Alfred Mele

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 lively dialogue on the topic. The book begins with an introduction by Audi that presents a thematic overview of his philosophy and connects his views in ethics, epistemology, and philosophy of mind and action. Each of the thirteen chapters that follow concentrates on one or another of these three main areas. The chapters are followed by Audi's replies.

Mele's ultimate purpose in this book is to help readers think more clearly about free will. He identifies and makes vivid the most important conceptual obstacles to justified belief in the existence of free will and meets them head on. Mele clarifies the central issues in the philosophical debate about free will and moral responsibility, criticizes various influential contemporary theories about free will, and develops two overlapping conceptions of free will--one for readers who are convinced that free will is incompatible with determinism (incompatibilists), and the other for readers who are convinced of the opposite (compatibilists). Luck poses problems for all believers in free will, and Mele offers novel solutions to those problems--one for incompatibilist believers in free will and the other for compatibilists. An early chapter of this empirically well-informed book clearly explains influential neuroscientific studies of free will and debunks some extravagant interpretations of the data. Other featured topics include abilities and alternative possibilities, control and decision-making, the bearing of manipulation on free will, and the development of human infants into free agents. Mele's theory offers an original perspective on an important problem and will garner the attention of anyone interested in the debate on free will

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 conduct survey studies with ordinary people. I conducted four such studies on weakness of will.

Claims about agents’ abilities—practical abilities—are common in theliterature on free will, moral responsibility, moral obligation, personalautonomy, weakness of will, and related topics. These claims typicallyignore differences among various kinds or levels of practical ability. Inthis article, using ‘A’ as an action variable, I distinguish among threekinds or levels: simple ability toA; ability toAintentionally; and a morereliable kind of ability toAassociated with promising toA. I believe thatattention to them will foster progress on the topics I mentioned. Substan-tiating that belief—by making progress on these topics in light of suchattention—is a project for other occasions. My aim here is to lay a partialfoundation for that project.

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 recent research in neuroscience. Methods for timing the onset of proximal intentions and onsets of consciousness of such intentions also receive special attention.

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 motivation in explaining them; (6) differences among various kinds of self- deception; (7) whether a proper conception of self-deception implies that definitive ascriptions of self-deception to individuals are impossible.

What are the criteria people use when they judge that other people did something intentionally? This question has motivated a large and growing literature both in philosophy and in psychology. It has become a topic of particular concern to the nascent field of experimental philosophy, which uses empirical techniques to understand folk concepts. We present new data that hint at some of the underly- ing psychological complexities of folk ascriptions of intentional action and at dis- tinctions both between diverse concepts and between associated mechanisms.

Must a rational ass equidistant from two equally attractive bales of hay starve for lack of a reason to prefer one bale to the other? Must a human being faced with a comparable, explicitly motivational, tie fail to pursue either option? Surely, one suspects, some practical resolution is possible. Surely, ties of either sort need not result in death or paralysis. But why? Donald Davidson has suggested that, in the human case, resolution depends upon the tie’s being broken---upon the agent’s coming to want to perform some action more than she wants to perform any genuine alternative. However, practical resolution is possible, I argue, even while the tie remains intact. This has significant implications for the theory of motivation. Most importantly, not all states that move us to action need be understood as moving us to A in virtue of their incorporating preponderant motivation to A.

This article examines the nature of rationality. The domain of rationality is customarily divided into the theoretical and the practical. Whereas theoretical or epistemic rationality is concerned with what it is rational to believe, and sometimes with rational degrees of belief, practical rationality is concerned with what it is rational to do, or intend or desire to do. This article raises some of the main issues relevant to philosophical discussion of the nature of rationality. Discussions of the nature of practical rationality and reason concern norms of choice, and it seems that if such norms are not arbitrary, arguments over what those norms are must ultimately be a theoretical matter. Furthermore, this article explores rationality's role in and relation to other domains of inquiry: psychology, gender, personhood, language, science, economics, law, and evolution.

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 faulty processing is due to the influence of desires or wishes, broadly construed. There is no "clear-cut distinction," Pears maintains, between "hot" and "cold" (i.e., motivated and unmotivated) cases, "but there are some indubitable cases of each type at each end of the spectrum" (p. 14). At the hot end are central species of self-deception and akratic action. Pears's primary concern is with motivated irrationality of these two sorts. He also comments at some length on other species of motivated irrationality, on cold irrational belief, and on practical reasoning (Chapter 7) and practical truth (Chapter 8).