Alfred Mele

Libertarianism about free will is the conjunction of two theses: the existence of free will is incompatible with the truth of determinism, and at least some human beings sometimes exercise free will (or act freely, for short). 1 Some libertarian views feature agent causation, others maintain that free actions are uncaused, and yet others – event-causal libertarian views – reject all views of these two kinds and appeal to indeterministic causation by events and states. 2 This article explores the relative merits of two different views of this third kind. One is Robert Kane's prominent view, and the other is the ‘daring libertarian’ view that I floated in Free Will and Luck. 3 (I labeled the view ‘daring’ to distinguish it from a more modest libertarian view that I floated a decade earlier.) 4 I say ‘floated’ because I am not a libertarian. I do not endorse incompatibilism; instead, I am agnostic about it. But if I were a libertarian, I would embrace my daring libertarian view (or DLV, for short). This article's thesis is that event-causal libertarians should prefer DLV to Kane's ‘dual or multiple efforts’ view.

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 argument’ (117) is to describe three cases of progressively weaker manipulation in which, he contends, the agent, Plum, is not morally responsible for killing his victim and to compare them to a related deterministic case that involves no manipulation. Pereboom argues that what blocks Plum’s moral responsibility for the killing in the first three cases is the fact that ‘his action results from a deterministic causal process that traces back to factors beyond his control’ and that, because this fact also obtains in the fourth case, Plum is not morally responsible for that killing either (116). My thesis is that Pereboom’s argument fails.

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 making; the nature and power of conscious deciding; connections among free will, consciousness, and quantum mechanics; why free will and consciousness might have evolved; how consciousness develops in individuals; the experience of free will; effects on behavior of the belief that free will is an illusion; and connections between free will and moral responsibility in lay thinking. Collectively, these state-of-the-art chapters by accomplished psychologists and philosophers provide a glimpse into the future of research on free will and consciousness.

This chapter discusses the view according to which human actions are explained teleologically and, therefore, all causal accounts of action explanation are, in a sense, rivals. This view is referred to here as “anticausalist teleologism” (AT). Teleological explanations of human actions are explanations in terms of aims, goals, or purposes of human agents. After providing some background on AT, an objection raised by Mele to a proposal George Wilson makes in developing his version of AT is presented and dissected. Scott Sehon’s recent reply to Mele’s objection is then presented, after which, Donald Davidson’s challenge to anticausalists about action explanation comes next. In conclusion, this chapter presents a reply to this challenge proposed by Sehon, which is explained in detail.

In this paper I shall argue that there is good reason to doubt a traditional supposition about this pair of distinctions between types of knowledge used to address worries about Aristotle's account of akrasia, and I shall develop an interpretation on which the supposition is not made. It will be seen that the interpretation to be advanced - on which the entire chapter expresses Aristotle's own position on akrasia - resolves the apparent internal and external inconsistencies; and I hope to show as well that, on this interpretation, Aristotle has something interesting and plausible to say about akrasia and that his analysis is happily applied to a large class of akratic actions.

Rationality has long been a central topic in philosophy, crossing standard divisions and categories. It continues to attract much attention in published research and teaching by philosophers as well as scholars in other disciplines, including economics, psychology, and law. The Oxford Handbook of Rationality is an indispensable reference to the current state of play in this vital and interdisciplinary area of study. Twenty-two newly commissioned chapters by a roster of distinguished philosophers provide an overview of the prominent views on rationality, with each author also developing a unique and distinctive argument.

There are intentional actions and unintentional actions. Do we ever perform actions that are neither intentional nor unintentional? Some philosophers have answered "yes" (Mele 1992; Mele and Moser 1994; Mele and Sverdlik 1996; Lowe 1978; Wasserman, forthcoming). That is, they have claimed that there is a middle ground between intentional and unintentional human actions.1 Motivation for this claim is generated by attention to a variety of issues, including two that are of special interest to experimental philosophers of action: the status of side-effect actions, and the status of actions that are instances of luckily succeeding in doing something one is trying to do. This article explores the idea that there is a middle ground between intentional and unintentional human actions, paying special attention to the two issues just identified. The exploration is partly theoretical and partly empirical. Section 2 reports the results of two new studies designed to yield evidence about whether and to what extent nonspecialists recognize this middle ground.

It is sometimes suggested that if, whenever we act intentionally, we do, or try to do, what we are most strongly motivated to do at the time, then we are at the mercy of whatever desire happens to be strongest at the time. I have argued elsewhere that this is false (Mele 1987, ch. 5; 1992, ch. 4; 1995, ch. 3; 1996). This essay provides another route to that conclusion, but that is not my primary aim. The goal of this paper is to display the bearing of some well-known experiments by physiologist Benjamin Libet on this issue. Philosophical discussion of these experiments has focused on Libet's claims about consciousness. The significance of these experiments for the topics of motivation and agential control also merits serious attention.

This article answers a question about luck, control, and free will that Bernard Berofsky raises in Nature’s Challenge to Free Will. The article focuses on a positive element of a typical libertarian view: namely, the thesis that there are indeterministic agents who sometimes act freely when their actions—and decisions in particular—are not deterministically caused by proximal causes. LFT is the target of what I call “the problem of present luck”—indeterministic luck at the time of decision. The bearing of such luck on LFT is explored

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 nature—that an intention appears in one’s consciousness preceding an action. Several questions arise from this assumption, and these questions are addressed here. The chapter argues that plans, including simple representations of prospective “basic” actions and complex strategies for achieving remote goals, constitute the representational content of intentions.