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Mar 2006
ISBN 0262162377
372 pp.
14 illus.
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Does Consciousness Cause Behavior?
Susan Pockett , William P. Banks and Shaun Gallagher

Our intuition tells us that we, our conscious selves, cause our own voluntary acts. Yet scientists have long questioned this; Thomas Huxley, for example, in 1874 compared mental events to a steam whistle that contributes nothing to the work of a locomotive. New experimental evidence (most notable, work by Benjamin Libet and Daniel Wegner) has brought the causal status of human behavior back to the forefront of intellectual discussion. This multidisciplinary collection advances the debate, approaching the question from a variety of perspectives.

Table of Contents
 Introduction
by Susan Pockett, William P. Banks, and Shaun Gallagher
 NEUROSCIENCE
1 The Neuroscience of Movement
by Susan Pockett
2 Consciousness of Action as an Embodied Consciousness
by Marc Jeannerod
3 Intentions, Actions, and the Self
by Suparna Choudhury and Sarah-Jayne Blakemore
4 Free Choice and the Human Brain
by Richard E. Passingham and Hakwan C. Lau
5 Consciousness, Intentionality, and Causality
by Walter J. Freeman
 PHILOSOPHY
6 Where's the Action? Epiphenomenalism and the Problem of Free Will
by Shaun Gallagher
7 Empirical Constraints on the Problem of Free Will
by Peter W. Ross
8 Toward a Dynamic Theory of Intentions
by Elisabeth Pacherie
9 Phenomenology and the Feeling of Doing: Wegner on the Conscious Will
by Timothy Bayne
10 Free Will: Theories, Analysis, and Data
by Alfred R. Mele
11 Of Windmills and Straw Men: Folk Assumptions of Mind and Action
by Bertram F. Malle
 LAW AND PUBLIC POLICY
12 Does Consciousness Cause Misbehavior?
by William P. Banks
13 Free Will as a Social Institution
by Wolfgang Prinz
14 Truth and/or Consequences: Neuroscience and Criminal Responsibility
by Leonard V. Kaplan
15 Bypassing Conscious Control: Unconscious Imitation, Media Violence, and Freedom of Speech
by Susan Hurley
16 Neurosociety Ahead? Debating Free Will in the Media
by Sabine Maasen
 List of Contributors
 Index
 
 


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