Abstract

This chapter considers the question of the place and role of mental action in an account of conscious thinking, and, more generally, the metaphysics of mind. It is argued that mental action has an essential role to play in an account of issues in the epistemology of mind that are central to our understanding of the sort of conscious thinking that self-conscious subjects can engage in. It is argued that in order to accommodate adequately these connections between mental action, the epistemology of mind, and conscious thinking, we need the right account of the ontology of conscious thinking, and that the right account of the ontology of conscious thinking should lead us to reject the notion that we can conceive of mental actions as reducible to mental processes (e.g. transitions between mental states) that enable and explain overt bodily action.