@inbook{4e79a139f4014c77b32e3ad1e9aea1b3,
title = "Neural Mechanisms of Decision Making and the Personal Level",
abstract = "Can findings from psychology and cognitive neuroscience about the neural mechanisms involved in decision-making can tell us anything useful about the commonly-understood mental phenomenon of making voluntary choices? Two philosophical objections are considered. First, that the neural data is subpersonal, and so cannot enter into illuminating explanations of personal-level phenomena like voluntary action. Secondly, that mental properties are multiply realized in the brain in such a way as to make them insusceptible to neuroscientific study. The paper argues that both objections would be weakened by the discovery of empirical generalisations connecting subpersonal properties with personal-level phenomena. It gives three case studies that furnish evidence to that effect. It argues that the existence of such interrelations are consistent with a plausible construal of the personal-subpersonal distinction. Furthermore, there is no reason to suppose that the notion of subpersonal representation relied on in cognitive neuroscience illicitly imports personal-level phenomena like consciousness or normativity, or is otherwise explanatorily problematic.",
author = "Nicholas Shea",
year = "2013",
language = "English",
isbn = "9780199579563",
volume = "N/A",
series = "International Perspectives in Philosophy and Psychiatry",
publisher = "Oxford University Press",
pages = "1063--1082",
editor = "Fulford, {K. W. M.} and Martin Davies and George Graham and Sadler, {John Z.} and Giovanni Stanghellini and Gipps, {Richard G. T.} and Tim Thornton",
booktitle = "The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychiatry",
edition = "N/A",
}