# AGENT CAUSATION AND THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF AGENCY **Abstract:** Several philosophers claim that the phenomenology of one’s own agency conflicts with standard causal theories of action, couched in terms of causation by mental events or states. Others say that the phenomenology is prima facie incompatible with such a theory, even if in the end, a reconciliation can be worked out. Here, it is argued that the type of action theory in question is consistent with what can plausibly be said to be presented to us in our experience of our agency. Several routes to a claim that there is nevertheless a prima facie incompatibility are examined, and all are found wanting. The phenomenology of agency, it is argued, is no threat to a standard causal theory of action. There is, many philosophers and psychologists say, a distinctive phenomenology of one’s own agency, something that it is like to act. Some maintain that the phenomenology tells against a widely held theory of action, one on which actions count as such in virtue of being caused by – or causings by – mental events or states.1 Others hold that the phenomenology is prima facie incompatible with such a theory, although in the end, a reconciliation can be worked out. There are indeed difficulties faced by the kind of action theory in question.2 But I argue here that it is logically consistent with what can plausibly be said to be presented to us in our experience of our agency. I examine several routes to a claim that there is nevertheless a prima facie incompatibility, none of which, I argue, wi **Authors:** [[RANDOLPH CLARKE]]