Bøker av Alfred R. (William H. and Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy Mele

What did you do a moment ago? What will you do after you read this? Are you in charge of your actions and decisions, or is your life following a script? Free will is such an important topic that it can feel overwhelming. In Free Will: An Opinionated Guide leading free-will expert Alfred R. Mele answers the big questions through engaging thought experiments, and provides a lively, beginner-friendly tour of the most prominent theories, puzzles, and argumentsabout free will.

In Manipulated Agents, Alfred R. Mele examines the role one's history plays in whether or not one is morally responsible for one's actions. Mele develops a "history-sensitive" theory of moral responsibility through reflection on a wide range of thought experiments which feature agents who have been manipulated or designed in ways that directly affect their actions.

Mele develops a view of paradigmatically free actions-including decisions-as indeterministically caused by their proximal causes. He mounts a masterful defense of this thesis that includes solutions to problems about luck and control widely discussed in the literature on free will and moral responsibility.

People backslide. They freely do things they believe it would be best on the whole not to do. Mele draws on work in social and developmental psychology and in psychiatry to motivate a view of human behavior in which both backsliding and overcoming the temptation to backslide are explicable.

A Dialogue on Free Will and Science is a brief and intriguing book discussing the scientific challenges of free will. Presented through a dialogue, the format allows ideas to emerge and be clarified and then evaluated in a natural way. Engaging and accessible, it offers students a compelling look at free will and science.

A study of self-control and individual autonomy. The concept of self-control, and its bearing on human behaviour, is examined, as well as its relationship to personal autonomy and autonomous behaviour.