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6Errant Self‐Control and the Self‐Controlled PersonPacific Philosophical Quarterly 71 (1): 47-59. 1990.
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80Self-deception and selectivityPhilosophical Studies 177 (9): 2697-2711. 2020.This article explores the alleged “selectivity problem” for Alfred Mele’s deflationary position on self-deception, a problem that can allegedly be solved only by appealing to intentions to bring it about that one acquires certain beliefs, or to make it easier for oneself to acquire certain beliefs, or to deceive oneself into believing that p. This article argues for the following thesis: the selectivity problem does not undermine this deflationary position on self-deception, and anyone who takes…Read more
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366Rescuing Frankfurt-style casesPhilosophical Review 107 (1): 97-112. 1998.Almost thirty years ago, in an attempt to undermine what he termed "the principle of alternate possibilities" (the thesis that people are morally responsible for what they have done only if they could have done otherwise), Harry Frankfurt offered an ingenious thought-experiment that has played a major role in subsequent work on moral responsibility and free will. Several philosophers, including David Widerker and Robert Kane, argued recently that this thought-experiment and others like it are fu…Read more
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65Free Will and Moral Responsibility: Manipulation, Luck, and Agents’ HistoriesMidwest Studies in Philosophy 43 (1): 75-92. 2019.Midwest Studies In Philosophy, EarlyView.
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12Liberation from Self: A Theory of Personal AutonomyPhilosophical and Phenomenological Research 58 (4): 995-996. 1995.
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Have I unmasked self-deception or am I self-deceived?In Clancy W. Martin (ed.), The philosophy of deception, Oxford University Press. 2009.
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35On being able to intendPhilosophical Studies 180 (1): 51-71. 2022.What is it to be able to intend to do something? At the end of her ground-breaking book, Agents’ Abilities, Romy Jaster identifies this question as a topic for future research. This article tackles the question from within the framework Jaster assembled for understanding abilities. The discussion takes place in two different spheres: intentions formed in acts of deciding, and intentions not so formed. The gradability of abilities has an important place in Jaster’s framework, and it is explained …Read more
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16Autonomy and BeliefsIn James F. Childress & Michael Quante (eds.), Thick (Concepts of) Autonomy: Personal Autonomy in Ethics and Bioethics, Springer Verlag. pp. 87-100. 2021.In Autonomous Agents, I argued that among the obstacles to autonomous action are facts of certain kinds about an agent’s beliefs. For example, someone who is deceived into investing her savings in a way that results in her losing the entire investment to the person who deceived her may correctly be said to make that investment nonautonomously. But not everyone has agreed. In this article, I return to doxastic aspects of individual autonomy and argue more fully for the thesis that facts of a cert…Read more
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33Intentional action without knowledgeSynthese 199 (1-2): 1231-1243. 2020.In order to be doing something intentionally, must one know that one is doing it? Some philosophers have answered yes. Our aim is to test a version of this knowledge thesis, what we call the Knowledge/awareness Thesis, or KAT. KAT states that an agent is doing something intentionally only if he knows that he is doing it or is aware that he is doing it. Here, using vignettes featuring skilled action and vignettes featuring habitual action, we provide evidence that, in various scenarios, a majorit…Read more
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53Deciding: how special is it?Philosophical Explorations 24 (3): 359-375. 2021.To decide to A, as I conceive of it, is to perform a momentary mental action of forming an intention to A. I argue that ordinary instances of practical deciding, so conceived, falsify the following...
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Psychology and Free Will: A CommentaryIn John Baer, James C. Kaufman & Roy F. Baumeister (eds.), Are we free?: psychology and free will, Oxford University Press. 2008.
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Intention and Intentional ActionIn Brian P. McLaughlin, Ansgar Beckermann & Sven Walter (eds.), The Oxford handbook of philosophy of mind, Oxford University Press. 2007.
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Delusional confabulations and self-deceptionIn William Hirstein (ed.), Confabulation: Views From Neuroscience, Psychiatry, Psychology, and Philosophy, Oxford University Press. pp. 139-158. 2009.
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54Folk psychology and proximal intentionsPhilosophical Psychology 1-23. forthcoming.There is a longstanding debate in philosophy concerning the relationship between intention and intentional action. According to the Single Phenomenon View, while one need not intend to A in order to A intentionally, one nevertheless needs to have an A-relevant intention. This view has recently come under criticism by those who think that one can A intentionally without any relevant intention at all. On this view, neither distal nor proximal intentions are necessary for intentional action. In thi…Read more
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45Manipulated Agents: Replies to Fischer, Haji, and McKennaCriminal Law and Philosophy 15 (2): 299-309. 2021.This article is part of a symposium on Alfred Mele’s Manipulated Agents: A Window to Moral Responsibility. It is Mele’s response to John Fischer, Ishtiyaque Haji, and Michael McKenna. Topics discussed include the bearing of manipulation on moral responsibility, the zygote argument, the importance of scenarios in which manipulators radically reverse an agent’s values, positive versus negative historical requirements for moral responsibility, the scope of moral responsibility, the value of intuiti…Read more
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31Manipulated Agents: PrécisCriminal Law and Philosophy 15 (2): 249-253. 2020.This précis kicks off an invited symposium on Alfred R. Mele.
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1154Intentional Action Without KnowledgeSynthese 197 1-13. 2020.In order to be doing something intentionally, must one know that one is doing it? Some philosophers have answered yes. Our aim is to test a version of this knowledge thesis, what we call the Knowledge/Awareness Thesis, or KAT. KAT states that an agent is doing something intentionally only if he knows that he is doing it or is aware that he is doing it. Here, using vignettes featuring skilled action and vignettes featuring habitual action, we provide evidence that, in various scenarios, a majori…Read more
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90Free Will and Luck: Compatibilism versus IncompatibilismThe Monist 103 (3): 262-277. 2020.Compatibilists about free will maintain that free will is compatible with determinism, and incompatibilists disagree. Incompatibilist believers in free will have been challenged to solve a problem that luck poses for them—the problem of present luck. This article articulates that challenge and then explores a novel compatibilist view recently proposed by Christian List. It is argued that List’s view, unlike standard compatibilist views, faces a very similar problem about luck.
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95Direct Versus Indirect: Control, Moral Responsibility, and Free ActionPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 102 (3): 559-573. 2020.Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.
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13Surrounding Self-Control (edited book)Oxford University Press, Usa. 2020.Self-control has gained enormous attention in recent years both in philosophy and the mind sciences, for it has profound implications on so many aspects of human life. Overcoming temptation, improving cognitive functioning, making life-altering decisions, and numerous other challenges all depend upon self-control. But recent developments in the philosophy of mind and in action theory, as well as in psychology, are now testing some of the assumptions about the nature of self-control previously he…Read more
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33Weakness of Will and Davidson’s Paradox of Irrationality: A Response to ZhengDao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 18 (4): 597-602. 2019.
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66Moral responsibility and manipulation: on a novel argument against historicismPhilosophical Studies 177 (10): 3143-3154. 2020.Taylor Cyr offers a novel argument against, as he puts it, “all versions of historicism” about direct moral responsibility. The argument features constitutive luck and a comparison of manipulated agents and young agents performing the first actions for which they are morally responsible. Here it is argued that Cyr’s argument misses its mark. Alfred Mele’s historicism is highlighted.
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185The Role of Intention in Intentional ActionCanadian Journal of Philosophy 19 (4). 1989.A great deal of attention has been paid in recent years to the function- al roles of intentions in intentional action. In this paper we sketch and defend a position on this issue while attacking a provocative alternative. Our position has its roots in a cybernetic theory of purposive behavior and is only part of the larger task of understanding all goal-directed behavior. Indeed, a unified model of goal-directed behavior, with appropriate modifications for different types of systems, is a long-r…Read more
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235The Intention/Volition DebateCanadian Journal of Philosophy 22 (3): 323-337. 1992.People intend to do things, try to do things, and do things. Do they also will to do things? More precisely, if people will to do things and their willing bears upon what they do, is willing, or volition, something distinct from intending and trying? This question is central to the intention/volition debate, a debate about the ingredients of the best theory of the nature and explanation of human action. A variety of competing conceptions of volition, intention, and trying have been advanced in t…Read more
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Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Action |
Philosophy of Mind |