PHIL 321 Moral Issues and Theories:  Freedom and Moral Responsibility

Spring Semester 2012 | Day | Burnaby

INSTRUCTOR  D. Zimmerman, WMC 5604

REQUIRED TEXT

• Free Will, Gary Watson (second ed.), Oxford University Press
  

COURSE DESCRIPTION

The human sciences are making headway in providing explanations for why people do what they do. But with each advance in psychology, biology, and neurology, the room for the kind of free will that is necessary to ground moral responsibility seems to shrink a bit. The more deeply we can explain a person's actions in terms of facts about her past history and current psychological states, the less room there seems to be for the freely acting person herself.

This is a new way of posing the venerable philosophical problem of "free will and determinism:" If the natural world is structered causally then what room is left for human freedom? The two ideas seem at odds with each other. 1. Human beings are part of the natural order and causally understandable as such, but 2. Human beings are also capable of free actions, for which they must be held morally responsible. However, each belief is quite compelling on its own. In this course we will tackle the dispute between "incompatibilists" and "compatibilists" on this question.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS

• Two papers (7pp and 10pp) - 50% each

NOTE: Prerequisite: PHIL 120.