I think user3776022 has the right of it---in the conflict between physicalists and dualists there is no winner. But that's just because both physicalism and dualism provide faulty pictures of the world. I'd like to present hints at an alternative view.
The founder of modern action theory is a philosopher named GEM Anscombe; I cannot recommend her book, Intention, highly enough. My answer is based entirely on her work.
Consider the following exchange:
"I'm going to go throw up."
"Why?"
"This tuna-fish sandwich was rancid!"
and contrast it with:
"I'm going to go throw up."
"Why?"
"I need to appear to be ill so they keep me on bed rest."
The first answer gives a cause---eating rancid food---and the second gives a reason---it will prevent the speaker from being taken off of bed rest. One is not reducible to the other. The reason for the action is the explanation of why the action is desirable, while the cause of the action is the explanation of how it came about. (Notably, in both cases, I can give a whole physicalist story about how someone came to throw up, and both will involve motions of the gag reflex and so on. But nowhere in either story will we find reference to any future event, because future events cannot cause past events.)
Anscombe has more to say to rebut physicalism than just that. Her discussion is too complex to be summarized here so I won't try. But as a disclaimer: she's never going to deny that we need brains to be conscious, or that damage to the brain doesn't cause corresponding damage to our ability to think. Humans aren't exceptions to any physical laws. But you won't be able to explain human actions exclusively in terms of physical laws.
Now dualists will say the real cause of the action was a desire or inner movement of the will in the actor. But this is implausible on several grounds.
If a desire were apt to cause actions, instead of just take part in explaining them, having a desire would be sufficient to act. But having a desire does not imply acting. If I see something I like in a store, and I desire it, I don't have to walk in and buy it. There is no puzzle there; I just decided not to.
The obvious response: but then I chose not to. And this choice is supposed to be some kind of inner movement. An act of will. But can there be a connection between an inner movement so conceived and a physical event movement? For instance: raise your arm. Did you observe any inner movement, or did you just do it? Now, instead of raising your arm, will that your arm raises. If this has any meaning other than "raise your arm" it can only be something along the lines of "say, 'Raise! Raise!' in your head". And if it did only mean "raise your arm"---then what was the point of the different phrasing? What work did "the will" do in that case? None at all.
Her book is full of fascinating insights and little experiments like that. I really like it a lot.
For an architectonic view of causation and thought that is almost entirely compatible with Anscombe, and fills in a lot of troublesome background details, I recommend PMS Hacker's Human Nature: The Categorial Framework (hopefully available at a library near you because it is quite pricey otherwise). And of course both Anscombe and Hacker build heavily off the ideas of the later Wittgenstein, whose magnum opus is titled Philosophical Investigations.
