ABSTRACT
Trying has been touted as the 'mental' pineal gland. Yet the modem materialist who identifies the mind with the brain no longer has any theoretical need for an exact location where mental substance causally interacts with a distinct physical substance. Brain events cause the body to move in a way perfectly describable in the physicalistic. causal terms of neurophysiology. Nonetheless a legacy of the Cartesian problem remains. The causal theory stated in purely physicalistic terms of brain events, muscle contractions, and bodily motions will never explain how some bodily motions acquire the status of bodily movements an agent intentionally performs. In the story of bodily movement told by the strictly causal laws of the physical sciences human agency disappears. The Cartesian problem of action is now to determine how brain events, of which certain mental or psychological predicates are true, cause certain bodily movements to be more than mere happenings in the physical world. For the Cartesian new-wave volitionist, focus on trying is the key to solving this problem. In this view, the referent of 'trying' will be seen to include, in part or wholly, a type of brain event responsible for the essence of human action, and it is only an analysis in terms of trying which reveals this fact about the essence of human action. So O'Shaughnessy says trying 'serves a crucial bridge function between mind and body, not unlike that allotted by Descartes to the pineal gland' (Will, 2, p. 352).
