-
21Surrounding Free Will: Philosophy, Psychology, Neuroscience (edited book)Oxford University Press USA. 2014.This volume showcases cutting-edge scholarship from The Big Questions in Free Will project, funded by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation and directed by Alfred R. Mele. It explores the subject of free will from the perspectives of neuroscience; social, cognitive, and developmental psychology; and philosophy. The volume consists of fourteen new articles and an introduction from top-ranked contributors, all of whom bring fresh perspectives to the question of free will. They investigate que…Read more
-
32Free Will and LuckOxford University Press USA. 2006.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 issue 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 t…Read more
-
D.N. Walton, "Courage: A philosophical investigation"International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 23 (2): 117. 1988.
-
3GF Schueler, Desire: Its Role in Practical Reason and the Explanation of Action (review)Minds and Machines 6 253-256. 1996.
-
15The Significance of Free Will (review)Journal of Philosophy 95 (11): 581-584. 1998.A book review of Robert Kane's The Significance of Free Will.
-
78Contours of Agency: Essays on Themes from Harry FrankfurtAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 81 (2): 292-295. 2003.Book Information Contours of Agency: Essays on Themes from Harry Frankfurt. Edited by Sarah Buss and Lee Overton. MIT Press. Cambridge MA. 2002. Pp. 381.
-
15Free Will and Consciousness: How Might They Work? (New York: OUP, 2010) (edited book)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
-
24Soft Libertarianism and Frankfurt-Style ScenariosPhilosophical Topics 24 (2): 123-141. 1996.Traditional libertarians about freedom of choice and action and about moral responsibility are hard-line incompatibilists. They claim that these freedoms (which they believe to be possessed by at least some human beings) are incompatible with determinism, and they take the same view of moral responsibility. I call them hard libertarians. A softer line is available to theorists who have libertarian sympathies. A theorist may leave it open that freedom of choice and action and moral responsibil…Read more
-
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.
-
201Kane, luck, and the significance of free willPhilosophical Explorations 2 (2): 96-104. 1999.This paper raises a pair of objections to the novel libertarian position advanced in Robert Kane's recent book, The Significance of Free Will.The first objection's target is a central element in Kane's intriguing response to what he calls the "Intelligibility" and "Existence" questions about free will. It is argued that this response is undermined by considerations of luck.The second objection is directed at a portion of Kane's answer to what he calls "The Significance Question" about free will:…Read more
-
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.
-
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.
-
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
-
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
-
646When Are We Self-Deceived?Humana Mente Journal of Philosophical Studies (20). 2012.This article‘s point of departure is a proto-analysis that I have suggested of entering self-deception in acquiring a belief and an associated set of jointly sufficient conditions for self-deception that I have proposed. Partly with the aim of fleshing out an important member of the proposed set of conditions, I provide a sketch of my view about how selfdeception happens. I then return to the proposed set of jointly sufficient conditions and offer a pair of amendments.
-
79Persisting intentionsNoûs 41 (4). 2007.Al is nearly finished sweeping his kitchen floor when he notices, on a counter, a corkscrew that should be put in a drawer. He intends to put the corkscrew away as soon as he is finished with the floor; but by the time he returns the broom and dustpan to the closet, he has forgotten what he intended to do. Al knows (or has a true belief) that there is something he intended to do now in the kitchen. He gazes around the room and tries to recall what it was. Within a minute or so, without seeing th…Read more
-
26Akratic Action and the Practical Role of Better JudgmentPacific Philosophical Quarterly 72 (1): 33-47. 1991.
-
10Self-Deception and Hypothesis TestingIn M. Marraffa, M. De Caro & F. Ferreti (eds.), Cartographies of the Mind, Kluwer Academic Publishers. 2007.The present book is a collection of essays exploring some classical dimensions of mind both from the perspective of an empirically-informed philosophy and from the point of view of a philosophically-informed psychology. In the last three decades, the level of interaction between philosophy and psychology has increased dramatically. As a contribution to this trend, this book explores some areas in which this interaction has been very productive – or, at least, highly provocative. The interaction …Read more
-
7The Structure of Emotions (review)Philosophical Books 29 (4): 224-225. 1988.A book review of Robert M. Gordon's The Structure of Emotions.
-
58Author Q & AThe Philosophers' Magazine 2012 (60). 2013.Alfred Mele explains how we act against our better judgments.
Tallahassee, Florida, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Action |
Philosophy of Mind |