Objectives
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This course deals with one of the central long-standing cluster of issues in philosophy, issues about moral responsibility, free will, self-determination, and the nature of persons as agents in a natural world governed by cause and effect relations. These fascinating and troubling issues connect problems in moral theory with issues in metaphysics regarding causation, intentional action, and personhood. The theories generated in response to these issues are not only interesting in a theoretical way, but appear to have significant practical importance for how we view and treat ourselves and others. The course objectives are related to this set of issues.

 

Successful students in this course should be able to...

 

bulletdefine the main issues relating to free will, moral responsibility, and causation as it applies to human behavior
bulletsummarize the major philosophical positions that have been taken on these issues,
bulletexplain the main strengths and weaknesses of those positions, and
bulletrationally defend their own preferred views on some of the main questions.

 

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Disclaimer:

Important theological and political/legal questions are included in the cluster of issues described above.

 

For example, the existence of an almighty, good, creator God is sometimes said to be compatible with the existence of moral evil in the world only because moral evil comes about through the exercise of human free will — a power that only humans possess, a power that makes humans more than animals. But one might reasonably worry that this religious viewpoint contradicts the scientific picture of humans as natural beings subject to the same causal forces as other animals.

 

For another example, the notions of criminal responsibility and liability to punishment under the criminal law are closely connected to ideas about moral responsibility and what people deserve. And many conservative political ideologies assume that individuals deserve what they get in a free market system, thus treating each individual as an autonomous source of desert, based on free choices.

 

In this course, the specifically theological and political/legal questions will sometimes be mentioned, but there will not be time to explore them in detail.