•  101
    Free Will and Science
    In Robert Kane (ed.), Oxford Handbook on Free Will, 2nd Edition, Oxford University Press. 2011.
    This article examines the work of two figures in fields whose work has had a significant impact on recent free-will debates, neuroscientist Benjamin Libet and psychologist Daniel Wegner. Libet's groundbreaking experimental studies on human subjects relating brain activities to the appearance or production of conscious experience, volition, and willed action have been much discussed by philosophers and scientists over the past few decades and have influenced subsequent scientific research on thes…Read more
  •  142
    A Dialogue on Free Will and Science is a brief and intriguing book discussing the scientific challenges of free will. Presented through a dialogue, the format allows ideas to emerge and be clarified and then evaluated in a natural way. Engaging and accessible, it offers students a compelling look at free will and science
  •  18
    Moral responsibility and agents’ histories
    Philosophical Studies 142 (2): 161-181. 2009.
    To what extent should an analysis of an agent’s being morally responsible for an action that he performed—especially a compatibilist analysis of this—be sensitive to the agent’s history? In this article, I give the issue a clearer focus than it tends to have in the literature, I lay some groundwork for an attempt to answer the question, and I motivate a partial but detailed answer.
  •  70
    My concern here with the possibility of an acceptable intention-involving explication of intentional action is, specifically, a concern with the possibility of such an explication that treats intentions as attitudes.
  •  43
    Conscious Deciding and the Science of Free Will
    In Roy Baumeister, Alfred Mele & Kathleen Vohs (eds.), Free will and consciousness: how might they work?, Oxford University Press. pp. 43. 2010.
    Mele's chapter addresses two primary aims. The first is to develop an experimentally useful conception of conscious deciding. The second is to challenge a certain source of skepticism about free will: the belief that conscious decisions and intentions are never involved in producing corresponding overt actions. The challenge Mele develops has a positive dimension that accords with the aims of this volume: It sheds light on a way in which some conscious decisions and intentions do seem to be effi…Read more
  •  326
    Real Self-Deception
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 20 (1): 91-102. 1997.
    Self-deception poses tantalizing conceptual conundrums and provides fertile ground for empirical research. Recent interdisciplinary volumes on the topic feature essays by biologists, philosophers, psychiatrists, and psychologists (Lockard & Paulhus 1988, Martin 1985). Self-deception's location at the intersection of these disciplines is explained by its significance for questions of abiding interdisciplinary interest. To what extent is our mental life present--or even accessible--to consciousnes…Read more
  •  16
    Passive Action
    In Ghita Holmström-Hintikka & Raimo Tuomela (eds.), Contemporary Action Theory, Volume 1, Kluwer Academic Publishers. 1997.
    Peter was placed — face down and head first — on a sled, and pushed from the top of a high, snow-covered hill. The brisk wind and flying snow swiftly awoke him. In moments, he had his wits about him and surmised that this early morning trip down the hill was part of his initiation into the SAE fraternity. Peter quickly surveyed his options. He could put an end to his trip by sliding off the sled, or by turning it sharply. He could grasp the steering handles and guide the sled down the slope. Or,…Read more
  •  93
    In `Underestimating Self-Control' (1997a), I argued that Jeanette Kennett and Michael Smith (1996) underestimate our capacity for synchronic self-control. They argued for a solution to a puzzle about such self-control that features non-actional exercises' of self-control. I argued in response that `a more robust, actional exercise of self-control is open to agents in scenarios of the sort in question' (1997a: 119). They disagree (Kennett and Smith 1997).In Mele 1997a, I resisted the temptation t…Read more
  •  70
    Against a belief/desire analysis of intention
    Philosophia 18 (2-3): 239-242. 1988.
    An influential belief/desire analysis of intention proposed by robert audi does not provide sufficient conditions for intention. Intending to "a" entails being settled upon "a"-Ing (or upon trying to "a"), And it entails being willing to "a". But an agent can satisfy audi's conditions for intending to "a" and yet be neither settled upon "a"-Ing (or trying to "a") nor willing to "a". The objection raised poses a serious problem for belief/desire analyses of intention in general
  •  93
    Motivated irrationality
    In Alfred R. Mele & Piers Rawling (eds.), The Oxford handbook of rationality, Oxford University Press. 2004.
    The literature on motivated irrationality has two primary foci: action and belief. This article explores two of the central topics falling under this rubric: akratic action (action exhibiting so-called weakness of will or deficient self-control) and motivationally biased belief (including self-deception). Among other matters, this article offers a resolution of Donald Davidson's worry about the explanation of irrationality. When agents act akratically, they act for reasons, and in central cases,…Read more
  •  32
    Incontinent Belief
    Journal of Philosophical Research 16 197-212. 1991.
    Brian McLaughlin, in “Incontinent Belief” (Journal of Philosophical Research 15 [1989-90], pp. 115-26), takes issue with my investigation, in lrrationality (Oxford University Press, 1987), of a doxastic analogue of akratic action. He deems what I term “strict akratic belief” philosophically uninteresting. In the present paper, I explain that this assessment rests on a serious confusion about the sort of possibility that is at issue in my chapter on the topic, correct a variety of misimpressions,…Read more
  • Contents
    In Self-Deception Unmasked, Princeton University Press. 2001.
  •  22
  •  29
    Intentions and Interpretations
    with Paisley Nathan Livingston
    MLN 107 (5): 931-949. 1992.
    Even if everything is up for grabs in philosophy, some things are very difficult to doubt. It is hard to believe, for example, that no one ever acts intentionally. Even the most powerful arguments for the unreality of intentional action could do no more, we believe, than place one in roughly the position in which pre-Aristotelian Greeks found themselves when presented with one of Zeno's arguments that nothing can move from any given point A to any other point B. One argument has it, for example,…Read more
  •  83
    Soft libertarianism and Frankfurt-style scenarios
    Philosophical Topics 24 (2): 123-41. 1996.
    This paper develops a soft-libertarian response to Frankfurt-style cases and to the threat that such cases apparently pose to any brand of libertarianism.
  •  26
    Mental Causation
    with John Heil
    Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 185 (1): 105-106. 1995.
    Common sense and philosophical tradition agree that mind makes a difference. What we do depends not only on how our bodies are put together, but also on what we think. Explaining how mind can make a difference has proved challenging, however. Some have urged that the project faces an insurmountable dilemma: either we concede that mentalistic explanations of behavior have only a pragmatic standing or we abandon our conception of the physical domain as causally autonomous. Although each option has…Read more
  •  41
    Motivation and Intention
    Journal of Philosophical Research 21 51-67. 1996.
    This essay defends the compatibility of a pair of popular theses in the philosophy of action and rebuts arguments of Hugh McCann’s (1995) designed to show that my earlier efforts, in Springs of Action, to resolve the apparent tension were unsuccessful. One thesis links what agents intentionally do at a time, t, to what they are most strongly motivated to do at t. The other is a thesis about the nature and functions of intent.
  •  154
    Intentional action: Controversies, data, and core hypotheses
    Philosophical Psychology 16 (2): 325-340. 2003.
    This article reviews some recent empirical work on lay judgments about what agents do intentionally and what they intend in various stories and explores its bearing on the philosophical project of providing a conceptual analysis of intentional action. The article is a case study of the potential bearing of empirical studies of a variety of folk concepts on philosophical efforts to analyze those concepts and vice versa. Topics examined include double effect; the influence of moral considerations …Read more
  •  79
    Approaching self-deception: How Robert Audi and I part company
    Consciousness and Cognition 19 (3): 745-750. 2010.
    This article explores fundamental differences between Robert Audi’s position on self-deception and mine. Although we both depart from a model of self-deception that is straightforwardly based on stereotypical interpersonal deception, we differ in how we do that. An important difference between us might be partly explained by a difference in how we understand the kind of deceiving that is most relevant to self-deception.
  •  61
  •  70
    Self-control and belief
    Philosophical Psychology 7 (4). 1994.
    Although the extent to which motivational factors are involved in the production and sustaining of biased or 'irrational' beliefs continues to be a controversial issue in social psychology, even those who urge that such beliefs are often explained by non-motivational tendencies admit that biased beliefs sometimes have motivational sources. Sometimes toe are influenced by motivational pressures in ways proscribed by principles that we accept for belief-acquisition or belief-revision ('doxastic' p…Read more
  •  58
    Socratic akratic action
    Philosophical Papers 25 (3): 149-159. 1996.
    I will argue that some changes of mind about what it is best to do are akratic occurrences and that the associated overt actions are derivatively akratic, and I will explain how akratic episodes of this kind are possible. Even if Socrates is mistaken in denying the reality of strict akratic action, he has identified an important phenomenon that deserves more attention than it has received.
  •  62
    Have I Unmasked Self-Deception or Am I Self-Deceived?
    In Clancy W. Martin (ed.), The philosophy of deception, Oxford University Press. pp. 260. 2009.
    This chapter separates the problem of self-deception into two component questions: how it happens and what it is. The key to this chapter's account of self-deception is called “deflationary view”. Self-deception, it notes, does not entail “intentionally deceiving oneself; intending to deceive oneself; intending to make it easier for oneself to believe something; concurrently believing each of two explicitly contrary propositions”. The chapter also offers a discussion of the notion of “twisted se…Read more
  •  52
    Vetoing and Consciousness
    In Andy Clark, Julian Kiverstein & Tillmann Vierkant (eds.), Decomposing the Will, Oxford University Press Usa. 2013.
    This chapter’s topic is Benjamin Libet’s position on vetoing. To veto a conscious decision, intention, or urge is to decide not to act on it and to refrain, accordingly, from acting on it. Libet associates veto power with some fancy metaphysics. This chapter sets the metaphysical issues aside and concentrates on the empirical ones, focusing on neuroscientific research that bears on vetoing.
  •  26
    Aristotle on the Justification of Ends
    Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 56 (n/a): 79. 1982.
    I believe Aristotle's position on practical ends is both illuminating and consistent with the idea that practical archai, and even conceptions of the ultimate end, are subject to justificatory reasoning. The purpose of this paper is substantiate these beliefs.
  •  161
    On Pereboom’s Disappearing Agent Argument
    Criminal Law and Philosophy 11 (3): 561-574. 2017.
    This article is a critical discussion of Derk Pereboom’s “disappearing agent objection” to event-causal libertarianism in his Free Will, Agency, and Meaning in Life. This objection is an important plank in Pereboom’s argument for free will skepticism. It is intended to knock event-causal libertarianism, a leading pro-free-will view, out of contention. I explain why readers should not find the objection persuasive.
  •  18
    How is confabulation related to self-deception? Obviously, that depends on what confabulation and self-deception are. In the first main section, I sketch a position that I have developed elsewhere on self-deception. I turn to confabulation in the second main section. Confabulation in general is more than I can take on in this chapter. I focus on confabulations associated with a trio of delusions.