Introduction

Abstract

The ubiquity of mental action, and its connection to consciousness and agency, would suggest that the topic deserves a foundational place in action theory and philosophy of mind. This chapter lays out the terrain, providing some reasons why there has been a tendency to overlook mental action in philosophical literature of the past several decades and raise some concerns for this omission. It describes some of the features of recent philosophical and scientific developments that may bear on questions concerning the nature of mental actions, their characteristic features, explanations appealing to them, and scientific explanations of them. The chapter shows that focusing on mental action can inform our understanding of many other philosophical issues, including consciousness, intentionality, agency, the ontology of mental kinds, and the nature of causation. One central issue for understanding mental actions is the issue of the relationship between explanations that appeal to mental actions and causal explanations that do not involve appealing to personhood or agency.