People backslide. They freely do things they believe it would be best on the whole not to do - and best from their own point of view, not just the perspective of their peers or their parents. The aim of this book is to explain why that happens. The first main item of business is to clarify the nature of backsliding - of actions that display some weakness of will. To this end, Mele uses traditional philosophical techniques dating back to Plato and Aristotle (whose work on weakness of will or "akrasia" he discusses) and some new studies in the emerging field of experimental philosophy. He then attacks the thesis that backsliding is an illusion because people never freely act contrary to what they judge best. Mele argues that it is extremely plausible that if people ever act freely, they sometimes backslide. The biggest challenge posed by backsliding is to explain why it happens. At the book's heart is the development of a theoretical and empirical framework that sheds light both on backsliding and on exercises of self-control that prevent it. Here, 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. He argues that backsliding is no illusion and our theories about the springs of action, the power of evaluative judgments, human agency, human rationality, practical reasoning, and motivation should accommodate backsliding.

About the Author
Alfred R. Mele is the William H. and Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy at Florida State University. He is the author of six previous OUP books: Irrationality (1987), Springs of Action (1992), Autonomous Agents (1995), Motivation and Agency (2003), Free Will and Luck (2006), and Effective Intentions (2009). He also is the editor of The Philosophy of Action (OUP 1997) and a coeditor of four other OUP volumes: Mental Causation (1993), The Oxford Handbook of Rationality (2004), Rationality and the Good (2007), and Free Will and Consciousness: How Might They Work? (2010).

Reviews
Full of intellectually stimulating arguments. * CHOICE *
Alfred Mele here caps, or continues, an impressive sequence of well-argued monographs on connected topics by one that is commendably brief. It offers at once a reconsideration that touches on recent developments, and a summing-up that resumes past discussions. The result will be welcome, and can be widely recommended. It includes well-developed arguments against what can seem two plausible claims, that backsliding is always compulsive, and that one cannot be effectively motivated to adopt a strategy to weaken the force of what is currently one's strongest motivation. * A.W Price, Mind *



Book Information
ISBN 9780199896134
Author Alfred R. Mele
Format Hardback
Page Count 160
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 290g
Dimensions(mm) 213mm * 148mm * 17mm