In her commentary, Dreßing suggested that the story I told about intentions should be viewed not just as a creation myth but as an attempt to give an explanation of the function of conscious intentions in the physical world. I tried to clarify exactly what I offered as merely a creation myth, namely the story given in answer to the question "Why do we have intentions in the first place?" and what I offered as empirical claims, namely my story as an answer to the question "What roles do intentions play in human agency?"
Dreßing also stresses that as an account of the roles intentions play in agency, my story has to meet both metaphysical and empirical constraints. In particular, she suggests that my claims about the role of intentions in action control makes the Causal Exclusion Problem more pressing for me than for other myth-tellers. I argued that the problem is actually equally pressing for all of us who want their views to be compatible with physicalism. I suggested that Dretske’s distinction between structuring and triggering causes and his view that mental properties should be understood as structuring causes may offer a solution to this metaphysical problem. Finally, Dreßing remarks that my claims concerning the role of conscious intentions appear to clash with certain findings from neuroscientific experiments. In response, I briefly discussed the most famous of these experiments, Libet’s RP experiments, and pointed out some of their limitations. I also questioned, together with Dreßing, the conception of causation with which these debates tend to operate, and suggested that Dretske’s distinction between structuring and triggering causes may also help to reconcile neuroscientific findings and claims about the causal roles of intentions.