ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the following questions: What, if anything, is distinctive of our capacity for mental agency? How does it compare and contrast with our capacity for bodily agency? What is the relation between mental agency and bodily agency? And how might answers to such questions add to our understanding of issues in the metaphysics of mind, the epistemology of mind, and the philosophy of action? Section 1 discusses the difficulties involved in marking a clear and stable distinction between mental agency and bodily agency, and then introduces the idea that what is distinctive of our capacity for mental agency is the fact that we can exercise that capacity without performing any overt bodily action. Section 2 discusses (i) how some have tried to deploy that conception of our capacity for mental agency in arguments that purport to establish that it is conceivable, and hence metaphysically possible, for one to possess a capacity for mental agency without possessing a capacity for overt bodily agency; (ii) the idea that how such arguments fare depends on the place and role of our capacity for overt bodily agency in our understanding of mentality (e.g. whether there is a necessary connection between being a bearer of mental states and being an agent capable of overt bodily action); and (iii) what differences these debates can make to one’s conception of the relation between exercises of mental agency and exercises of bodily agency. Section 3 compares and contrasts the notions of bodily paralysis and mental paralysis as a way of exploring further (a) whether there are any significant epistemological and metaphysical differences between the exercise of mental agency and the exercise of bodily agency, and (b) the more general significance of the exercise of mental agency in our conscious mental lives.
