Philosophy 29600
Junior Seminar
University of Chicago, autumn 2004
Course Instructor: Jason Bridges
Office hours: Thursday, 10:00am-11:30am, Wieboldt 125
The follow books are required, and are available for purchase at the Seminary Coop Bookstore (in the basement of 5757 University Ave.):
Free Will, second edition, edited by Gary Watson (Oxford University Press, 2003)
Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments, R. Jay Wallace (Harvard University Press, 1994)
The Illusion of Conscious Will, Daniel Wegner (MIT Press, 2002)
The remaining course readings will be collected in a reading packet, available for purchase at the Humanities Copy Center (on the first floor of the Classics building in the southwest corner of the main quad).
There will be one 10-page paper, due on December 10th.. Short assignments preparatory to this paper will be due at earlier stages in the quarter.
Attendance at all class sessions is required.
Meeting |
Topic |
Reading |
|
1 |
Introduction |
|
|
2 |
An argument for incompatibilism |
Van Inwagen, “An Argument for Incompatibilism” |
Compatibilism, part 1: intricacies of modality
|
3 |
What does it mean that a person “could have done otherwise”? |
Moore, “Free Will”, Chisholm “Human Freedom and the Self” Aune and Lehrer: “Cans and Ifs: an Exchange” |
|
4 |
And does it matter? |
Frankfurt, “Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility” Widerker, “Libertarianism and Frankfurt’s Attack on the Principle of Alternative Possibilities” |
|
5 |
Strawsonian compatibilism |
Strawson, “Freedom and Resentment”
|
|
6 |
Non-cognitivism about responsibility |
Korsgaard, “Creating the Kingdom of Ends” |
|
7 |
A cognitivist alternative |
Wallace, Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments, chapters 4-7 |
Free will and physical explanations of human behavior
|
8 |
The challenge of naturalistic psychology
|
Wegner, The Illusion of Conscious Will, chapters 1-4 |
|
9 |
The disappearance of the agent |
Nagel, “Moral Luck” and “Freedom”
|
|
10 |
(slack) |
|