FA17 PHIL493/593

Special Topics: The Metaphysics of Moral Responsibility (PHIL493/593)
Instructor: Austin Duggan
MW 2:00-3:15pm, LA5–246

Course Topic: It seems obvious that we are at least sometimes responsible for our actions. But there are genuine challenges to this idea. For example, many people take recent discoveries in neuroscience to show that our actions are not caused by our deliberations and decisions, but instead by unconscious brain events. Derk Pereboom argues that all of our mental states, including our deliberations and decisions, are ultimately the result of forces beyond our control. Gideon Rosen argues that no one ever wills an action with full understanding of the relevant moral facts. Perhaps, as Galen Strawson suggests, the sort of agency we think we have is simply inconceivable. Each of these considerations is alleged to support the conclusion that no one is ever responsible for their actions.

We’ll spend much of the semester exploring and critically assessing these recent challenges to responsible agency, as well as responses by Carolina Sartorio, Al Mele, Susan Wolff, and others. Along the way, we’ll address some fundamental questions about responsibility itself. Is being responsible for an immoral act to deserve punishment for that action? Is it instead, as Nomy Arpaly, Angela Smith, and others argue, for one to be attributable with the immoral ends that prompted the action? Or is it, as Karin Boxer, Michael McKenna, and other ‘Strawsonians’ claim, to be the target of natural blaming responses that are requisite for good human relationships? Finally, how ought we treat each other if it turns out that no one is responsible for their actions? Should we nevertheless blame each other as if we are responsible, as Manuel Vargas claims? Or should we forego blaming altogether? This will be a highly interactive seminar prizing above all else the development of your intellectual self-sufficiency and ability to engage critically with a difficult contemporary debate.