Freedom and Responsibility
Fall 2002
Unique # 40275
David Sosa (WAG 221, 471–5284)
E-mail: david_sosa@mail.utexas.edu
Web page: http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/philosophy/faculty/sosa/main.html
Office Hours: Thursday and Friday, 11 a.m.–noon
Syllabus
Do we have and deploy a concept of responsibility whose satisfaction is not coherent with the rest of our scientific worldview? What are the implications of our answer to that question? We should assess carefully the contours of residual concepts of responsibility that might survive as part of that worldview. Is anything missing? What sorts of freedoms comport with which sorts of responsibility? We might consider whether there is even a coherent Libertarianism that would satisfy our desiderata. Of course, ideally, we will solve the problem of freedom.
Stakes
• P.F. Strawson, “Freedom and Resentment,” reprinted in Gary Watson (ed.), Free Will (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 59–80
• R.M. Chisholm, “Responsibility and Avoidability,” in S. Hook (ed.), Determinism and Freedom in the Age of Modern Science (New York: Collier Books, 1961), pp. 157–9
Agents’ Actions (see also Reid)
• R.M. Chisholm, “Human Freedom and the Self,” reprinted in Gary Watson (ed.), Free Will (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 24–35
• David Velleman, “What Happens When Someone Acts?” in his The Possibility of Practical Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 123–43
Refined Compatibilisms (see also Hume)
• Harry Frankfurt, “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of the Person,” reprinted in Gary Watson (ed.), Free Will (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 81–95
• Gary Watson, “Free Agency,” reprinted in Gary Watson (ed.), Free Will (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 96–110
The Reason View
• Susan Wolf, Freedom Within Reason (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990)
Guidance Control
• John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza, Responsibility and Control (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998),
Tracking Value
• Robert Nozick, Philosophical Explanations (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981), pp. 291–341
Moral Sentiment
• R. Jay Wallace, Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994)
Other Views
• Michael Bratman, “Responsibility and Planning,” in his Faces of Intention (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 165–84
• Robert Kane, The Significance of Free Will (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996)
• Derk Pereboom, Living Without Free Will (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001)
• Michael Smith, “A Theory of Freedom and Responsibility,” in G. Cullity and B. Gaut (eds.), Ethics and Practical Reason (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), pp. 293–319