The thesis may be expressed as: An agent intentionally A's if and only if she A's for a reason. My aim in this paper is to show that the spirit of the thesis, if not its letter, survives a variety of criticisms and to illuminate, in the process, the nature of reasons for action, acting for reasons, and acting intentionally.

This paper criticizes the conjunction of two theses: 1) cognitivism about first-person moral ought-beliefs, the thesis (roughly) that such beliefs are attitudes with truth-valued contents; 2) robust internalism about these beliefs, the thesis that, necessarily, agents' beliefs that they ought, morally, to A constitute motivation to A. It is argued that the conjunction of these two theses places our moral agency at serious risk. The argument, which centrally involves attention to clinical depression, is extended to a less demanding, recent brand (...) of internalist moral cognitivism. Philosophers discussed include Dancy, McDowell, McNaughton, and Nagel. (shrink)

'...In these pages I consider Reason in its relation to these contrasted aspects of history. Reason is the self-discipline of the originative element in history. Apart from the operations of Reason, this element is anarchic.' -From the Summary.

In the first section, I will argue that the folk concept of necessary conditions for intentional action needs refinement. In the second and third sections, I will identify some additional issues one would need to explore in con- structing a statement of individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for intentional action. I will conclude with a brief discussion of the conceptual analyst’s task.

What kind of stuff is the world made of? What is the nature or substance of things? These are ontological questions, and they are usually answered with respect to the objects of science. The objects of technoscience tell a different story that concerns the power, promise and potential of things - not what they are but what they can be. Seventeen scholars from history and philosophy of science, epistemology, social anthropology, cultural studies and ethics each explore a research object in (...) its technological setting, ranging from carbon to cardboard, from arctic ice cores to nuclear waste, from wetlands to GMO seeds, from fuel cells to the great Pacific garbage patch. Together they offer fascinating stories and novel analytic concepts, all the while opening up a space for reflecting on the specific character of technoscientific objects. With their promise of sustainable innovation and a technologically transformed future, these objects are highly charged with values and design expectations. By clarifying their mode of existence, we are learning to come to terms more generally with the furniture of the technoscientific world - where, for example, the 'dead matter' of classical physics is becoming the 'smart material' of emerging and converging technologies. (shrink)

As this passage from a recent book on the psychology of decision-making indicates, deciding seems to be part of our daily lives. But what is it to decide to do something? It may be true, as some philosophers have claimed, that to decide to A is to perform a mental action of a certain kind – specifically, an action of forming an intention to A. (Henceforth, the verb ‘form’ in this context is to be understood as an action verb.) Even (...) if this is so, we are faced with pressing questions. Do we form all of our intentions? If not, how does forming an intention differ from other ways of acquiring one? Do we ever, in fact, form intentions, or do we rather merely acquire them in something like the way we acquire beliefs or desires? These are some of the questions that will occupy me here. My aim is to clarify the nature of deciding to act and to make a case for the occurrence of genuine acts of intention formation. (shrink)

On making philosophy intelligible.--What is communication?--Meaning and intentionality.--What must there be?--Metaphysics and common sense.--Philosophy and science.--Chance.--Knowledge, belief, and evidence.--Has Austin refuted the sense-datum theory?--Professor Malcolm on dreams.--An appraisal of Bertrand Russell's philosophy.--G. E. Moore on propositions and facts.--Reflections on existentialism.--Man as a subject for science.--Philosophy and politics.

In his "Purposive Intending" T.L.M. Pink (1991) instructively criticized a popular view about intentions and advanced an alternative position of his own. I challenged a pair of theses to which Pink's position committed him (Mele 1992a). Pink now agrees that both theses are false. His mistake, he says, was to express his view in terms of reasons; his position is now to be framed in terms of "justifications" (1993).

Intention, intentional action, and the connections between them are central topics of the philosophy of action, a branch of the philosophy of mind. One who regards the subject matter of the philosophy of mind as having at its core some aspect of what lies between environmental input to beings with minds and behavioural output may be inclined to see the philosophy of action as concerned only with the output end of things. That would be a mistake. Many intentional actions depend (...) for their development on the processing of input — both from the environment and from the body. (shrink)

Le but principal de la communication est d’esquisser les traits essentiels de la méthode appliquée dans les sciences déductives.1. A quoi tend la méthode déductive? Termes primitifs et définis ; axiomes et théorèmes. Les sciences antérieures à une science donnée. La méthode déductive considérée comme propriété caractéristique des mathématiques.2. Liberté dans le choix des termes primitifs et des axiomes ; notion d’équivalence de deux systèmes de termes ou de propositions.Postulats d’indépendance des termes primitifs et des axiomes.3. Postulats de la formalisation (...) des définitions et des démonstrations. Règles de définition et de démonstration ; les démonstrations complètes ; les sciences déductives formalisées. Le rôle de la logique mathématique au point de vue des nouvelles exigences méthodologiques.4. Les notions de science non-contradictoire et complète. L’importance théorique de ces notions ; leur rapport avec le problème de la vérité des mathématiques. Pourquoi les notions en question n’exercent pas en pratique une grande influence sur la construction des sciences mathématiques.5. Certaines propriétés des sciences mathématiques découlant d’une application conséquente de la méthode déductive.ion du sens des termes primitifs dans la construction de la science. Modèles et interprétations du système d’axiomes. Concept de système formel. Valeur de la méthode déductive du point de vue de l’économie de la pensée. (shrink)

I will argue that close attention to deciding casts doubt on the simple view and the single phenomena view of intentional action. That is my thesis. My aim is much broader—to improve our understanding of deciding and of the bearing of the phenomenon of deciding on free will and moral responsibility.

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 between philosophy and psychology (...) can be of different kinds. For example, psychology can be the subject for philosophy of science. In such a case, the philosopher of science pursues the usual set of issues (explanation, reduction, etc.) within the special case of psychology. Or, philosophy can be the source of proposals for improving psychology. Vice versa, the findings of psychology can be used to criticize philosophical theories and suggest ways to resolve some traditional philosophical questions about the mind, such as the nature of mental representation, perception, emotion, memory, consciousness and free will. -/- The chapters in this book reflect these different forms of interaction in an effort to clarify issues and debates concerning some traditional cognitive capacities. The result is a philosophically and scientifically up-to-date collection of "cartographies of the mind.". (shrink)

We obtain some new results on the topology of unary definable sets in expansions of densely ordered Abelian groups of burden 2. In the special case in which the structure has dp‐rank 2, we show that the existence of an infinite definable discrete set precludes the definability of a set which is dense and codense in an interval, or of a set which is topologically like the Cantor middle‐third set (Theorem 2.9). If it has burden 2 and both an infinite (...) discrete set D and a dense‐codense set X are definable, then translates of X must witness the Independence Property (Theorem 2.26). In the last section, an explicit example of an ordered Abelian group of burden 2 is given in which both an infinite discrete set and a dense‐codense set are definable. (shrink)

According to immunology’s prevailing paradigm, immunity is based on self/nonself discrimination and thus requires a construction of identity. Two orientations vie for dominance: The original conception, conceived in the context of infectious diseases, regards the organism as insular and autonomous, an entity that requires defense of its borders. An alternate view places the organism firmly in its environment in which both benign and onerous encounters occur. On this latter relational account, active tolerance allows for cooperative relationships with other organisms in (...) the larger ecological economy. These contending orientations —one derived from biomedicine and the other from the ecological sciences— have drawn the attention of social scientists and culture critics. On the one hand, feminists have portrayed immune theory as based upon borrowed social notions of identity that reflect male aggressive values and thus distort more balanced accounts of immunity; and, on the other hand, other commentary projects immune theory as a framework in which analysis of Western societies putatively reveals analogous patterns of ‘self’ and ‘other’ interactions, where autoimmunity and immunization are understood as expressions of the insular understanding of identity. Here, a meta-interpretation is presented that shows how these critiques place the immune self on a spectrum stretching from its formulation as an autonomous agent, a modernist conception of the independent individual, to a postmodern portrayal in which this conception of selfhood has been deconstructed. Accordingly, immunology is drawn into a wide-ranging debate about agency, where differing interpretations of immunity serves as a template in which competing understandings of human social intercourse is modeled.Según el paradigma dominante en inmunología, la inmunidad está basada en la discriminación entre yo/noyo y requiere, por tanto, una construcción de la identidad. Dos orientaciones compiten por dominar: la concepción original, concebida en el contexto de las enfermedades infecciosas contempla al organismo como aislado y autónomo, como una entidad que necesita defender sus fronteras. Una visión alternativa sitúa firmemente al organismo en su entorno, en el cual suceden tanto encuentros beneficiosos como costosos. En este enfoque relacional, la tolerancia activa permite relaciones cooperativas con otros organismos en una economía ecológica más amplia. Estas orientaciones en liza —una derivada de la biomedicina y otra de las ciencias ecológicas— han llamado la atención de los científicos sociales y de los críticos de la cultura. Por una parte, el feminismo ha descrito la teoría inmunológica como basada en nociones sociales prestadas de identidad que reflejan los valores agresivos del macho y que, de este modo, impiden una explicación más equilibrada de la inmunidad. Por otra parte, otro comentario proyecta la teoría inmunológica como un marco en el que el análisis de las sociedades occidentales revela aparentemente patrones análogos de interacciones ‘yo’ y ‘otros’, en las que la autoinmunidad y la inmunización son entendidas como expresiones de la comprensión insular de la identidad. Se ofrece aquí una meta-representación que muestra cómo estas críticas sitúan al yo inmune en un espectro que va desde su formulación cómo un agente autónomo, una concepción modernista del individuo independiente, a una visión postmoderna en la que esta concepción de la identidad ha sido deconstruida. De acuerdo con esto, la inmunología recoge un amplio debate sobre la agencia en el que diferentes interpretaciones de la inmunidad sirven como molde en el que se modelan comprensiones competidoras de la comprensión de las relaciones sociales humanas. (shrink)

Whereas some philosophers view all reasons for action as psychological states of agents, others—objective favourers theorists—locate the overwhelming majority of reasons for action outside the agent, in items that objectively favour courses of action. (The latter may count such psychological states as a person's belief that demons dance in his kitchen as a reason for him to seek psychiatric help.) This article explores options that objective favourers theorists have regarding cases in which, owing significantly to a false belief, an agent (...) performs an action for which there is no objective favourer. Topics addressed include whether such theorists, including Jonathan Dancy himself, should accept Dancy's thesis that 'intentional, deliberate, purposeful action is always done for a reason' and whether there are two different concepts of reasons for action, one geared to action-evaluation and the other to action-explanation. (shrink)

Mele's chapter addresses two primary aims. The first is to develop an experimentally useful conception of conscious deciding. The second is to challenge a certain source of skepticism about free will: the belief that conscious decisions and intentions are never involved in producing corresponding overt actions. The challenge Mele develops has a positive dimension that accords with the aims of this volume: It sheds light on a way in which some conscious decisions and intentions do seem to be efficacious.

Starting from the question of whether Ernst Mach's well-known notion of "Elemente" (elements) must lead to the verdict that the arch-anti-metaphysician himself may be justly accused of holding an essantially metaphysical position, the idea of metaphysical neutrality is explained in Section I. Section II deals with Quine's verdict on abstract entities, among which Mach's elements would have to be counted if there were no way out of the Quinean test. Such a way out, it is proposed in section III, is (...) Carnap's Remedy: the distinction of external and internal questions. Finally, in Section IV, the empirical meaning of Mach's notion of elements is explained, from whence it's argued that Mach's "philosophy" is good, non-metaphysical, empirical science. (shrink)

The teaching of John Paul II clearly articulates the strain of human rights. The Pope initiates a dialogue with the Enlightenment tradition and develops the theological and philosophical foundations of the culture of human rights. Karola Wojtyła’s personalistic thought appears to be a very coherent and reliable key to understand the doctrine of human rights. Wojtyła stresses subjectivity and non-reducibility of the person as a concrete human „I.” It is both autonomy and transcendence that constitute dignity of the person towards (...) other personal and impersonal beings. (shrink)

What is integrity and why is it valuable? One account of the nature of integrity, proposed by John Cottingham amongst others, is The Integrated Self View. On this account integrity is a formal relation of coherence between various aspects of a person. One problem that has been raised against this account is that it isn’t obvious that it can account for the value of integrity. In this paper I will respond to this problem by providing an account of the value (...) of an integrated self. I will do so by first looking closely at two examples from literature: John Sassal in John Berger’s A Fortunate Man and Tetrius Lydgate in George Eliot’s Middlemarch. Based on my comparison of these two case studies I will argue that an integrated self is valuable as it makes people more likely to act in line with their moral judgements. (shrink)

Can there be a duty to forgive those who have wronged us? According to a popular view amongst philosophers working on forgiveness the answer is no. Forgiveness, it is claimed, is always elective. This view is rejected by Gamlund (2010a; 2010b) who argues that duties to forgive do exist and then provides conditions that are relevant to determining whether forgiveness is obligatory or supererogatory. In this paper I will argue that the conditions that Gamlund provides do not provide a plausible (...) account of the connection between forgiveness and duty. The problems I will raise against Gamlund’s view is a problem that faces any moral view that makes room for supererogation. I will then investigate whether the existing solutions to this problem provide a more plausible account of the connection between forgiveness and obligation. I will argue that the two most prominent solutions, The Favouring Reasons View and The Sacrifice View, produce implausible results when applied to the case of forgiveness. However, an alternative view, The Freedom View, can provide plausible results when applied to the case of forgiveness. This gives us defeasible reason to favour this as a general solution to The Problem of the Good Ought Tie-Up. (shrink)

What, precisely, are the ‘changing perspectives on reality’ in contemporary scientific thought? The topics of the lecture are the scope and the limits of science with emphasis on the physical foundations of biology. The laws of physics in general and the physics of molecules in particular form the basis for explaining the mechanism of reproduction, the generation of structure and form in the course of the development of the individual organism, the evolution of the diversity and complexity of organisms by (...) mutation and selection, and the control of behaviour by information processing in the nervous system. However, the application of scientific thought to its own foundations reveals some basic limitations in science: indeterminacy in quantum physics, the limits of decidability in mathematics, and, most likely, the limitations of an algorithmic theory of the brain-mind relationship. In all these cases, the application of scientific methods to their own presuppositions leads us to recognize their intrinsic limitations. These limits, in turn, are closely related to fundamental philosophical questions on the relationship between human knowledge and reality. Modern science is consistent with different, though of course not all, interpretations of man and the universe, including the religious interpretations of the universe as God’s creation and man as God’s (mentally creative) image. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Jahrbuch für Wissenschaft und Ethik Jahrgang: 22 Heft: 1 Seiten: 205-220.

Ich werde zu Beginn die philosophische Entwicklung Heideggers darstellen. Auf diese Weise wird es möglich sein, genau die Stelle aufzuzeigen, wo das Fichte-Studium für ihn von größter Wichtigkeit ist. Der wahre Ausgangspunkt des Heideggerschen Denkens ist nicht die Seinsfrage, sondern die katholische Theologie. Nach seinem Abitur im Sommer 1909 nahm er sein Theologiestudium in der Absicht auf, Priester zu werden. In den theologischen Veröffentlichungen, die vor allem in Der Akademiker erschienen, treten seine katholische Weltanschauung und der antimoderne Charakter seines Denkens (...) klar zutage. Seine Kritik des Modernismus richtet sich vor allem gegen Individualismus, Liberalismus, Naturalismus und das neukantische Streben nach Autonomie; auch die Technik, der zügellose Konsum und das Modebewußtsein werden angeprangert. Dem rasenden, verflachten Leben des modernen Menschen stellt Heidegger das katholische Leben mit seinem Traditionsbewußtsein gegenüber. Das Jerusalem Gottes wird dem neoheidnischen Babylon als ein nachstrebenswürdiges Ideal vorgehalten. Die moderne Welt kann nur von ihren Übeln heilen, indem sie zum ewigen Brunnen aller Wahrheit zurückkehrt. Gegen die Zersplitterung und Nivellierung der modernen Zeit, durch die die Welt eindimensional wird und der Raum der Transzendenz verlorengeht, muß die katholische Gemeinschaft sich zur Wehr setzen und die religiöse Dimension des Lebens mit Händen und Füßen verteidigen. (shrink)

Let me begin somewhat perversely by making clear what I do not intend to do in this paper. I do not propose to offer a general defense of Ockham's resolution of the metaphysical perplexities engendered by the dogma of the Incarnation. In fact, I have argued elsewhere that his account of the hypostatic union is seriously deficient. 1..

Many issues at the heart of the philosophy of action and of philosophical work on free will are framed partly in terms of causation. The leading approach to understanding both the nature of action and the explanation or production of actions emphasizes causation. What may be termed standardcausalism is the conjunction of the following two theses: firstly, an event's being an action depends on how it was caused; and secondly, proper explanations of actions are causal explanations. Important questions debated in (...) the literature on free will include: is an action's being deterministically caused incompatible with its being freely performed? Are actions free only if they are indeterministically caused? Does the indeterministic causation of an action preclude its being freely performed? Does free action require agent causation? This article concentrates on issues about action and free will that centrally involve causation. (shrink)

Gregory Kavka’s toxin puzzle has spawned a lively literature about the nature of intention and of rational intention in particular. This paper is largely a critique of a pair of recent responses to the puzzle that focus on the connection between rationally forming an intention to A and rationally A-ing, one by David Gauthier and the other by Edward McClennen. It also critically assesses the two main morals Kavka takes reflection on the puzzle to support, morals about the nature of (...) intention and the consequences of a divergence between “reasons for intending and reasons for acting. (shrink)