Effective Intentions

Introduction -- Conscious intentions and decisions -- Neuroscience and causes of action -- Neuroscience and free will -- Intentional actions and the alleged illusion of conscious will -- Proximal intentions and awareness reports -- The power of conscious will -- Conclusion.

NGOs are as Canadian as hockey, declared a 1988 Parliamentary report. Few institutions epitomize the foundational Canadian myth of international benevolence like the non-governmental organization devoted to development abroad. This book raises important questions about these organizations and their development projects: Just how non-governmental are organizations that get most of their funding from government agencies? What impact do these funding ties have on NGOs' ability to support popular demands for democratic reforms and wealth redistribution? What happens when NGOs support a repressive regime? What happens when NGOs bite the hand that feeds them?

"Designed to enrich social, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual living, Good Morning Intentions is a practical book about the natural health care benefits of daily rituals.” —Foreword Reviews What can you do each morning to raise your vibration and jumpstart your bliss? Spoiler alert: The answer isn’t coffee. If you want to feel more grounded, energized, and connected to your goals, you should try what famous and highly successful people—from Benjamin Franklin and Jane Austen to Steve Jobs and Oprah Winfrey—have been doing throughout history: adopt a morning ritual, and stick to it! But where do you start? In Good Morning Intentions, two yoga and meditation teachers and entrepreneurs reveal 21 rituals to help you make each morning really matter, setting you up for daily success. In this easy-to-use and accessible guide, you’ll find a powerful blend of energy-boosting exercises, breathwork, simple meditations, and intention-setting practices—rather than complex yoga postures—to help you start your day with a deep sense of joy, vitality, and radiance. If you’re ready to align your life with a higher purpose, increase your motivation, and reach your highest goals, make this book a part of your daily ritual. Coffee is optional.

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.

Do your intentions have no effect on your actions? Is free will an illusion? Some scientists say yes. Alfred Mele shows that these claims are not justified by the data and that there is weighty evidence of the existence of effective conscious intentions or the power of conscious will.

We often struggle to answer the question: What is the right thing to do here? Good Intentions suggests that it is possible to do good in economic matters if we begin with the right assumptions (and begins to ask the right questions): —Is greed ever good? —How can we give poor kids a million bucks? —How did Ben and Jerry get so rich? —Is capitalism ruining the environment? —Do immigrants take American jobs? Our actions can produce outcomes that reflect what we value.

With Good Intentions examines the joint efforts of Aboriginal people and individuals of European ancestry to counter injustice in Canada when colonization was at its height, from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century. These people recognized colonial wrongs and worked together in a variety of ways to right them, but they could not stem the tide of European-based exploitation. The book is neither an apologist text nor an attempt to argue that some colonizers were simply "well intentioned." Almost all those considered here -- teachers, lawyers, missionaries, activists -- had as their overall goal the Christianization and civilization of Canada's First Peoples. By discussing examples of Euro-Canadians who worked with Aboriginal peoples, With Good Intentions brings to light some of the lesser-known complexities of colonization.

From the New York Times–bestselling author Stephen M. Walt, The Hell of Good Intentions dissects the faults and foibles of recent American foreign policy—explaining why it has been plagued by disasters like the “forever wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan and outlining what can be done to fix it. In 1992, the United States stood at the pinnacle of world power and Americans were confident that a new era of peace and prosperity was at hand. Twenty-five years later, those hopes have been dashed. Relations with Russia and China have soured, the European Union is wobbling, nationalism and populism are on the rise, and the United States is stuck in costly and pointless wars that have squandered trillions of dollars and undermined its influence around the world. The root of this dismal record, Walt argues, is the American foreign policy establishment’s stubborn commitment to a strategy of “liberal hegemony.” Since the end of the Cold War, Republicans and Democrats alike have tried to use U.S. power to spread democracy, open markets, and other liberal values into every nook and cranny of the planet. This strategy was doomed to fail, but its proponents in the foreign policy elite were never held accountable and kept repeating the same mistakes. Donald Trump won the presidency promising to end the misguided policies of the foreign policy “Blob” and to pursue a wiser approach. But his erratic and impulsive style of governing, combined with a deeply flawed understanding of world politics, are making a bad situation worse. The best alternative, Walt argues, is a return to the realist strategy of “offshore balancing,” which eschews regime change, nation-building, and other forms of global social engineering. The American people would surely welcome a more restrained foreign policy, one that allowed greater attention to problems here at home. This long-overdue shift will require abandoning the futile quest for liberal hegemony and building a foreign policy establishment with a more realistic view of American power. Clear-eyed, candid, and elegantly written, Stephen M. Walt’s The Hell of Good Intentions offers both a compelling diagnosis of America’s recent foreign policy follies and a proven formula for renewed success.