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12Motivational TiesJournal 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
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81Backsliding: Understanding Weakness of WillOup Usa. 2012.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
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324Real Self-DeceptionBehavioral and Brain Sciences 20 (1): 91-102. 1997.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 consciousnes…Read more
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42Effective reasons and intrinsically motivated actionsPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 48 (4): 723-731. 1988.In this paper I advance an alternative to Davidson’s conception of reasons that preserves the spirit of Davidson's account of effective reasons while avoiding a problem posed by a familiar species of intentional action - roughly, action done for its own sake, or what I shall call intrinsically motivated action.
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153Mental causesAmerican 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.
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66Two Paradoxes of Self-DeceptionIn Jean-Pierre Dupuy (ed.), Self-Deception and Paradoxes of Rationality, Csli Publications. 1998.
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62Intention, Belief, and Intentional ActionAmerican 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
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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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199Akrasia, self-control, and second-order desiresNoûs 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
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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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58Desiring to Try: Reply to AdamsCanadian 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.
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79Reasonology and False BeliefsPhilosophical 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
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92Synchronic self-control revisited: Frog and toad shape upAnalysis 58 (4). 1998.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 t…Read more
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71Intentional action and wayward causal chains: The problem of tertiary waywardness (review)Philosophical Studies 51 (1). 1987.
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91Motivated irrationalityIn Alfred R. Mele & Piers Rawling (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Rationality, Oxford University Press. 2004.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,…Read more
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25Aristotle on the Proximate Efficient Cause of ActionCanadian 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
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133Direct controlPhilosophical 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.
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975Self-Deception and DelusionsEuropean 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.
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81Soft libertarianism and Frankfurt-style scenariosPhilosophical Topics 24 (2): 123-41. 1996.This paper develops a soft-libertarian response to Frankfurt-style cases and to the threat that such cases apparently pose to any brand of libertarianism.
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103History and Personal AutonomyCanadian 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
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111Acting Intentionally: Probing Folk Notions.In Bertram Malle, L. J. Moses & Dare 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.
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23Responsibility and freedom: The challenge of Frankfurt-style-casesIn Monika Betzler & Barbara Guckes (eds.), Autonomes Handeln: Beitrage Zur Philosophie von Harry G. Frankfurt, Berlin: Akademie Verlag. 2000.
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8Chance, choice and freedomThe Philosophers' Magazine 55 61-65. 2011.What does the idea that you could have done something else at the time come to? According to some philosophers, it comes to this: in a hypothetical universe that has exactly the same past as our universe and exactly the same laws of nature, you do something else at this very time.
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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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66Self-control and beliefPhilosophical Psychology 7 (4). 1994.Although the extent to which motivational factors are involved in the production and sustaining of biased or 'irrational' beliefs continues to be a controversial issue in social psychology, even those who urge that such beliefs are often explained by non-motivational tendencies admit that biased beliefs sometimes have motivational sources. Sometimes toe are influenced by motivational pressures in ways proscribed by principles that we accept for belief-acquisition or belief-revision ('doxastic' p…Read more
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112Free Will: Action Theory Meets NeuroscienceIn C. Lumer (ed.), Intentionality, Deliberation, and Autonomy: The Action-Theoretic Basis of Practical Philosophy, Ashgate. 2007.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
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24Autonomy and NeuroscienceIn L. Radoilska (ed.), Autonomy and Mental Disorder, Oxford University Press. 2012.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 deci…Read more
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52Vetoing and ConsciousnessIn T. Vierkant, J. Kiverstein & A. Clark (eds.), Decomposing the Will, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.This chapter’s topic is Benjamin Libet’s position on vetoing. To veto a conscious decision, intention, or urge is to decide not to act on it and to refrain, accordingly, from acting on it. Libet associates veto power with some fancy metaphysics. This chapter sets the metaphysical issues aside and concentrates on the empirical ones, focusing on neuroscientific research that bears on vetoing.
Tallahassee, Florida, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Action |
Philosophy of Mind |