•  68
    Akratics and Addicts
    American 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.
  •  86
    The Oxford handbook of rationality (edited book)
    with Alfred R. Mele and Piers Rawling
    Oxford University Press. 2004.
    Rationality has long been a central topic in philosophy, crossing standard divisions and categories. It continues to attract much attention in published research and teaching by philosophers as well as scholars in other disciplines, including economics, psychology, and law. The Oxford Handbook of Rationality is an indispensable reference to the current state of play in this vital and interdisciplinary area of study. Twenty-two newly commissioned chapters by a roster of distinguished philosophers…Read more
  •  191
    Moral responsibility and history revisited
    Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 12 (5). 2008.
    Compatibilists about determinism and moral responsibility disagree with one another about the bearing of agents’ histories on whether or not they are morally responsible for some of their actions. Some stories about manipulated agents prompt such disagreements. In this article, I call attention to some of the main features of my own “history-sensitive” compatibilist proposal about moral responsibility, and I argue that arguments advanced by Michael McKenna and Manuel Vargas leave that proposal u…Read more
  •  62
    Intention, Belief, and Intentional Action
    American 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
  •  78
    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
  •  69
    Intention and Intentional Action
    In Brian P. McLaughlin, Ansgar Beckermann & Sven Walter (eds.), The Oxford handbook of philosophy of mind, Oxford University Press. 2007.
    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
  •  6
    Review: Practical Determinism (review)
    Behavior and Philosophy 18 (1). 1990.
  •  59
    Desiring to Try: Reply to Adams
    Canadian 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.
  •  153
    Mental causes
    with John Heil
    American 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.
  •  48
    Strength of motivation and being in control - learning from Libet
    American Philosophical Quarterly 34 (3): 319-32. 1997.
    It is sometimes suggested that if, whenever we act intentionally, we do, or try to do, what we are most strongly motivated to do at the time, then we are at the mercy of whatever desire happens to be strongest at the time. I have argued elsewhere that this is false (Mele 1987, ch. 5; 1992, ch. 4; 1995, ch. 3; 1996). This essay provides another route to that conclusion, but that is not my primary aim. The goal of this paper is to display the bearing of some well-known experiments by physiologist …Read more
  •  343
    Manipulation, Compatibilism, and Moral Responsibility
    The Journal of Ethics 12 (3-4): 263-286. 2008.
    This article distinguishes among and examines three different kinds of argument for the thesis that moral responsibility and free action are each incompatible with the truth of determinism: straight manipulation arguments; manipulation arguments to the best explanation; and original-design arguments. Structural and methodological matters are the primary focus
  •  199
    Akrasia, self-control, and second-order desires
    Noûs 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
  •  55
    Rational Intentions and the Toxin Puzzle
    ProtoSociology 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
  •  83
    Reasonology and False Beliefs
    Philosophical 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
  •  60
    This cutting-edge volume showcases work supported by a four-year, 4.4 million dollar project on free will and science. In fourteen new articles and an introduction, contributors explore the subject of free will from the perspectives of neuroscience; social, cognitive, and developmental psychology; and philosophy
  •  243
    Motivation and agency
    Oxford University Press. 2003.
    What place does motivation have in the lives of intelligent agents? Mele's answer is sensitive to the concerns of philosophers of mind and moral philosophers and informed by empirical work. He offers a distinctive, comprehensive, attractive view of human agency. This book stands boldly at the intersection of philosophy of mind, moral philosophy, and metaphysics.
  •  103
    History and Personal Autonomy
    Canadian 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
  •  25
    Aristotle on the Proximate Efficient Cause of Action
    Canadian 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
  •  50
    Literary Theory After Davidson (review) (review)
    Philosophy and Literature 18 (1): 165-167. 1994.
    A book review of Literary Theory After Davidson edited by Reed Way Dasenbrock.
  •  41
    Pears on akrasia, and defeated intentions
    Philosophia 14 (1-2): 145-152. 1984.
    David Pears's recent essay, "How Easy is Akrasia?, '' is, in significant part, a refutation of an argument against the possibility of a certain sort of incontinent action. The kind of incontinent action in question is, in Pears's words, "underivative brazen akrasia, which is commonly taken to be akrasia with the fault located between the last line of an agent's reasoning and his action" (p. 40). The argument which he attacks is attributed to Donald Davidson. The purpose of this note is, not to q…Read more
  •  12
    Living Without Free Will (review)
    Mind 112 (446): 375-378. 2003.
  •  134
    Direct control
    Philosophical 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.
  •  986
    Self-Deception and Delusions
    European 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.
  •  29
    Self-Control, Action, and Belief
    American Philosophical Quarterly 22 (2). 1985.
    This paper is an attempt to characterize self-control and to make evident the bearing of this trait of character on our actions, evaluative thinking, and non-evaluative beliefs. In Section I, I focus on action and practical reasoning and advance an account of self-control which applies to both. In Section II, I turn to the bearing of self-control upon our beliefs. I argue there that "doxastic" self-control is properly conceived in accordance with the account developed in Section I.
  •  112
    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
  •  113
    Acting Intentionally: Probing Folk Notions.
    In Bertram F. Malle, Louis J. Moses & Dare A. 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.
  •  111
    Ultimate Responsibility and Dumb Luck*: ALFRED R. MELE
    Social Philosophy and Policy 16 (2): 274-293. 1999.
    My topic lies on conceptual terrain that is quite familiar to philosophers. For others, a bit of background may be in order. In light of what has filtered down from quantum mechanics, few philosophers today believe that the universe is causally deterministic. That is, to use Peter van Inwagen's succinct definition of “determinism,” few philosophers believe that “there is at any instant exactly one physically possible future.” Even so, partly for obvious historical reasons, philosophers continue …Read more
  •  85
    Luck and Free Will
    Metaphilosophy 45 (4-5): 543-557. 2014.
    This essay sketches a problem about luck for typical incompatibilist views of free will posed in Alfred Mele, Free Will and Luck , and examines recent reactions to that problem. Reactions featuring appeals to agent causation receive special attention. Because the problem is focused on decision making, the control that agents have over what they decide is a central topic. Other topics discussed include the nature of lucky action and differences between directly and indirectly free actions