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68Akratics and AddictsAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 39 (2). 2002.In Section 1, a pair of arguments for the nonexistence of strict akratic action are criticized with a view to setting the stage for a more general discussion of the lay of the land. In Sections 2 and 3, it is argued that the worry to which this essay is addressed is inflated.
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166Intentions, reasons, and beliefs: Morals of the toxin puzzlePhilosophical Studies 68 (2). 1992.In garden-variety instances of intentional action, according to a popular account, agents intend to perform actions of particular kinds, their intentions are based on reasons so to act, and the intentions issue in appropriate behaviour. On this account, the reasons that give rise to our intentions are reasons for action. Interesting questions for this view are raised by cases in which an agent seemingly has a reason to intend to do something while having no reason to do it. Can such reasons to i…Read more
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81Backsliding: Understanding Weakness of WillOup Usa. 2012.People backslide. They freely do things they believe it would be best on the whole not to do. Mele draws on work in social and developmental psychology and in psychiatry to motivate a view of human behavior in which both backsliding and overcoming the temptation to backslide are explicable
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298The philosophy of action (edited book)Oxford University Press. 1997.The latest offering in the highly successful Oxford Readings in Philosophy series, The Philosophy of Action features contributions from twelve leading figures in the field, including: Robert Audi, Michael Bratman, Donald Davidson, Wayne Davis, Harry Frankfurt, Carl Ginet, Gilbert Harman, Jennifer Hornsby, Jaegwon Kim, Hugh McCann, Paul Moser, and Brian O'Shaughnessy. Alfred Mele provides an introductory essay on the topics chosen and the questions they deal with. Topics addressed include intenti…Read more
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69Intention and Intentional ActionIn B. McLaughlin & A. Beckermann (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Mind, Oxford University Press. 2009.Intention, intentional action, and the connections between them are central topics of the philosophy of action, a branch of the philosophy of mind. One who regards the subject matter of the philosophy of mind as having at its core some aspect of what lies between environmental input to beings with minds and behavioural output may be inclined to see the philosophy of action as concerned only with the output end of things. That would be a mistake. Many intentional actions depend for their developm…Read more
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112Moral responsibility and the continuation problemPhilosophical Studies 162 (2): 237-255. 2013.Typical incompatibilists about moral responsibility and determinism contend that being basically morally responsible for a decision one makes requires that, if that decision has proximal causes, it is not deterministically caused by them. This article develops a problem for this contention that resembles what is sometimes called the problem of present (or cross-world) luck. However, the problem makes no reference to luck nor to contrastive explanation. This article also develops a solution.
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140Mental causesAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 28 (1): 61-71. 1991.Our suspicion is that philosophers who tie the fate of agency to advances in cognitive science simultaneously underestimate that conception's tenacity and overestimate their ability to divine the course of empirical inquiry. For the present, however, we shall pretend that current ideas about what would be required for the scientific vindication of folk psychology are apt, and ask where this leaves the notion of agency. Our answer will be that it leaves that notion on the whole unaffected.
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62Intention, Belief, and Intentional ActionAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 26 (1). 1989.Ordinary usage supports both a relatively strong belief requirement on intention and a tight conceptual connection between intention and intentional action. More specifically, it speaks in favor both of the view that "S intends to A" entails "S believes that he (probably) will A" and of the thesis that "S intentionally A-ed" entails "S intended to A." So, at least, proponents of these ideas often claim or assume, and with appreciable justification. The conjunction of these two ideas, however, h…Read more
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199Akrasia, self-control, and second-order desiresNoûs 26 (3): 281-302. 1992.Pristine belief/desire psychology has its limitations. Recognizing this, some have attempted to fill various gaps by adding more of the same, but at higher levels. Thus, for example, second-order desires have been imported into a more stream- lined view to explicate such important notions as freedom of the will, personhood, and valuing. I believe that we need to branch out as well as up, augmenting a familiar 'philosophical psychology' with psychological items that are irreducible to beliefs and…Read more
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96Scientific Skepticism about Free WillIn Thomas Nadelhoffer, Eddy Nahmias & Shaun Nichols (eds.), Moral Psychology: Historical and Contemporary Readings, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 295. 2010.My topic is recent scientific skepticism about free will. A leading argument for such skepticism features the proposition—defended by Daniel Wegner (2002, 2008) and Benjamin Libet (1985, 2004) among others that conscious intentions (and their physical correlates) never play a role in producing corresponding overt actions. This chapter examines alleged scientific evidence for the truth of this proposition.
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304Motivation: Essentially motivation-constituting attitudesPhilosophical Review 104 (3): 387-423. 1995.The term 'motivation' has considerable currency both in moral philosophy and in the philosophy of mind. It appears in debates between internalists and externalists about moral judgments and moral reasons, in the related controversy over moral realism, and in explanatory schemes for purposive behavior offered in the philosophy of mind. But what is motivation? My aim in this paper is to elucidate a notion of motivation associated with a popular perspective on intentional conduct, a perspectiv…Read more
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42Effective reasons and intrinsically motivated actionsPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 48 (4): 723-731. 1988.In this paper I advance an alternative to Davidson’s conception of reasons that preserves the spirit of Davidson's account of effective reasons while avoiding a problem posed by a familiar species of intentional action - roughly, action done for its own sake, or what I shall call intrinsically motivated action.
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78Reasonology and False BeliefsPhilosophical Papers 36 (1): 91-118. 2007.Whereas some philosophers view all reasons for action as psychological states of agents, others—objective favourers theorists—locate the overwhelming majority of reasons for action outside the agent, in items that objectively favour courses of action. (The latter may count such psychological states as a person's belief that demons dance in his kitchen as a reason for him to seek psychiatric help.) This article explores options that objective favourers theorists have regarding cases in which, owi…Read more
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127Philosophy of ActionIn Kirk Ludwig (ed.), Donald Davidson, Cambridge University Press. 2003.The basic subject matter of the philosophy of action is a pair of questions: (1) What are actions? (2) How are actions to be explained? The questions call, respectively, for a theory of the nature of action and a theory of the explanation of actions. Donald Davidson has articulated and defended influential answers to both questions. Those answers are the primary focus of this chapter.
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71Intentional action and wayward causal chains: The problem of tertiary waywardness (review)Philosophical Studies 51 (1). 1987.
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25Aristotle on the Proximate Efficient Cause of ActionCanadian Journal of Philosophy 14 (sup1): 133-155. 1984.In this paper I shall attempt to locate and articulate Aristotle's answer to a foundational question in the theory of action - viz., 'what is the proximate (efficient) cause of action?' This task is certainly of historical importance, since one cannot hope to understand Aristotle's interesting and influential theory of action without understanding his views on the proximate efficient cause of action. But the present project is not, I should think, of historical interest alone; for it has recentl…Read more
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99She intends to tryPhilosophical Studies 55 (1): 101-106. 1989.My aim in this paper is to refute an intriguing argument of Hugh McCann's for the thesis that'S tried to A' entails 'S intended to A. I shall call this the strong intention thesis about trying, or SIT. SIT implies, as McCann observes, that even an agent who thinks that the probability of her A-ing is close to zero intends to A, provided only that she tries to A.
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21Motivated BeliefBehavior and Philosophy 21 (2). 1993.In this essay, I focus on Ainslie's interesting and bold view of belief and on its implications for akratic belief.
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55Desiring to Try: Reply to AdamsCanadian Journal of Philosophy 24 (4). 1994.Frederick Adams has tried again to object to my argument in "He Wants to Try"; his new attempt includes both an account of the constitution of trying and a corresponding account of desiring to try. My aim here is to show that his new efforts fail to undermine T and to develop some related problems for his positive view.
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101History and Personal AutonomyCanadian Journal of Philosophy 23 (2). 1993.John Christman, in 'Autonomy and Personal History,' advances a novel genetic or historical account of individual autonomy.1 He formulates 'the conditions of the [i.e., his] new model of autonomy' as follows: (i) A person Pis autonomous relative to some desireD if it is the case that P did not resist the development of D when attending to this process of development, or P would not have resisted that development had P attended to the process; (ii) The lack of resistance to the development of D di…Read more
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110Acting Intentionally: Probing Folk Notions.In Bertram Malle, L. J. Moses & Dare Baldwin (eds.), Intentions and Intentionality: Foundations of Social Cognition, Mit Press. pp. 27--43. 2001.In the first section, I will argue that the folk concept of necessary conditions for intentional action needs refinement. In the second and third sections, I will identify some additional issues one would need to explore in con- structing a statement of individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for intentional action. I will conclude with a brief discussion of the conceptual analyst’s task.
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188Situationism and AgencyJournal of Practical Ethics 1 (1): 62-83. 2013.Research in psychology indicates that situations powerfully impact human behavior. Often, it seems, features of situations drive our behavior even when we remain unaware of these features or their influence. One response to this research is pessimism about human agency: human agents have little conscious control over their own behavior, and little insight into why they do what they do. In this paper we review classic and more recent studies indicating “the power of the situation,” and argue for …Read more
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132Direct controlPhilosophical Studies 174 (2): 275-290. 2017.This article’s aim is to shed light on direct control, especially as it pertains to free will. I sketch two ways of conceiving of such control. Both sketches extend to decision making. Issues addressed include the problem of present luck and the relationship between direct control and complete control.
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110Underestimating self-control: Kennett and Smith on frog and toadAnalysis 57 (2). 1997.No abstract available.
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967Self-Deception and DelusionsEuropean Journal of Analytic Philosophy 2 (1): 109-124. 2006.My central question in this paper is how delusional beliefs are related to self-deception. In section 1, I summarize my position on what self-deception is and how representative instances of it are to be explained. I turn to delusions in section 2, where I focus on the Capgras delusion, delusional jealousy (or the Othello syndrome), and the reverse Othello syndrome.
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112Free Will: Action Theory Meets NeuroscienceIn C. Lumer (ed.), Intentionality, Deliberation, and Autonomy: The Action-Theoretic Basis of Practical Philosophy, Ashgate. 2007.This chapter defends the thesis that Benjamin Libet’s data do not justify his claim that “the brain ‘decides’ to initiate or, at least, to prepare to initiate [certain actions] before there is any reportable subjective awareness that such a decision has taken place” and do not justify associated worries about free will. The data are examined in light of familiar distinctions in action theory: for example, the distinction between deciding and wanting and the distinction between intending and want…Read more
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Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Action |
Philosophy of Mind |