The text before you is a study ofthe problematic issue ofmental
causation: causation by minds. On hearing the expression 'mental
causation, ' you may at first think ofsomething like bending spoons by
'psychic' powers. But no, we are dealing here with something much more
puzzling: doing things for reasons, i. e., what we call agency. Psychic
spoon-bending would be a fairly straightforward issue. You just exert
some psychic force and bend a spoon, just like you might bend it by
hand, i. e., by physical force. The only trouble here is that psychic
forces may not be in fact available '. But now you fetch an umbrella
because you expect that it will rain. How does that work? Some- how, it
seems, you let an expectation move your limbs. But aren't your limbs
already moved by nerve impulses and muscle contractions? And are
expecta- tions the proper kind ofitems to move things around? Mental
causation is an issue that is at the heart ofthe mind-body problem, the
problem of making it clear how minded creatures such as we are possi-
ble, and what our mindedness consists in. Unlike psychic spoon-bending,
mental causation happens every day. At least, pretty much of what we
take for granted about ourselves can only be right when mental causation
really happens.