Seminar in Philosophy of Mind
PHIL 596K
Spring 2007
S
SCI 311
Monday
3:30-5:50
Instructor: Shaun Nichols
Office: Social Sciences 318c
Phone: 626-0616
Office Hours: Tuesday 2-4, and by appointment
Course website: http://dingo.sbs.arizona.edu/~snichols/courses/SeminarS07.htm
Course Description:
In this seminar, we will first survey traditional positions in the free will debate. We will then spend the bulk of the semester exploring in detail different aspects of the issue: (1) descriptive accounts of the folk concepts of free will and responsibility, (2) substantive arguments about whether or not the folk concepts correspond to anything, (3) prescriptive arguments about what changes should follow if the folk concept is mistaken in important ways, and (4) accounts of the origin of the folk notions of free will and responsibility.
Course requirements and grading:
- 70%: Term paper (5-6000 words), due May 7th
- 15%: In-class presentations (~20 minutes) on your prospective paper topic. Final two or three seminar sessions will be devoted to these presentation.
- 15%: Short assignments on the readings (one about every 3 weeks), to be used as basis for class discussion. These assignments should be circulated to everyone on Sunday afternoon for the next day’s class.
University boilerplate:
You need a good excuse, in advance, to miss an exam or to hand in a paper late. All holidays or special events observed by organized religions will be honored for those students who show affiliation with that particular religion. Absences pre-approved by the UA Dean of Students (or Dean's designee) will be honored.
I expect acceptable classroom behavior at all times. Disruptive or threatening
behavior may result in disciplinary procedures leading to severe penalties. See
the UA Policy on Threatening Behavior by Students, and documents referenced
therein.
Students
with Disabilities
Students with physical, psychological, or learning disabilities who anticipate
needing accommodations in this course are encouraged to register with the
Tentative schedule of
readings
Canonical statements
Libertarianism
Campbell, C. A.
1957, On Selfhood and Godhood.
Good old fashioned compatibilism
Smart, J. 1961. Free will, praise and blame. Mind 70, 291-306
Reactive attitude compatibilism
Strawson, P. 1962.
Freedom and Resentment. Proceedings of the
Hard incompatibilism
Strawson, Galen 1994. The Impossibility of Moral Responsibility. Philosophical Studies 75: 5-24 (pp. 5-16)
Pereboom, Derk 1995. Determinism Al Dente. Noûs 29, pp. 21-45 (through section III).
Descriptive project
Platitude approach
Frank Jackson 1998. From Metaphysics to Ethics
Jackson, F. 2001a. Précis of From Metaphysics to Ethics. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 62(3): 617-624.
Jackson, F. 2001b. Responses. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 62(3): 653-664.
Phenomenological approach
Horgan,
T., Tienson, J. & Graham, G. 2003. The phenomenology of first-person
agency. In Physicalism and Mental
Causation, ed. S. Walter, H. Heckman (Imprint Academic).
Mele,
A. 1995 from Autonomous Agents. OUP
Nahmias, Morris,
Nadelhoffer & Turner 2005. The Phenomenology of Free Will. Journal of Consciousness Studies.
Proudfoot, W. 1987. Religious Experience.
Social scientific approach
Nichols, 2004.
The Folk Psychology of Free Will. Mind
& Language, sections 1-3
Nahmias et al.
2006. Is Incompatibilism Intuitive? Philosophy
& Phenomenological Research
Woolfolk, Doris,
Darley, 2006. Attribution and Alternate Possibilities. Cognition
Nichols & Knobe forthcoming.
Moral Responsibility and Determinism. Nous
Tamler Sommers, forthcoming. The Two Faces of Revenge.
[Roskies & Nichols forthcoming. Bringing Moral Responsibility Down to Earth]
Origin of free will
intuitions
[Wegner, from On the Illusion of Conscious Will]
[Sommers, T. forthcoming. The Illusion of Freedom Evolves.
In Spurrett, D., Kincaid, H. Ross, D., Stephens. L. (Eds.), Distributed
Cognition and the Will.
Greene & Cohen part 6-8
Nichols forthcoming. How Can Psychology Contribute to the Free Will Debate? In Baer et al. (eds.) Psychology and Free Will. OUP. Section 2.2.
Fischer, J. 2005. Free Will and Moral Responsibility. Oxford Handbook on Ethical Theory [on deliberative accounts]
Substantive project
Traditional metaphysics:
O‘Connor 1995.
Agent causation. In O‘Connor, ed., Agents, Causes, and Events: Essays on
Indeterminism and Free Will.
[Pereboom 2001.
Living without Free Will.
Pereboom, 2006 Is Our Conception of Agent-Causation Coherent? Philosophical Topics 32. pdf
Neuroscience:
[Kane, R. 1999. Responsibility, Luck, and Chance: Reflections on Free will and Indeterminism, The Journal of Philosophy XCVI, (esp. 225-6)]
Psychology:
Wegner, D. 2001. On the Illusion of Conscious Will. MIT Press, chapter 3.
John Bargh and Melissa Ferguson, 2000. Beyond Behaviorism: On the automaticity of higher mental processes. Psychological Bulletin, v. 126, 925-45.
Prescriptive project
Revolutionism
Smilansky, S.
2001. Free Will, Fundamental Dualism, and the Centrality of Illusion from Kane,
Pereboom, Living
without Free Will: The Case for Hard Incompatibilism from Kane’s
Determinism al Dente, sections IV to end.
Greene &
Cohen 2004. For the Law, Neuroscience Changes Nothing and Everything Philosophical
Transactions of the Royal Society of
Revisionism
Vargas, M. 2005. The Revisionist's Guide to Responsibility Philosophical Studies 125:3, 399-429. Prepublication PDF
Vargas, M. 2004. Responsibility and the Aims of Theory: Strawson and Revisionism Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 85:2, 218-241. Published version
Pereboom from Four Views on Free Will. Blackwell.
Kane from Four Views on Free Will. Blackwell.