Author: Alfred R Mele
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Keywords: conscious, power, intentions, effective
Number of Pages: 192
Published: 2009-04-22
List price: $45.00
ISBN-10: 0195384261
ISBN-13: 9780195384260

Each of the following claims has been defended in the scientific literature on free will and consciousness: your brain routinely decides what you will do before you become conscious of its decision; there is only a 100 millisecond window of opportunity for free will, and all it can do is veto conscious decisions, intentions, or urges; intentions never play a role in producing corresponding actions; and free will is an illusion. In Effective Intentions Alfred Mele shows that the evidence offered to support these claims is sorely deficient. He also shows that there is strong empirical support fo

Author: Alfred R. Mele
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Keywords: autonomy, control, agents, autonomous
Number of Pages: 288
Published: 1995-08-03
List price: $135.00
ISBN-10: 0195094549
ISBN-13: 9780195094541

This book addresses two related topics: self-control and individual autonomy. In approaching these issues, Mele develops a conception of an ideally self-controlled person, and argues that even such a person can fall short of personal autonomy. He then examines what needs to be added to such a person to yield an autonomous agent and develops two overlapping answers: one for compatibilist believers in human autonomy and one for incompatibilists. While remaining neutral between those who hold that autonomy is compatible with determinism and those who deny this, Mele shows that belief that the

Author: Alfred R Mele
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Keywords: luck, free
Number of Pages: 240
Published: 2008-07-29
List price: $19.95
ISBN-10: 0195374398
ISBN-13: 9780195374391

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 that free will is incompatible with determinism (incompatibilists), and the other for readers w

Author: Alfred R. Mele
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Keywords: unmasked, deception
Number of Pages: 160
Published: 2001-01-15
List price: $26.95
ISBN-10: 0691057451
ISBN-13: 9780691057453

Self-deception raises complex questions about the nature of belief and the structure of the human mind. In this book, Alfred Mele addresses four of the most critical of these questions: What is it to deceive oneself? How do we deceive ourselves? Why do we deceive ourselves? Is self-deception really possible? Drawing on cutting-edge empirical research on everyday reasoning and biases, Mele takes issue with commonplace attempts to equate the processes of self-deception with those of stereotypical interpersonal deception. Such attempts, he demonstrates, are fundamentally misguided, particularly

Author: Alfred R. Mele
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Keywords: agency, motivation
Number of Pages: 272
Published: 2005-09-15
List price: $35.00
ISBN-10: 0195189523
ISBN-13: 9780195189520

What place does motivation have in the lives of intelligent agents? Mele’s answer is sensitive to the concerns of philosophers of mind and moral philosophers and informed by empirical work. He offers a distinctive, comprehensive, attractive view of human agency. This book stands boldly at the intersection of philosophy of mind, moral philosophy, and metaphysics.

Author: Alfred R. Mele
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Keywords: behavior, intentional, understanding, action, springs
Number of Pages: 288
Published: 1992-02-06
List price: $125.00
ISBN-10: 019507114X
ISBN-13: 9780195071146

Tackling some central problems in the philosophy of action, Mele constructs an explanatory model for intentional behavior, locating the place and significance of such mental phenomena as beliefs, desires, reason, and intentions in the etiology of intentional action. Part One comprises a comprehensive examination of the standard treatments of the relations between desires, beliefs, and actions. In Part Two, Mele goes on to develop a subtle and well-defended view that the motivational role of intentions is of a different sort from that of beliefs and desires. Mele, also offers a provocative ex

Author: Alfred R. Mele
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Keywords: control, deception, akrasia, essay, irrationality
Number of Pages: 200
Published: 1992-09-24
List price: $60.00
ISBN-10: 0195080017
ISBN-13: 9780195080018

Although much human action serves as proof that irrational behavior is remarkably common, certain forms of irrationality--most notably, incontinent action and self-deception--pose such difficult theoretical problems that philosophers have rejected them as logically or psychologically impossible. Here, Mele shows that, and how, incontinent action and self-deception are indeed possible. Drawing upon recent experimental work in the psychology of action and inference, he advances naturalized explanations of akratic action and self-deception while resolving the paradoxes around which the philosoph