-
32Chance, choice and freedomThe Philosophers' Magazine 55 (55): 61-65. 2011.What does the idea that you could have done something else at the time come to? According to some philosophers, it comes to this: in a hypothetical universe that has exactly the same past as our universe and exactly the same laws of nature, you do something else at this very time.
-
15Intending and Trying: Tuomela vs. Bratman at the Video ArcadeIn Matti Sintonen, Petri Ylikoski & Kaarlo Miller (eds.), Realism in Action, Kluwer Academic Publishers. 2003.I have long been an admirer of Raimo Tuomela’s work in the philosophy of action. In this paper I will address a disagreement between Tuomela and Michael Bratman about intention and trying. I will argue that each disputant is partly right and partly wrong.
-
81Reporting on Past Psychological States: Beliefs, Desires, and IntentionsBehavioral and Brain Sciences 16 (1): 61. 1993.
-
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.
-
26Agency 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.
-
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
-
26Akratic Action and the Practical Role of Better JudgmentPacific Philosophical Quarterly 72 (1): 33-47. 1991.
-
66Rational irrationalityThe Philosophers' Magazine 26 (26): 31-32. 2004.Alfred Mele argues we shouldn't try too hard to rid ourselves of all delusions.
-
93ActionIn Frank Jackson & Michael Smith (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy, Oxford University Press. pp. 78-88. 2005.What are actions? And how are actions to be explained? These two central questions of the philosophy of action call, respectively, for a theory of the nature of action and a theory of the explanation of actions. Many ordinary explanations of actions are offered in terms of such mental states as beliefs, desires, and intentions, and some also appeal to traits of character and emotions. Traditionally, philosophers have used and refined this vocabulary in producing theories of the explanation of in…Read more
-
105Self-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
-
194Irresistible 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
-
58Author Q & AThe Philosophers' Magazine 2012 (60). 2013.Alfred Mele explains how we act against our better judgments.
-
492Weakness 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
-
108Proximal 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
-
172Emotion and Desire in Self-DeceptionIn Anthony Hatzimoysis (ed.), Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, Cambridge University Press. pp. 163-179. 2003.According to a traditional view of self-deception, the phenomenon is an intrapersonal analogue of stereotypical interpersonal deception. In the latter case, deceivers intentionally deceive others into believing something, p , and there is a time at which the deceivers believe that p is false while their victims falsely believe that p is true. If self-deception is properly understood on this model, self-deceivers intentionally deceive themselves into believing something, p , and there is a time a…Read more
-
904Humean compatibilismMind 111 (442): 201-223. 2002.Humean compatibilism is the combination of a Humean position on laws of nature and the thesis that free will is compatible with determinism. This article's aim is to situate Humean compatibilism in the current debate among libertarians, traditional compatibilists, and semicompatibilists about free will. We argue that a Humean about laws can hold that there is a sense in which the laws of nature are 'up to us' and hence that the leading style of argument for incompatibilism?the consequence argume…Read more
-
17Self-Deception and Three Psychiatric Delusions: On Robert Audi's Transition from Self-Deception to DelusionIn M. Timmons, J. Greco & A. Mele (eds.), Rationality and the Good, 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
-
115Understanding 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
-
276Motivation and Agency: PrecisPhilosophical Studies 123 (3): 243-247. 2005.This is a POD only reprint of a 2002 philosophy monograph, which discusses themes related to motivation and human action.
-
12Motivational TiesJournal of Philosophical Research 16 431-442. 1991.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 comin…Read more
-
47Dretske's intricate behaviorPhilosophical Papers 20 (May): 1-10. 1991.In his recent book, Explaining Behavior: Reasons in a World of Causes, Fred Dretske develops at length a conception of behavior as part of an ingenious attempt to display the causal relevance of intentional states, qua intentional, to behavior. So-called folk-psychological explanations of intentional human behavior accord central explanatory roles to beliefs, desires, reasons, intentions, and the like. But how, Dretske asks, do the distinctively psychological features of such items figure in the…Read more
-
28The Single Phenomenon View and Experimental PhilosophyIn M. Vargas & G. Yaffe (eds.), Rational and Social Agency: Essays on the Philosophy of Michael Bratman, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.This chapter explores the merits of two different versions of what Michael Bratman has dubbed “The Single Phenomenon View” of intentional action – Bratman’s version and Alfred Mele’s version. The primary focus is on what is done intentionally in cases featuring side effects. Some studies in experimental philosophy that seem to count in favor of Bratman’s view and against Mele’s are discussed with a view to uncovering their bearing on the disagreement between Bratman and Mele.
-
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
-
79Aristotle on Akrasia, Eudaimonia, and the Psychology of ActionHistory of Philosophy Quarterly 2 (4). 1985.ALTHOUGH Aristotle's work on akrasia has prompted numerous competing interpretations, at least one point seems clear: incontinent action is, for him, dependent upon some deficiency in the agent's cognitive condition at the time of action. But why, exactly, did he take this view? This question, my central concern in the present paper, is not just a query about Aristotle's understanding of incontinent action. It leads us at once into a tangled web of questions about his conception of human action …Read more
-
66Two Paradoxes of Self-DeceptionIn Jean-Pierre Dupuy (ed.), Self-Deception and Paradoxes of Rationality, Csli Publications. 1998.
-
43Luck, Control, and Free Will: Answering BerofskyJournal of Philosophy 112 (7): 337-355. 2015.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 …Read more
Tallahassee, Florida, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Action |
Philosophy of Mind |