Do conscious decisions cause physical actions?

Abstract

Experiments suggest that conscious decisions to act may be initiated by unconscious neural events that precede the decision. Some have concluded that unconscious neural events are sufficient to cause both the decision to act and the action, so consciousness has no causal efficacy in producing the action. Here, I explain why this reasoning is fallacious in terms that apply to all mental events, using a variety of examples in which the conscious aspect of a mental event has a different and even an “opposite” effect on behavior from the unconscious aspect. These cases provide vivid illustrations of the distinct causal contributions of conscious and unconscious aspects of a mental event to behavior. One conclusion is that the neuroscience of decision has been overly focused on binary “go/no go” contents, obscuring the ways in which conscious and unconscious contents can make distinct contributions to decision and to action.