Alfred Mele

Must a rational ass equidistant from two equally attractive bales of hay starve for lack of a reason to prefer one bale to the other? Must a human being faced with a comparable, explicitly motivational, tie fail to pursue either option? Surely, one suspects, some practical resolution is possible. Surely, ties of either sort need not result in death or paralysis. But why? Donald Davidson has suggested that, in the human case, resolution depends upon the tie’s being broken---upon the agent’s coming to want to perform some action more than she wants to perform any genuine alternative. However, practical resolution is possible, I argue, even while the tie remains intact. This has significant implications for the theory of motivation. Most importantly, not all states that move us to action need be understood as moving us to A in virtue of their incorporating preponderant motivation to A.

Self-deception and akratic action (roughly, uncompelled intentional action that is contrary to the agent's better judgment) are the leading dramatis personae in philosophical work on motivated irrational behavior. David Pears's Motivated Irrationality advances our understanding of both phenomena and of their causal and conceptual interrelationships. Irrationality, as Pears understands it, is "incorrect processing of information in the mind" (p. 14). In instances of motivated irrationality, the faulty processing is due to the influence of desires or wishes, broadly construed. There is no "clear-cut distinction," Pears maintains, between "hot" and "cold" (i.e., motivated and unmotivated) cases, "but there are some indubitable cases of each type at each end of the spectrum" (p. 14). At the hot end are central species of self-deception and akratic action. Pears's primary concern is with motivated irrationality of these two sorts. He also comments at some length on other species of motivated irrationality, on cold irrational belief, and on practical reasoning (Chapter 7) and practical truth (Chapter 8).

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, owing significantly to a false belief, an agent performs an action for which there is no objective favourer. Topics addressed include whether such theorists, including Jonathan Dancy himself, should accept Dancy's thesis that 'intentional, deliberate, purposeful action is always done for a reason' and whether there are two different concepts of reasons for action, one geared to action-evaluation and the other to action-explanation.

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 consciousness? How rational are we? How is motivated irrationality to be explained? To what extent are our beliefs subject to our control? What are the determinants of belief, and how does motivation bear upon belief? In what measure are widely shared psychological propensities products of evolution?

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 did not take place (or would not have) under the influence of factors that inhibit self-reflection; and (iii) The self-reflection involved in condition (i) [sic] is (minimally) rational and involves no self-deception. (11) Although Christman makes a telling case for the relevance of personal history to personal autonomy, I shall argue that he has gone too far in that direction.

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 to criticize Kennett and Smith's attempted resolution, because I thought it better to concentrate on sketching an alternative resolution. Here, I will argue that the resolution they offer is problematic and reply to their criticism (1997) of my suggested resolution.

I opened this chapter with the question whether neuroscientific experiments have shown that there are no autonomous human beings. In my opinion, the answer is no. I have not argued for that answer here, of course. Doing so is much too grand a project for a single chapter. Instead, I attacked one line of argument for the claim that neuroscientific experiments have shown that human autonomy is an illusion and I discussed an important difficulty in moving from an alleged finding about proximal decisions in a common experimental setting to an autonomy-threatening thesis about all decisions.

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, they make rational judgments about what it is best to do. The rationality required for that is in place. However, to the extent to which their actions are at odds with these judgments, they act irrationally. Motivationally biased believers test hypotheses and believe on the basis of evidence. Again there is a background of rationality. But owing to the influence of motivation, they violate general standards of epistemic rationality.

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 wanting.

In the bulk of this paper, I shall attempt to clarify the meaning and significance of each of these claims and to resolve (sometimes in footnotes) the interpretational problems which surround them. I hope thereby to contribute not only to our knowledge of the part assigned to wish in the generation of "chosen" or "ethical" action, but to our appreciation, more generally, of Aristotle's position on the roles of thought and desire in action of this sort and his understanding of ethical action itself.

Mele's ultimate purpose in this book is to help readers think more clearly about free will. He identifies and makes vivid the most important conceptual obstacles to justified belief in the existence of free will and meets them head on. Mele clarifies the central issues in the philosophical debate about free will and moral responsibility, criticizes various influential contemporary theories about free will, and develops two overlapping conceptions of free will--one for readers who are convinced that free will is incompatible with determinism (incompatibilists), and the other for readers who are convinced of the opposite (compatibilists). Luck poses problems for all believers in free will, and Mele offers novel solutions to those problems--one for incompatibilist believers in free will and the other for compatibilists. An early chapter of this empirically well-informed book clearly explains influential neuroscientific studies of free will and debunks some extravagant interpretations of the data. Other featured topics include abilities and alternative possibilities, control and decision-making, the bearing of manipulation on free will, and the development of human infants into free agents. Mele's theory offers an original perspective on an important problem and will garner the attention of anyone interested in the debate on free will

Claims about agents’ abilities—practical abilities—are common in theliterature on free will, moral responsibility, moral obligation, personalautonomy, weakness of will, and related topics. These claims typicallyignore differences among various kinds or levels of practical ability. Inthis article, using ‘A’ as an action variable, I distinguish among threekinds or levels: simple ability toA; ability toAintentionally; and a morereliable kind of ability toAassociated with promising toA. I believe thatattention to them will foster progress on the topics I mentioned. Substan-tiating that belief—by making progress on these topics in light of suchattention—is a project for other occasions. My aim here is to lay a partialfoundation for that project.

This article examines the nature of rationality. The domain of rationality is customarily divided into the theoretical and the practical. Whereas theoretical or epistemic rationality is concerned with what it is rational to believe, and sometimes with rational degrees of belief, practical rationality is concerned with what it is rational to do, or intend or desire to do. This article raises some of the main issues relevant to philosophical discussion of the nature of rationality. Discussions of the nature of practical rationality and reason concern norms of choice, and it seems that if such norms are not arbitrary, arguments over what those norms are must ultimately be a theoretical matter. Furthermore, this article explores rationality's role in and relation to other domains of inquiry: psychology, gender, personhood, language, science, economics, law, and evolution.