•  83
    Recent work on self-deception
    American Philosophical Quarterly 24 (1): 1-17. 1987.
    I start, in Section I, with the case for skepticism about the possibility of self-deception. In Sections II and III, I review attempts to explain how self-deception, conceived on a strict interpersonal model, is possible. Section IV addresses a variety of analyses of self-deception that involve modest departures from these strict models and canvasses associated attacks on the standard paradoxes. The emphasis there is on the static paradoxes, discussion of their dynamic coun terparts being reser…Read more
  •  124
    Deciding to act
    Philosophical Studies 100 (1). 2000.
    As this passage from a recent book on the psychology of decision-making indicates, deciding seems to be part of our daily lives. But what is it to decide to do something? It may be true, as some philosophers have claimed, that to decide to A is to perform a mental action of a certain kind – specifically, an action of forming an intention to A. (Henceforth, the verb ‘form’ in this context is to be understood as an action verb.) Even if this is so, we are faced with pressing questions. Do we form …Read more
  •  116
    The folk concept of intentional action: A commentary
    Journal of Cognition and Culture 6 (1-2): 277-290. 2006.
    In this commentary, I discuss the three main articles in this volume that present survey data relevant to a search for something that might merit the label “the folk concept of intentional action” – the articles by Joshua Knobe and Arudra Burra, Bertram Malle, and Thomas Nadelhoffer. My guiding question is this: What shape might we find in an analysis of intentional action that takes at face value the results of all of the relevant surveys about vignettes discussed in these three articles?1 To s…Read more
  •  277
    Manipulation, Moral Responsibility, and Bullet Biting
    The Journal of Ethics 17 (3): 167-184. 2013.
    This article’s guiding question is about bullet biting: When should compatibilists about moral responsibility bite the bullet in responding to stories used in arguments for incompatibilism about moral responsibility? Featured stories are vignettes in which agents’ systems of values are radically reversed by means of brainwashing and the story behind the zygote argument. The malady known as “intuition deficit disorder” is also discussed.
  •  24
    Aristotle on the Proximate Efficient Cause of Action
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy Supplementary Vol. X (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 recentl…Read more
  •  248
    Libet on Free Will: Readiness Potentials, Decisions, and Awareness
    In W. Sinnot-Armstrong & L. Nadel (eds.), Conscious Will and Responsibility, Oxford University Press. pp. 23--33. 2011.
    Benjamin Libet contends both that “the brain ‘decides’ to initiate or, at least, prepare to initiate [certain actions] before there is any reportable subjective awareness that such a decision has taken place” and that “if the ‘act now’ process is initiated unconsciously, then conscious free will is not doing it.” He also contends that once we become conscious of our proximal decisions, we can exercise free will in vetoing them. This chapter provides some conceptual and empirical background and t…Read more
  •  183
    Teleological explanations of human actions are explanations in terms of aims, goals, or purposes of human agents. According to a familiar causal approach to analyzing and explaining human action, our actions are, essentially, events (and sometimes states, perhaps) that are suitably caused by appropriate mental items, or neural realizations of those items. Causalists traditionally appeal, in part, to such goal-representing states as desires and intentions (or their neural realizers) in their expl…Read more
  •  24
    Soft Libertarianism and Frankfurt-Style Scenarios
    Philosophical Topics 24 (2): 123-141. 1996.
    Traditional libertarians about freedom of choice and action and about moral responsibility are hard-line incompatibilists. They claim that these freedoms (which they believe to be possessed by at least some human beings) are incompatible with determinism, and they take the same view of moral responsibility. I call them hard libertarians. A softer line is available to theorists who have libertarian sympathies. A theorist may leave it open that freedom of choice and action and moral responsibil…Read more
  •  27
    Free Will and Luck: Reply to Critics
    Philosophical Explorations 10 (2): 195-210. 2007.
    I am grateful to my critics—E. J. Coffman and Ted Warfield, Dana Nelkin, Timothy O’Connor, and Derk Pereboom—for their good work on Free Will and Luck (2006). Philoso- phers traditionally focus on their disagreements with one another. My reply is squarely within that tradition, as are the articles to which I am replying.
  •  14
    Michael 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.
  •  67
    Akratic feelings
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 50 (2): 277-288. 1989.
    Elsewhere, I have argued for the possibility of strict or full-blown akratic action - roughly, free (or uncompelled), intentional action against the agent's better judgment.' My aim in the present paper is to defend and account for the possibility of an analogous variety of akratic feeling.
  •  207
    Kane, luck, and the significance of free will
    Philosophical Explorations 2 (2): 96-104. 1999.
    This paper raises a pair of objections to the novel libertarian position advanced in Robert Kane's recent book, The Significance of Free Will.The first objection's target is a central element in Kane's intriguing response to what he calls the "Intelligibility" and "Existence" questions about free will. It is argued that this response is undermined by considerations of luck.The second objection is directed at a portion of Kane's answer to what he calls "The Significance Question" about free will:…Read more
  •  29
    Conscious Intentions
    In J. Campbell, M. O'Rourke & H. Silverstein (eds.), Action, Ethics, and Responsibility, Mit Press. 2010.
    This chapter discusses the nature of intentions and how it is discussed in a variety of fields, including neuroscience, philosophy, law, and several branches of psychology. It should be noted that the term is not understood in the same way in all fields; the chapter will focus on an account of intentions similar to that held by neuroscience, specifically the concept of occurrent intentions as commanding attitudes toward plans. A number of psychologists assume that intentions are conscious in nat…Read more
  •  11
    Free will
    The Philosophers' Magazine 50 86-87. 2010.
  •  27
    Agency and Mental Action
    Noûs 31 (s11): 231-249. 1997.
    My question here is whether there are intentional mental actions that generate special, significant threats to causalism (i.e., threats of a kind not generated by intentional overt actions), or that generate, more poignantly, problems for causalism that some intentional overt actions allegedly generate, as well.
  •  673
    When Are We Self-Deceived?
    Humana Mente Journal of Philosophical Studies (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 selfdeception happens. I then return to the proposed set of jointly sufficient conditions and offer a pair of amendments.
  •  194
    Irresistible desires
    Noûs 24 (3): 455-72. 1990.
    The topic of irresistible desires arises with unsurprising frequency in discussions of free agency and moral responsibility. Actions motivated by such desires are standardly viewed as compelled, and hence unfree. Agents in the grip of irresistible desires are often plausibly exempted from moral blame for intentional deeds in which the desires issue. Yet, relatively little attention has been given to the analysis of irresistible desire. Moreover, a popular analysis is fatally flawed. My aim in th…Read more
  •  83
    Persisting intentions
    Noûs 41 (4). 2007.
    Al is nearly finished sweeping his kitchen floor when he notices, on a counter, a corkscrew that should be put in a drawer. He intends to put the corkscrew away as soon as he is finished with the floor; but by the time he returns the broom and dustpan to the closet, he has forgotten what he intended to do. Al knows (or has a true belief) that there is something he intended to do now in the kitchen. He gazes around the room and tries to recall what it was. Within a minute or so, without seeing th…Read more
  •  25
    Causation, Action, and Free Will
    In H. Beebee, C. Hitchcock & P. Menzies (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Causation, Oxford University Press. 2009.
    Many issues at the heart of the philosophy of action and of philosophical work on free will are framed partly in terms of causation. The leading approach to understanding both the nature of action and the explanation or production of actions emphasizes causation. What may be termed standardcausalism is the conjunction of the following two theses: firstly, an event's being an action depends on how it was caused; and secondly, proper explanations of actions are causal explanations. Important quest…Read more
  •  16
    Intending and Trying: Tuomela vs. Bratman at the Video Arcade
    In 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.
  •  11
    Self-Deception and Hypothesis Testing
    In M. Marraffa, M. De Caro & F. Ferreti (eds.), Cartographies of the Mind, Kluwer Academic Publishers. 2007.
    The present book is a collection of essays exploring some classical dimensions of mind both from the perspective of an empirically-informed philosophy and from the point of view of a philosophically-informed psychology. In the last three decades, the level of interaction between philosophy and psychology has increased dramatically. As a contribution to this trend, this book explores some areas in which this interaction has been very productive – or, at least, highly provocative. The interaction …Read more
  •  96
    Action
    In Frank Jackson & Michael Smith (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy, Oxford University Press. pp. 78-88. 2005.
    What are actions? And how are actions to be explained? These two central questions of the philosophy of action call, respectively, for a theory of the nature of action and a theory of the explanation of actions. Many ordinary explanations of actions are offered in terms of such mental states as beliefs, desires, and intentions, and some also appeal to traits of character and emotions. Traditionally, philosophers have used and refined this vocabulary in producing theories of the explanation of in…Read more
  •  7
    The Structure of Emotions (review)
    Philosophical Books 29 (4): 224-225. 1988.
    A book review of Robert M. Gordon's The Structure of Emotions.
  •  43
    Motivational Ties
    Journal of Philosophical Research 16 431-442. 1991.
    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 comin…Read more