The phrase "conscious act" is correct and can be used in written English.
One example of its usage is: "The decision to donate to charity was a conscious act of generosity".
Copying the work of another is a conscious act.
Ancient Chinese thinkers never discuss an initial conscious act of creation.
Robert Dunlop's last conscious act was to jam on the front brake.
And even the thank-you was a cold knife, an unacknowledged but conscious act of murder.
Design is the conscious act of changing ourselves through manipulating the physical environment.
The sensation of progressive change is different in kind: it usually follows a conscious act of will.
It is a self-conscious act.
Decision-making — whether it's taking out a loan or deciding whom to marry — isn't a coldly rational, self-conscious act.
We are told that the 1986 version, by Carin Goldberg, "once again incorporated the language of modernism, but now as a self-conscious act of historical quotation".
Far from a solemn, self-conscious act of reclamation, it is more a jaunty tip of the hat to the pop music of his parents' generation.
Eating can be a personal, even self-conscious act, and in the absence of a roommate or partner, unconventional approaches to food emerge.
