Abstract

What is it like to experience one’s own behavior as the exercising of one’s agency? What are the satisfaction conditions of agentive phenomenology (the conditions that must be met in order for experiences of agency to be veridical)? Is such phenomenology typically veridical, or is it instead usually (or even always) illusory? In this dialogue we pursue a debate about these issues that began as a series of oral exchanges between us at recent conferences in Fribourg and in Munich. Horgan has been seeking to articulate and defend a position that (i) fully acknowledges the phenomenal character of agentive experience, ¹ (ii) treats such experience as veridical, and (iii) renders agentive phenomenology compatible with familiar, broadly “materialist,” tenets in metaphysics and philosophy of mind. Nida-Rümelin has been challenging Horgan; she has maintained that he does not successfully offer a position incorporating each of features (i)–(iii), and she has expressed persistent skepticism about the very possibility of such a package-deal position.