Alfred Mele

If, as much recent work in the philosophy of action suggests, intention plays a crucial role in the production of intentional action, a complete theory of explanation of intentional action should provide an account of the production of intentions themselves. I shall not offer a perfectly general account in this paper. Rather, I shall limit my investigation to intentions formed or acquired on the basis of practical evaluative inference and to the role of some important kinds of evaluative judgment in the etiology of these intentions.

Develops an account of the motivational strength of the desires most closely associated with intentional actions. The motivational strength of a desire is distinguished from such things as the agent's evaluation of what she desires and the affective quality of a desire. The general idea that desires differ in motivational strength is defended against a variety of objections, including the objection that the idea is vacuous because the only measure of motivational strength is what the agent does. It is argued that the position defended on motivational strength does not diminish human agency and is compatible, with practical reasoning playing a major role in producing many actions.

This chapter's aim is threefold: to articulate and defend an account of what it is to decide to do something; to defend the thesis that there are genuine instances of deciding so understood; and to shed light on how decisions are to be explained. This chapter defends the idea that to decide to do something is to perform a momentary mental action of forming an intention to do it. Actively forming an intention is distinguished from passively acquiring one, and the bearing of reasons and motivational strength on deciding is discussed.

Investigates the connection between motivation and reasons for action. It begins with a sketch of Donald Davidson's influential version of the view that reasons for action are states of mind. It then undermines some criticisms of a broadly Davidsonian view of action explanation, including objections by Rosalind Hursthouse and T. M. Scanlon. Finally, it builds a theoretical bridge between work on its central topic by two groups of theorists: those guided primarily by a concern with the evaluation of actions or their agents, and those primarily guided instead by an interest in the explanation of intentional actions. Motivational and normative notions of reasons for action are distinguished.

Drawing on work in cognitive and social psychology, this chapter explains the bearing of motivationally biased beliefs on the project of producing an account of motivational explanation. It is argued that the core of ordinary motivational explanations is the following compound feature: motivation‐constituting items make a causal contribution to the explanandum that helps to explain the explanandum at least partly by revealing an agreeable feature, from the perspective of the agent's desires, either of the explanandum itself or of its object and is of such a kind that our learning of contributions of that kind tends to improve our folk‐psychological understanding – that is, the understanding we have in, roughly, commonsense psychological terms – of why the explanandum came to be.

Offers an analysis of a paradigmatic species of motivational attitude, one that essentially encompasses motivation to act, as action–desires and intentions do. It is argued that attitudes of this kind have, essentially, a functional connection to intentional action that beliefs lack. A subsidiary thesis is that so‐called “negative actions” do not undermine the analysis offered because, in fact, they divide into non‐actions and positive actions misdiagnosed as negative ones. The main support for the idea that there are truly negative actions – namely, that sometimes it is intentional on a person's part, and for a reason, that he does not do something – is explained away.

Examines the motivational power of practical reasoning. Two views are distinguished: “the antecedent motivation theory,” according to which, in actual human beings, all motivation nonaccidentally produced by practical reasoning issuing in a belief favoring a course of action derives, at least partly, from motivation already present in the agent; and “the cognitive engine theory,” according to which, in actual human beings, some instances of practical evaluative reasoning nonaccidentally produce motivation that does not derive at all from motivation already present. The former view is defended and the latter is criticized. Bernard Williams's defense of the former view is argued to be unsuccessful; alternative arguments for it are advanced.

This chapter's topic is moral motivation. It is argued – against John McDowell, David McNaughton, Thomas Nagel, and others – that no plausible cognitivist moral theory will include the strong “internalist” thesis that moral ought‐beliefs essentially encompass motivation to act accordingly or even Jonathan Dancy's more modest thesis that some such beliefs are “intrinsically motivating.” The argument features an examination of depression or listlessness. An alternative, causal view of the connection between moral judgments and motivation is proposed. It is argued that this view supports the practical function of morality.

The primary purpose of this chapter is to show that data generated in well‐known experiments by physiologist Benjamin Libet can be used to support the idea that an independently plausible thesis about the connection between motivational strength and intentional action leaves ample room for self‐control. Aspects of Libet's interpretation of his data are criticized, but Libet's work does give us a sense of how much time might elapse between the acquisition of a desire to do something straightaway and the beginning of an overt action motivated by that desire. More important, it gives us a sense of possibilities for practically relevant motivational change during that span and adds to the extant case for the view that a plausible principle of the kind at issue does not place agents at the mercy of their strongest desires.