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180Intention, intentional action, and moral responsibilityPhilosophical Studies 82 (3). 1996.Philosophers traditionally have been concerned both to explain intentional behavior and to evaluate it from a moral point of view. Some have maintained that whether actions (and their consequences) properly count as intended sometimes hinges on moral considerations - specifically, considerations of moral responsibility. The same claim has been made about an action's properly counting as having been done intentionally. These contentions will be made more precise in subsequent sections, where infl…Read more
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12Review of Robert Audi's Action, Intention, and Reason (review)Mind 104 (413): 145-8. 1995.This volume is a welcome contribution to the philosophy of action. Audi employs a host of subtle distinctions and carefully crafted arguments in defending a unified position on the major issues in action theory. In his characteristically lucid prose, he makes vivid the location of those issues at the intersection of ethics, metaphysics, and the philosophy of mind. Given the tight organization and the unifying introduction, this volume is an exceptionally cohesive collection of essays. It will ma…Read more
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116Understanding 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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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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50Exciting intentionsPhilosophical Studies 59 (3): 289-312. 1990.In this paper, I restrict the discussion to overt intentional action, intentional action that essentially involves peripheral bodily movement. My guiding question is this: If there is a specific motivational role that intention is plausibly regarded as playing in all cases of overt intentional action, in virtue of what feature(s) of intention does it play this role? I am looking for an answer that can be articulated in the terminology of intentionalist psychology.
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191Dennett on freedomMetaphilosophy 36 (4): 414-426. 2005.This article is my contribution to an author-meets-critics session on Daniel Dennett’s Freedom Evolves (Viking, 2003) at the 2004 meetings of the American Philosophical Association – Pacific Division. Dennett criticizes a view I defend in Autonomous Agents (Oxford University Press, 1995) about the importance of agents’ histories for autonomy, freedom, and moral responsibility and defends a competing view. Our disagreement on this issue is the major focus of this article. Additional topics are ma…Read more
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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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142Irrationality: A precisPhilosophical Psychology 1 (2): 173-177. 1988.My primary aim in Irrationality: An Essay on Akrasia, Self-Deception, and Self-Control (1987) is to show that and how akratic action and self-deception are possible. The control that normal agents have over their actions and beliefs figures in the analysis and explanation of both phenomena. For that reason, an examination of self-control plays a central role in the book. In addition, I devote a chapter each to akratic belief and the explanation of intentional action. A precis of the book will pr…Read more
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148Akrasia, reasons, and causesPhilosophical Studies 44 (3): 345-368. 1983.The occurrence or apparent occurrence of incontinent actions challenges several influential views in ethics and the philosophy of mind, e.g., Hare's prescriptivism and the Socratic idea that we always act in the light of the imagined greatest good. It also raises, as I shall explain, an interesting and instructive problem for proponents of causal theories of action. But whereas Socrates and Hare attempt to avoid the difficulties with which akrasia confronts them by denying - wrongly, I shall arg…Read more
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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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332Intentional actionNoûs 28 (1): 39-68. 1994.We shall formulate an analysis of the ordinary notion of intentional action that clarifies a commonsense distinction between intentional and nonintentional action. Our analysis will build on some typically neglected considerations about relations between lucky action and intentional action. It will highlight the often- overlooked role of evidential considerations in intentional action, thus identifying the key role of certain epistemological considerations in action theory. We shall also explain…Read more
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57Aristotle on the Roles of Reason in Motivation and JustificationArchiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 66 (22). 1984.In this paper I shall attempt to answer to questions about the relationship, in Aristotle's ethical thought and the practical intellect to practical ends. The first is a question about motivation, and second is a question about justification. I shall argue that the practical intellect has important work to do in both connections.
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91Synchronic 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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16Motivation and IntentionJournal of Philosophical Research 21 51-67. 1996.This essay defends the compatibility of a pair of popular theses in the philosophy of action and rebuts arguments of Hugh McCann’s (1995) designed to show that my earlier efforts, in Springs of Action, to resolve the apparent tension were unsuccessful. One thesis links what agents intentionally do at a time, t, to what they are most strongly motivated to do at t. The other is a thesis about the nature and functions of intent.
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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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15Can Libertarians Make Promises?Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 55 217-241. 2004.Libertarians hold that free action and moral responsibility are incompatible with determinism and that some human beings occasionally act freely and are morally responsible for some of what they do. Can libertarians who know both that they are right and that they are free make sincere promises? Peter van Inwagen, a libertarian, contends that they cannot—at least when they assume that should they do what they promise to do, they would do it freely. Probably, this strikes many readers as a surpris…Read more
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50Rational Intentions and the Toxin PuzzleProto Sociology 8 39-52. 1996.Gregory Kavka’s toxin puzzle has spawned a lively literature about the nature of intention and of rational intention in particular. This paper is largely a critique of a pair of recent responses to the puzzle that focus on the connection between rationally forming an intention to A and rationally A-ing, one by David Gauthier and the other by Edward McClennen. It also critically assesses the two main morals Kavka takes reflection on the puzzle to support, morals about the nature of intention and …Read more
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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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36Free will: Theories, analysis, and dataIn Susan Pockett, William P. Banks & Shaun Gallagher (eds.), Does Consciousness Cause Behavior?, Mit Press. pp. 187-205. 2006.Alfred Mele develops a conceptual analysis of some of the concepts that inform the recent experimental studies of intentional action. Based on a distinction between unconscious urge and conscious decision, he suggests that the neural activity described by Libet’s experiments may represent an urge to move rather than a decision to do so, and that the decision to move might be made only when the subject becomes conscious of the urge. If this is the case, then Libet’s experiments do not threaten fr…Read more
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108Actions, Explanations, and CausesIn Giuseppina D'Oro & Constantine Sandis (eds.), Reasons and Causes: Causalism and Non-causalism in the Philosophy of Action, Palgrave-macmillan. 2013.
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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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232Libertarianism, luck, and controlPacific Philosophical Quarterly 86 (3): 381-407. 2005.This article critically examines recent work on free will and moral responsibility by Randolph Clarke, Robert Kane, and Timothy O’Connor in an attempt to clarify issues about control and luck that are central to the debate between libertarians (agent causationists and others) and their critics. It is argued that luck poses an as yet unresolved problem for libertarians.
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49Vetoing 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.
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17Intention and LiteratureStanford French Review 16 173-196. 1992.The issues of authorial intentions and interpretations are discussed. The philosophical dispute between metaphysical realists and metaphysical antirealists on authorial intentions and how these are characterized is examined. While realists maintain that a mind-independent reality exists, antirealists claim that reality is completely mind-dependent and that all things are mere mental constructions.
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155On Pereboom’s Disappearing Agent ArgumentCriminal Law and Philosophy 11 (3): 561-574. 2017.This article is a critical discussion of Derk Pereboom’s “disappearing agent objection” to event-causal libertarianism in his Free Will, Agency, and Meaning in Life. This objection is an important plank in Pereboom’s argument for free will skepticism. It is intended to knock event-causal libertarianism, a leading pro-free-will view, out of contention. I explain why readers should not find the objection persuasive.
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23Free Will and Consciousness: An Introduction and Overview of PerspectivesIn A. Mele, R. Baumeister & K. Vohs (eds.), Free Will and Consciousness: How Might They Work?, Oxford University Press. 2010.This volume is aimed at readers who wish to move beyond debates about the existence of free will and the efficacy of consciousness and closer to appreciating how free will and consciousness might operate. It draws from philosophy and psychology, the two fields that have grappled most fundamentally with these issues. In this wide-ranging volume, the contributors explore such issues as how free will is connected to rational choice, planning, and self-control; roles for consciousness in decision ma…Read more
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216Agency and mental actionPhilosophical Perspectives 11 231-249. 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 poi- gnantly, problems for causalism that some intentional overt actions allegedly generate, as well.
Tallahassee, Florida, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Action |
Philosophy of Mind |