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201Kane, luck, and the significance of free willPhilosophical 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
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32Chance, choice and freedomThe Philosophers' Magazine 55 (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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15Intending 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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139Springs of action: understanding intentional behaviorOxford University Press. 1992.Tackling some central problems in the philosophy of action, Mele constructs an explanatory model for intentional behavior, locating the place and significance of such mental phenomena as beliefs, desires, reason, and intentions in the etiology of intentional action. Part One comprises a comprehensive examination of the standard treatments of the relations between desires, beliefs, and actions. In Part Two, Mele goes on to develop a subtle and well-defended view that the motivational role of inte…Read more
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27Free Will and Luck: Reply to CriticsPhilosophical 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.
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31Practical Mistakes and Intentional ActionsAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 43 (3). 2006.Sometimes we forget to do what we intended to do. For example, we intend to buy some milk on the way home from work, but we forget and drive home, as usual. In situations of this kind, what do we do unintentionally and what do we do intentionally? That is this article's guiding question.
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194Irresistible desiresNoûs 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
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26Akratic Action and the Practical Role of Better JudgmentPacific Philosophical Quarterly 72 (1): 33-47. 1991.
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62Surrounding Free Will: A Response to Baumeister, Crescioni, and Alquist (review)Neuroethics 4 (1): 25-29. 2010.This contribution to a symposium on an article by Roy Baumeister, A. William Crescioni, and Jessica Alquist focuses on a tension between compatibilist and incompatibilist elements in that article. In their discussion of people’s beliefs about free will, Baumeister et al. sometimes sound like incompatibilists; but in their presentation of their work on psychological processes of free will, they sound more like compatibilists than like incompatibilists. It is suggested that Baumeister and coauthor…Read more
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93ActionIn 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
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23Emotion and Desire in Self-DeceptionRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 52 163-179. 2003.According to a traditional view of self-deception, the phenomenon is an intrapersonal analogue of stereotypical interpersonal deception. In the latter case, deceiversintentionallydeceive others into believing something,p, and there is a time at which the deceivers believe thatpis false while their victims falsely believe thatpis true. If self-deception is properly understood on this model, self-deceivers intentionally deceive themselves into believing something,p, and there is a time at which th…Read more
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42Noninstrumental rationalizingPacific Philosophical Quarterly 79 (3). 1998.A central notion in Donald Davidson's philosophy of mind and action is "rationalization," a species of causal explanation designed in part to reveal the point or purpose of the explananda. An analogue of this notion - noninstrumental rationalization - merits serious attention. I develop an account of this species of rationalization and display its utility in explaining the production of certain desires and of motivationally biased beliefs.
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58Author Q & AThe Philosophers' Magazine 2012 (60). 2013.Alfred Mele explains how we act against our better judgments.
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34?Self-deception, action, and will?: CommentsErkenntnis 18 (2): 159-164. 1982.Since the virtues of Professor Audi's paper are obvious and my time is limited, 1 shall restrict myself here to negative comments. I shall argue, first, that condition (1) - the unconscious true belief condition - in Audi's account of "clear cases of self-deception" is too strong and, second, that he does not succeed in justifying his limitation of the self-deceiver to sincere avowals of the proposition with respect to which he is in self-deception.
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172Emotion and Desire in Self-DeceptionIn Anthony Hatzimoysis (ed.), Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, Cambridge University Press. pp. 163-179. 2003.According to a traditional view of self-deception, the phenomenon is an intrapersonal analogue of stereotypical interpersonal deception. In the latter case, deceivers intentionally deceive others into believing something, p , and there is a time at which the deceivers believe that p is false while their victims falsely believe that p is true. If self-deception is properly understood on this model, self-deceivers intentionally deceive themselves into believing something, p , and there is a time a…Read more
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906Humean compatibilismMind 111 (442): 201-223. 2002.Humean compatibilism is the combination of a Humean position on laws of nature and the thesis that free will is compatible with determinism. This article's aim is to situate Humean compatibilism in the current debate among libertarians, traditional compatibilists, and semicompatibilists about free will. We argue that a Humean about laws can hold that there is a sense in which the laws of nature are 'up to us' and hence that the leading style of argument for incompatibilism?the consequence argume…Read more
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136Unconscious decisions and free willPhilosophical Psychology 26 (6): 777-789. 2013.It is sometimes claimed that certain experiments show that free will is an illusion by showing that all decisions are made unconsciously. I have argued elsewhere that these experiments do not show that any decisions are made unconsciously. But suppose I am wrong about that. Even then, I argue, these experiments do not pose a serious threat to free will. First, one is not warranted in generalizing from findings about the decisions allegedly made in these experiments to the claim that all decision…Read more
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79Aristotle on Akrasia, Eudaimonia, and the Psychology of ActionHistory of Philosophy Quarterly 2 (4). 1985.ALTHOUGH Aristotle's work on akrasia has prompted numerous competing interpretations, at least one point seems clear: incontinent action is, for him, dependent upon some deficiency in the agent's cognitive condition at the time of action. But why, exactly, did he take this view? This question, my central concern in the present paper, is not just a query about Aristotle's understanding of incontinent action. It leads us at once into a tangled web of questions about his conception of human action …Read more
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277Motivation and Agency: PrecisPhilosophical 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.
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48Dretske's intricate behaviorPhilosophical Papers 20 (May): 1-10. 1991.In his recent book, Explaining Behavior: Reasons in a World of Causes, Fred Dretske develops at length a conception of behavior as part of an ingenious attempt to display the causal relevance of intentional states, qua intentional, to behavior. So-called folk-psychological explanations of intentional human behavior accord central explanatory roles to beliefs, desires, reasons, intentions, and the like. But how, Dretske asks, do the distinctively psychological features of such items figure in the…Read more
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28The Single Phenomenon View and Experimental PhilosophyIn M. Vargas & G. Yaffe (eds.), Rational and Social Agency: Essays on the Philosophy of Michael Bratman, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.This chapter explores the merits of two different versions of what Michael Bratman has dubbed “The Single Phenomenon View” of intentional action – Bratman’s version and Alfred Mele’s version. The primary focus is on what is done intentionally in cases featuring side effects. Some studies in experimental philosophy that seem to count in favor of Bratman’s view and against Mele’s are discussed with a view to uncovering their bearing on the disagreement between Bratman and Mele.
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135The Practical Syllogism and Deliberation in Aristotle’s Causal Theory of ActionNew Scholasticism 55 (3): 281-316. 1981.In the present paper, I want to contribute to a correct understanding of Aristotle's action theory by explaining just how two of the key concepts which it involves are connected and by showing that, contrary to what a number of commentators have said, there are causal concepts. The concepts in question are those of deliberation and the so-called "practical syllogism."
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200Moral responsibility for actions: epistemic and freedom conditionsPhilosophical Explorations 13 (2): 101-111. 2010.Two questions guide this article. First, according to Fischer and Ravizza (jointly and otherwise), what epistemic requirements for being morally responsible for performing an action A are not also requirements for freely performing A? Second, how much progress have they made on this front? The article's main moral is for philosophers who believe that there are epistemic requirements for being morally responsible for A-ing that are not requirements for freely A-ing because they assume that Fische…Read more
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258A critique of Pereboom's 'four-case argument' for incompatibilismAnalysis 65 (1): 75-80. 2005.One popular style of argument for the thesis that determinism is incompatible with moral responsibility features manipulation. Its thrust is that regarding moral responsibility, there is no important difference between various cases of manipulation in which agents who A are not morally responsible for A-ing and ordinary cases of A-ing in deterministic worlds. There is a detailed argument of this kind in Derk Pereboom’s recent book (2001: 112–26). His strategy in what he calls his ‘four-case argu…Read more
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47Motivation and Agency: Replies: 1. Reply to Wayne Davis (review)Philosophical Studies 123 (3). 2005.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.
Tallahassee, Florida, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Action |
Philosophy of Mind |