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329Intentional actionNoûs 28 (1): 39-68. 1994.We shall formulate an analysis of the ordinary notion of intentional action that clarifies a commonsense distinction between intentional and nonintentional action. Our analysis will build on some typically neglected considerations about relations between lucky action and intentional action. It will highlight the often- overlooked role of evidential considerations in intentional action, thus identifying the key role of certain epistemological considerations in action theory. We shall also explain…Read more
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57Aristotle on the Roles of Reason in Motivation and JustificationArchiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 66 (22). 1984.In this paper I shall attempt to answer to questions about the relationship, in Aristotle's ethical thought and the practical intellect to practical ends. The first is a question about motivation, and second is a question about justification. I shall argue that the practical intellect has important work to do in both connections.
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16Motivation and IntentionJournal 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.
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81Soft libertarianism and Frankfurt-style scenariosPhilosophical 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.
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48Rational Intentions and the Toxin PuzzleProto Sociology 8 39-52. 1996.Gregory Kavka’s toxin puzzle has spawned a lively literature about the nature of intention and of rational intention in particular. This paper is largely a critique of a pair of recent responses to the puzzle that focus on the connection between rationally forming an intention to A and rationally A-ing, one by David Gauthier and the other by Edward McClennen. It also critically assesses the two main morals Kavka takes reflection on the puzzle to support, morals about the nature of intention and …Read more
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35Free will: Theories, analysis, and dataIn Susan Pockett, William P. Banks & Shaun Gallagher (eds.), Does Consciousness Cause Behavior?, Mit Press. pp. 187-205. 2006.Alfred Mele develops a conceptual analysis of some of the concepts that inform the recent experimental studies of intentional action. Based on a distinction between unconscious urge and conscious decision, he suggests that the neural activity described by Libet’s experiments may represent an urge to move rather than a decision to do so, and that the decision to move might be made only when the subject becomes conscious of the urge. If this is the case, then Libet’s experiments do not threaten fr…Read more
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107Actions, Explanations, and CausesIn Giuseppina D'Oro & Constantine Sandis (eds.), Reasons and Causes: Causalism and Non-causalism in the Philosophy of Action, Palgrave-macmillan. 2013.
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23Responsibility and freedom: The challenge of Frankfurt-style-casesIn Monika Betzler & Barbara Guckes (eds.), Autonomes Handeln: Beitrage Zur Philosophie von Harry G. Frankfurt, Berlin: Akademie Verlag. 2000.
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231Libertarianism, luck, and controlPacific Philosophical Quarterly 86 (3): 381-407. 2005.This article critically examines recent work on free will and moral responsibility by Randolph Clarke, Robert Kane, and Timothy O’Connor in an attempt to clarify issues about control and luck that are central to the debate between libertarians (agent causationists and others) and their critics. It is argued that luck poses an as yet unresolved problem for libertarians.
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14Can Libertarians Make Promises?Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 55 217-241. 2004.Libertarians hold that free action and moral responsibility are incompatible with determinism and that some human beings occasionally act freely and are morally responsible for some of what they do. Can libertarians who know both that they are right and that they are free make sincere promises? Peter van Inwagen, a libertarian, contends that they cannot—at least when they assume that should they do what they promise to do, they would do it freely. Probably, this strikes many readers as a surpris…Read more
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65Self-control and beliefPhilosophical 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
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17Intention and LiteratureStanford French Review 16 173-196. 1992.The issues of authorial intentions and interpretations are discussed. The philosophical dispute between metaphysical realists and metaphysical antirealists on authorial intentions and how these are characterized is examined. While realists maintain that a mind-independent reality exists, antirealists claim that reality is completely mind-dependent and that all things are mere mental constructions.
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23Free Will and Consciousness: An Introduction and Overview of PerspectivesIn A. Mele, R. Baumeister & K. Vohs (eds.), Free Will and Consciousness: How Might They Work?, Oxford University Press. 2010.This volume is aimed at readers who wish to move beyond debates about the existence of free will and the efficacy of consciousness and closer to appreciating how free will and consciousness might operate. It draws from philosophy and psychology, the two fields that have grappled most fundamentally with these issues. In this wide-ranging volume, the contributors explore such issues as how free will is connected to rational choice, planning, and self-control; roles for consciousness in decision ma…Read more
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48Vetoing and ConsciousnessIn T. Vierkant, J. Kiverstein & A. Clark (eds.), Decomposing the Will, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.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.
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216Agency and mental actionPhilosophical Perspectives 11 231-249. 1997.My question here is whether there are intentional mental actions that generate special, significant threats to causalism (i.e., threats of a kind not generated by intentional overt actions), or that generate, more poi- gnantly, problems for causalism that some intentional overt actions allegedly generate, as well.
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154On Pereboom’s Disappearing Agent ArgumentCriminal 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.
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278Justifying intentionsMind 102 (406): 335-337. 1993.In his "Purposive Intending" T.L.M. Pink (1991) instructively criticized a popular view about intentions and advanced an alternative position of his own. I challenged a pair of theses to which Pink's position committed him (Mele 1992a). Pink now agrees that both theses are false. His mistake, he says, was to express his view in terms of reasons; his position is now to be framed in terms of "justifications" (1993).
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125Choice and Virtue in the Nicomachean EthicsJournal of the History of Philosophy 19 (4): 405-423. 1981.In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Choice and Virtue in the Nicomachean Ethics ALFRED R. MELE COM~rNTATORS ON THr Nicomachean Ethics (NE) have long been laboring under the influence of a serious misunderstanding of one of the key terms in Aristotle's moral philosophy and theory of action. This term is prohairesis (choice), the importance of which is indicated by Aristotle's assertions that choice is the proximate efficient cause of action (NE 6. 1139a31--32) and that…Read more
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44Folk conceptions of intentional actionPhilosophical Issues 22 (1): 281-297. 2012.Studies designed to help us understand how nonspecialists conceive of intentional action have generated some widely discussed results. To what extent are the results accounted for by the existence of different folk conceptions of intentional action? That is my guiding question in this article. I am not in a position to offer a full answer, but I do hope to make some progress.
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162Twisted Self DeceptionPhilosophical Psychology 12 (2): 117-137. 1999.In instances of "twisted" self-deception, people deceive themselves into believing things that they do not want to be true. In this, twisted self-deception differs markedly from the "straight" variety that has dominated the philosophical and psychological literature on self-deception. Drawing partly upon empirical literature, I develop a trio of approaches to explaining twisted self-deception: a motivation-centered approach; an emotion-centered approach; and a hybrid approach featuring both moti…Read more
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39Evaluating Emotional Responses to FictionIn Mette Hjort & Sue Laver (eds.), Emotion and the Arts, Oup Usa. 1997.Philosophical discussion of emotional responses to fiction has been dominated by work on the paradox of fiction, which is often construed as asking whether and how we can experience genuine emotions in reaction to fiction. One may also ask more generally how we ought to respond to fictional works, a question that has to do both with what we should do when reacting to fiction and with what we should and should not let happen to us. It is possible to delineate any principles regarding the rational…Read more
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94Motivational strengthNoûs 32 (1): 23-36. 1998.It is often suggested that our desires vary in motivational strength or power. In a paper expressing skepticism about this idea, Irving Thalberg asked what he described, tongue in cheek, as "a disgracefully naive question" (1985, p. 88): "What do causal and any other theorists mean when they rate the strength of our PAs," that is, our "desires, aversions, preferences, schemes, and so forth"? His "guiding question" in the paper seems straightforward (p. 98): "What is it for our motivational state…Read more
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10Incontinent BeliefJournal 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
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133Another Scientific Threat to Free Will?The Monist 95 (3): 422-440. 2012.In Effective Intentions: The Power of Conscious Will (Mele 2009), I argue that scientists—neuroscientists and others—have not proved that free will is an illusion and have not produced powerful evidence for that claim. Manuel Vargas has suggested that in that book I ignore a serious scientific threat to free will (2009). The alleged threat is identified in section 1. It is the topic of this article.
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85Recent Work on Free Will and ScienceAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 45 (2): 107-129. 2008.This article has two aims: to articulate the main lines of argument for Libet's and Wegner's theses, and to survey philosophical responses in the present century to the argumentation. Because a proper understanding of the scientific argumentation at issue requires attention to a raft of data and the experiments that generate them, reasonable constraints on space preclude discussion of philosophical responses before 2000.
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26Akratic Action and the Practical Role of Better JudgmentPacific Philosophical Quarterly 72 (1): 33-47. 1991.
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11Discussion – Velleman on Action and Agency (review)Philosophical Studies 121 (3): 249-261. 2004.
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110The Illusion of Conscious Will and the Causation of Intentional ActionsPhilosophical Topics 32 (1-2): 193-213. 2004.My aim in this article is to ascertain whether any of the interesting phenomena that Daniel Wegner discusses in The Illusion of Conscious Will (2002) falsify a certain hypothesis about intentional actions. Here is a rough, preliminary statement of the hypothesis: Whenever human agents perform an overt intentional action, A, some intention of theirs is a cause of A. The hypothesis is refined in section. In section 2, I turn to this article's main question.
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225Free will and consciousness: how might they work? (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2010.This volume is aimed at readers who wish to move beyond debates about the existence of free will and the efficacy of consciousness and closer to appreciating ...
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Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Action |
Philosophy of Mind |