ABSTRACT
Broadly, there are two ways that we can think about the fact that much of our mental function is unconscious. The first of these – the Chief Executive model – is compatible with common sense or folk psychology and the way we like to think about ourselves as conscious beings in control of our behaviour (see Figure 1). The philosophical position known as dualism, famously espoused by Decartes, is largely discredited in contemporary philosophy. However, I contend that ordinary people think implicitly about minds and bodies in a dualistic manner, regardless of whether they hold explicit religious beliefs about souls or life after death. Essentially, we think of ourselves as conscious persons who inhabit our bodies and are in some way separate from them. Of course, there is no scientific foundation for this dualism at all; the fact that it is in our folk psychology suggests that the conscious person is a construction of the brain, whose properties may be illusory. Part of this construct is the belief in intentional cognition or conscious will. It appears to us that we freely choose our actions, after reflection on our beliefs, desires, goals and intentions. For example, I chose to write this book because I believed that this was an important scientific topic that deserved a wider audience and I wanted to be the one to communicate it.
