Effective Intentions: The Power of Conscious Will
Oxford University Press (2009)
| Abstract | 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 for the thesis that some conscious decisions and intentions have a genuine place in causal explanations of corresponding actions. In short, there is weighty evidence of the existence of effective conscious intentions or the power of conscious will. Mele examines the accuracy of subjects' reports about when they first became aware of decisions or intentions in laboratory settings and develops some implications of warranted skepticism about the accuracy of these reports. In addition, he explores such questions as whether we must be conscious of all of our intentions and why scientists disagree about this. Mele's final chapter closes with a discussion of imaginary scientific findings that would warrant bold claims about free will and consciousness of the sort he examines in this book. | |||||||||
| Keywords | Will Consciousness Intentionalism | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Buy the book | $19.37 new (23% off) $19.40 direct from Amazon (23% off) Amazon page | |||||||||
| Call number | BF611.M46 2009 | |||||||||
| ISBN(s) | 0199764689 9780199764686 9780195384260 0195384261 | |||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,709 |
| External links |
  Try with proxy. |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesAlfred R. Mele (2005). Decisions, Intentions, and Free Will. Midwest Studies in Philosophy 29 (1):146-162.
Elisabeth Pacherie (2004). Toward a Dynamic Theory of Intentions. In Susan Pockett (ed.), Does Consciousness Cause Behaviour? Mit Press.
Manuel Vargas (2009). Review of Mele, Effective Intentions: The Power of Conscious Will. [REVIEW] Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2009 (9).
Eddy A. Nahmias (2002). When Consciousness Matters: A Critical Review of Daniel Wegner's the Illusion of Conscious Will. [REVIEW] Philosophical Psychology 15 (4):527-541.
Alfred R. Mele (1992). Springs of Action: Understanding Intentional Behavior. Oxford University Press.
M. Balaguer (2011). Effective Intentions: The Power of Conscious Will. Philosophical Review 120 (3):447-452.
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong & Adina Roskies (2010). Mele's Effective Intentions: The Power of Conscious Will. [REVIEW] Philosophical Books 51 (3):127-143.
G. Botterill (2010). Effective Intentions: The Power of Conscious Will * By ALFRED R. MELE. [REVIEW] Analysis 70 (2):395-398.
Alfred R. Mele (2010). Testing Free Will. Neuroethics 3 (2).
Alfred R. Mele (2008). Proximal Intentions, Intention-Reports, and Vetoing. Philosophical Psychology 21 (1):1 – 14.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2009-01-28Total downloads97 ( #6,597 of 549,754 )Recent downloads (6 months)6 ( #12,458 of 549,754 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
