience the sensorimotor consequences of our unconscious motor plans. In this chapter, Walter Glannon argues that although unconscious processes drive many of our actions, this does not imply that conscious mental states have no causal role in our behavior and that we have no control over it. He argues that some degree of unconscious neural constraint on conscious mental states is necessary to modulate thought and action and promote flexible behavior and adaptability to environmental demands. He maintains that a nonreductive materialist account of the mind–brain relation makes it plausible to claim that mental states can cause changes in physical states of the brain.