•  127
    Philosophy of Action
    In Kirk Ludwig (ed.), Donald Davidson, Cambridge University Press. 2003.
    The basic subject matter of the philosophy of action is a pair of questions: (1) What are actions? (2) How are actions to be explained? The questions call, respectively, for a theory of the nature of action and a theory of the explanation of actions. Donald Davidson has articulated and defended influential answers to both questions. Those answers are the primary focus of this chapter.
  •  112
    Acting 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.
  •  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
  •  99
    She intends to try
    Philosophical Studies 55 (1): 101-106. 1989.
    My aim in this paper is to refute an intriguing argument of Hugh McCann's for the thesis that'S tried to A' entails 'S intended to A. I shall call this the strong intention thesis about trying, or SIT. SIT implies, as McCann observes, that even an agent who thinks that the probability of her A-ing is close to zero intends to A, provided only that she tries to A.
  •  279
    Motivation and Agency: Precis
    Philosophical Studies 123 (3): 243-247. 2005.
    This is a POD only reprint of a 2002 philosophy monograph, which discusses themes related to motivation and human action.
  •  977
    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.
  •  448
    Free Will and Luck
    Oxford University Press. 2006.
    Mele's ultimate purpose in this book is to help readers think more clearly about free will. He identifies and makes vivid the most important conceptual obstacles to justified belief in the existence of free will and meets them head on. Mele clarifies the central issues in the philosophical debate about free will and moral responsibility, criticizes various influential contemporary theories about free will, and develops two overlapping conceptions of free will--one for readers who are convinced t…Read more
  •  47
    On “Happiness and the Good Life”
    Southwestern Journal of Philosophy 10 (2): 181-187. 1979.
  •  24
    Autonomy and Neuroscience
    In 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
  •  110
    Intending for reasons
    Mind 101 (402): 327-333. 1992.
    T. L. M. Pink, in his (1991) "Purposive Intending", raises an important question about intentions, instructively criticizes a familiar response, and advances an interesting answer of his own. Pink's question is this (p. 343): "What psychological attitudes rationalize and explain intentions to act?" The burden of this note is to show that his answer is problematic.
  •  193
    Situationism and Agency
    Journal of Practical Ethics 1 (1): 62-83. 2013.
    Research in psychology indicates that situations powerfully impact human behavior. Often, it seems, features of situations drive our behavior even when we remain unaware of these features or their influence. One response to this research is pessimism about human agency: human agents have little conscious control over their own behavior, and little insight into why they do what they do. In this paper we review classic and more recent studies indicating “the power of the situation,” and argue for …Read more
  •  126
    Choice and Virtue in the Nicomachean Ethics
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 19 (4): 405-423. 1981.
    In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Choice and Virtue in the Nicomachean Ethics ALFRED R. MELE COM~rNTATORS ON THr Nicomachean Ethics (NE) have long been laboring under the influence of a serious misunderstanding of one of the key terms in Aristotle's moral philosophy and theory of action. This term is prohairesis (choice), the importance of which is indicated by Aristotle's assertions that choice is the proximate efficient cause of action (NE 6. 1139a31--32) and that…Read more
  •  17
    Intending and the Balance of Motivation
    Pacific 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.
  •  72
    Moral Responsibility: Radical Reversals and Original Designs
    The Journal of Ethics 20 (1-3): 69-82. 2016.
    This article identifies and assesses a way of thinking that might help to explain why some compatibilists are attracted to what is variously called an internalist, structuralist, or anti-historicist view of moral responsibility—a view about the bearing of agents’ histories on their moral responsibility. Scenarios of two different kinds are considered. Several scenarios feature heavy-duty manipulation that radically changes an agent’s mature moral personality from admirable to despicable or vice …Read more
  •  311
    Agents' abilities
    Noûs 37 (3). 2003.
    Claims about agents’ abilities—practical abilities—are common in theliterature on free will, moral responsibility, moral obligation, personalautonomy, weakness of will, and related topics. These claims typicallyignore differences among various kinds or levels of practical ability. Inthis article, using ‘A’ as an action variable, I distinguish among threekinds or levels: simple ability toA; ability toAintentionally; and a morereliable kind of ability toAassociated with promising toA. I believe th…Read more
  •  114
    Introduction: Aspects of Rationality
    In Alfred R. Mele & Piers Rawling (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Rationality, Oxford University Press. 2004.
    This article examines the nature of rationality. The domain of rationality is customarily divided into the theoretical and the practical. Whereas theoretical or epistemic rationality is concerned with what it is rational to believe, and sometimes with rational degrees of belief, practical rationality is concerned with what it is rational to do, or intend or desire to do. This article raises some of the main issues relevant to philosophical discussion of the nature of rationality. Discussions of …Read more
  •  106
    Recent Work on Intentional Action
    American Philosophical Quarterly 29 (3). 1992.
    Central to the philosophy of action is a concern to understand intentional action. Two pertinent questions may be distinguished. What is it to do something intentionally? How is intentional behavior to be explained? Although, ideally, a review of recent work in the philosophy of action would attend equally to both questions, space does not permit my doing justice to both here. I shall focus on the definitional or conceptual issue and examine work on the explanatory issue only insofar as it sheds…Read more
  •  102
    Aristotle's Wish
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 22 (2): 139-156. 1984.
    In the bulk of this paper, I shall attempt to clarify the meaning and significance of each of these claims and to resolve (sometimes in footnotes) the interpretational problems which surround them. I hope thereby to contribute not only to our knowledge of the part assigned to wish in the generation of "chosen" or "ethical" action, but to our appreciation, more generally, of Aristotle's position on the roles of thought and desire in action of this sort and his understanding of ethical action itse…Read more
  •  59
    Acting for Reasons and Acting Intentionally
    Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 73 (4): 355-374. 1992.
    The thesis may be expressed as: An agent intentionally A's if and only if she A's for a reason. My aim in this paper is to show that the spirit of the thesis, if not its letter, survives a variety of criticisms and to illuminate, in the process, the nature of reasons for action, acting for reasons, and acting intentionally.
  •  18
    Review 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.
  •  121
    Intentional action : two-and-a-half folk concepts?
    In Joshua Michael Knobe & Shaun Nichols (eds.), Experimental Philosophy, Oxford University Press. pp. 171. 2008.
    What are the criteria people use when they judge that other people did something intentionally? This question has motivated a large and growing literature both in philosophy and in psychology. It has become a topic of particular concern to the nascent field of experimental philosophy, which uses empirical techniques to understand folk concepts. We present new data that hint at some of the underly- ing psychological complexities of folk ascriptions of intentional action and at dis- tinctions both…Read more
  •  55
    He Wants to Try
    Analysis 50 (4). 1990.
    Is it a conceptual requirement on wanting to try to do something, A - or on an agent's acting on such a want - that the agent want to A? The cases with which I am familiar allegedly supporting a negative answer are, for a reason that I shall sketch, unconvincing. However, a negative answer is defensible, and partly by appeal to case.
  •  15
    Author Q & A
    The Philosophers' Magazine 60 125-126. 2013.
  •  277
    Testing free will
    Neuroethics 3 (2): 161-172. 2008.
    This article describes three experiments that would advance our understanding of the import of data already generated by scientific work on free will and related issues. All three can be conducted with existing technology. The first concerns how reliable a predictor of behavior a certain segment of type I and type II RPs is. The second focuses on the timing of conscious experiences in Libet-style studies. The third concerns the effectiveness of conscious implementation intentions. The discussion…Read more
  •  4
    Moral Psychology
    In Christian Miller (ed.), Continuum Companion to Ethics, Continuum. pp. 98. 2011.
    This chapter focuses on a pair of topics in moral psychology that are linked to motivation and evaluation: weakness of will and first-person moral ought beliefs.