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106Recent Work on Intentional ActionAmerican 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
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103Lenman on externalism and amoralism: An interplanetary explorationPhilosophia 32 (1-4): 275-283. 2005.One of us -- Alfred Mele (1996; 2003, ch. 5) -- has argued that possible instances of listlessness falsify the combination of cognitivism and various kinds of internalism about positive first-person moral ought-beliefs. If an argument recently advanced by James Lenman (1999) is successful, listlessnessis impossible and Mele's argument from listlessness therefore fails.However, we will argue that Lenman's argument is unpersuasive.
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277Testing free willNeuroethics 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
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86Is akratic action unfree?Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 46 (4): 673-679. 1986.That incontinent action is possible, I have argued elsewhere. The purpose of the present paper is to ascertain whether such action can ever be free.
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4Moral PsychologyIn 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.
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67Autonomy, self-control and weakness of willIn Robert Kane (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Free Will, Oxford University Press. 2001.This article defends a nonstandard position on free will that is based on three topics linked to contemporary debates about free will: autonomy, self-control, and weakness of will. It argues that autonomy, and hence also free will, requires more than self-control, including ideal self-control. It considers the additional conditions required, showing how contemporary discussions of autonomy are intertwined with debates about free will. These additional conditions for genuine autonomy do not requi…Read more
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82Reporting on Past Psychological States: Beliefs, Desires, and IntentionsBehavioral and Brain Sciences 16 (1): 61. 1993.
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124Deciding to actPhilosophical 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
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183Goal-Directed Action: Teleological Explanations, Causal Theories, and DevianceNoûs 34 (s14). 2000.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
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107Self-control, motivational strength, and exposure therapyPhilosophical Studies 170 (2): 359-375. 2014.Do people sometimes exercise self-control in such a way as to bring it about that they do not act on present-directed motivation that continues to be motivationally strongest for a significant stretch of time (even though they are able to act on that motivation at the time) and intentionally act otherwise during that stretch of time? This paper explores the relative merits of two different theories about synchronic self-control that provide different answers to this question. One is due to Sripa…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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24Aristotle on the Proximate Efficient Cause of ActionCanadian 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
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248Libet on Free Will: Readiness Potentials, Decisions, and AwarenessIn L. Nadel & W. Sinnott-Armstrong (eds.), Conscious Will and Responsibility. A tribute to Benjamin Libet, Oxford University Press. pp. 23--33. 2010.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
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66Rational irrationalityThe Philosophers' Magazine 26 (26): 31-32. 2004.Alfred Mele argues we shouldn't try too hard to rid ourselves of all delusions.
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CHAPTER 5. Twisted Self-DeceptionIn Self-Deception Unmasked, Princeton University Press. pp. 94-118. 2001.
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17Self-Deception and Three Psychiatric Delusions: On Robert Audi's Transition from Self-Deception to DelusionIn Mark Timmons, John Greco & Alfred R. Mele (eds.), Rationality and the Good: Critical Essays on the Ethics and Epistemology of Robert Audi, Oxford University Press. 2007.For more than thirty years, Robert Audi has been one of the most creative and influential philosophical voices on a broad range of topics in the fields of ethics, epistemology, philosophy of mind and action, and philosophy of religion. This volume features thirteen chapters by renowned scholars plus new writings by Audi. Each chapter presents both a position of its author and a critical treatment of related ideas of Audi's, and he responds to each of the contributors in a way that provides a liv…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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67Akratic feelingsPhilosophy 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.
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499Weakness of will and akrasiaPhilosophical Studies 150 (3). 2010.Richard Holton has developed a view of the nature of weak-willed actions, and I have done the same for akratic actions. How well does this view of mine fare in the sphere of weakness of will? Considerably better than Holton’s view. That is a thesis of this article. The article’s aim is to clarify the nature of weak-willed actions. Holton reports that he is "trying to give an account of our ordinary notion of weakness of will" (1999, p. 262). One way to get evidence about ordinary notions is to c…Read more
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211Kane, 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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115Proximal intentions, intention-reports, and vetoingPhilosophical Psychology 21 (1). 2008.Proximal intentions are intentions to do something at once. Are they ever among the causes of actions? Can agents “veto” or retract proximal intentions and refrain from acting on them in certain experimental settings? When, in controlled studies, do proximal intentions to press a button, for example, arise? And when does the agent's consciousness of these intentions arise? This article explores these questions—and evaluates some answers that have been offered—in light of the results of some rece…Read more
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29Conscious IntentionsIn Joseph Keim Campbell, Michael O'Rourke & Harry Silverstein (eds.), Action, Ethics, and Responsibility, Bradford. 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
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43Self-Deception and Akrasia: A Review of David Pears's Motivated Irrationality (review)Behaviorism 14 (2): 183-191. 1986.
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12Self-Deception and "Akrasia" (review)Behavior and Philosophy 14 (2): 183. 1986.Self-deception and akratic action (roughly, uncompelled intentional action that is contrary to the agent's better judgment) are the leading dramatis personae in philosophical work on motivated irrational behavior. David Pears's Motivated Irrationality advances our understanding of both phenomena and of their causal and conceptual interrelationships. Irrationality, as Pears understands it, is "incorrect processing of information in the mind" (p. 14). In instances of motivated irrationality, the f…Read more
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27Agency and Mental ActionNoûs 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.
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120Understanding and explaining real self-deceptionBehavioral and Brain Sciences 20 (1): 127-134. 1997.This response addresses seven main issues: (1) alleged evidence that in some instances of self-deception an individual simultaneously possesses “contradictory beliefs”; (2) whether garden-variety self-deception is intentional; (3) whether conditions that I claimed to be conceptually sufficient for self-deception are so; (4) significant similarities and differences between self-deception and interpersonal deception; (5) how instances of self-deception are to be explained, and the roles of motivat…Read more
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195Irresistible 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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Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Action |
Philosophy of Mind |