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21Surrounding Free Will: Philosophy, Psychology, Neuroscience (edited book)Oxford University Press USA. 2014.This volume showcases cutting-edge scholarship from The Big Questions in Free Will project, funded by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation and directed by Alfred R. Mele. It explores the subject of free will from the perspectives of neuroscience; social, cognitive, and developmental psychology; and philosophy. The volume consists of fourteen new articles and an introduction from top-ranked contributors, all of whom bring fresh perspectives to the question of free will. They investigate que…Read more
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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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20How to Represent Aristotelian Deliberation SyllogisticallyNew Scholasticism 59 (4): 484-492. 1985.In this paper Mele constructs, and defends as adequate, a practical-syllogistic schema for representing deliberation.
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19Motivation, Self-Control, and the Agglomeration of DesiresFacta Philosophica 1 (1): 77-86. 1999.
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18Review of The Rationality of Emotion (review)Philosophical Books 30 (1): 39-40. 1989.A book review of Ronald de Sousa's The Rationality of Emotion.
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18Delusional Confabulations and Self-DeceptionIn William Hirstein (ed.), Confabulation: Views from Neuroscience, Psychiatry, Psychology, and Philosophy, Oxford University Press. pp. 139. 2009.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.
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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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17Causality, Interpretation, and the Mind (review)Philosophical Review 104 (4): 637. 1995.Child’s aim is to defend a pair of ideas in the philosophy of mind—"interpretationism" and "causalism"—and, especially, to establish their compatibility. "What is essential for interpretationism is the claim that thought is, in its nature, interpretable" ; "interpretability is a necessary condition for thought". Regarding belief, "the interpretationist thought is that we can give an account of the circumstances under which it is true that S believes that p by considering the circumstances under …Read more
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17Intending and the Balance of MotivationPacific Philosophical Quarterly 65 (4): 370-376. 1984.How is what we intend to do related to what we are most motivated to do? I shall argue that the relationship in question is more complex than is often thought and that the source of complexity, at least at one level of analysis, lies in two things: a role which evaluation often plays in the formation or acquisition of intentions, and an occasional lack of alignment between an agent's evaluations of his reasons for action and the motivation force of those reasons.
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17Self-Deception and Three Psychiatric Delusions: On Robert Audi's Transition from Self-Deception to DelusionIn M. Timmons, J. Greco & A. Mele (eds.), Rationality and the Good, Oxford University Press. 2007.For more than thirty years, Robert Audi has been one of the most creative and influential philosophical voices on a broad range of topics in the fields of ethics, epistemology, philosophy of mind and action, and philosophy of religion. This volume features thirteen chapters by renowned scholars plus new writings by Audi. Each chapter presents both a position of its author and a critical treatment of related ideas of Audi's, and he responds to each of the contributors in a way that provides a liv…Read more
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17Moral responsibility and agents’ historiesPhilosophical 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.
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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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16Autonomy and BeliefsIn James F. Childress & Michael Quante (eds.), Thick (Concepts of) Autonomy: Personal Autonomy in Ethics and Bioethics, Springer Verlag. pp. 87-100. 2021.In Autonomous Agents, I argued that among the obstacles to autonomous action are facts of certain kinds about an agent’s beliefs. For example, someone who is deceived into investing her savings in a way that results in her losing the entire investment to the person who deceived her may correctly be said to make that investment nonautonomously. But not everyone has agreed. In this article, I return to doxastic aspects of individual autonomy and argue more fully for the thesis that facts of a cert…Read more
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16Intending and Trying: Tuomela vs. Bratman at the Video ArcadeIn Matti Sintonen, Petri Ylikoski & Kaarlo Miller (eds.), Realism in Action, Kluwer Academic Publishers. 2003.I have long been an admirer of Raimo Tuomela’s work in the philosophy of action. In this paper I will address a disagreement between Tuomela and Michael Bratman about intention and trying. I will argue that each disputant is partly right and partly wrong.
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16Passive ActionIn Ghitta Holstrom-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
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16Agnostic autonomism revisitedIn J. Stacey Taylor (ed.), Personal Autonomy: New Essays on Personal Autonomy and Its Role in Contemporary Moral Philosophy, Cambridge University Press. 2005.Autonomy, as I understand it, is associated with a family of freedom concepts: free will, free choice, free action, and the like. In much of the philosophical literature discussed in this chapter, issues are framed in terms of freedom rather than autonomy, but we are talking about (aspects of) the same thing. Libertarians argue that determinism precludes autonomy by, for example, precluding an agent's being ultimately responsible for anything. Some compatibilist believers in autonomy argue that …Read more
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15Can 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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15When Are We Self-Deceived?Humana Mente 5 (20). 2012.This article’s point of departure is a proto-analysis that I have suggested of entering self-deception in acquiring a belief and an associated set of jointly sufficient conditions for self-deception that I have proposed. Partly with the aim of fleshing out an important member of the proposed set of conditions, I provide a sketch of my view about how self-deception happens. I then return to the proposed set of jointly sufficient conditions and offer a pair of amendments.
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15Free Will and Consciousness: How Might They Work? (New York: OUP, 2010) (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 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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15Free Action, Moral Responsibility, and Alternative Possibilities: Frankfurt-style Cases RevisitedIn F. Castellani & J. Quitterer (eds.), Agency and Causation in the Human Sciences, Mentis Verlag. 2007.
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15The Significance of Free Will (review)Journal of Philosophy 95 (11): 581-584. 1998.A book review of Robert Kane's The Significance of Free Will.
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14Aristotle on the Proximate Efficient Cause of ActionCanadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary Volume 10 (n/a): 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 recently …Read more
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14Michael A. Simon: "Understanding Human Action" (review)The Thomist 48 (1): 121. 1984.A book review of Michael A. Simon's Understanding Human Action: Social Explanation of the Vision of Social Science.
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Tallahassee, Florida, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Action |
Philosophy of Mind |