PHIL 6471: Responsibility and Blame

Dr. Jada Twedt Strabbing

Spring 2013

Course Description:

In this course, we will examine the nature of moral responsibility, the nature of blame, and the connection between them.

In the first part of the course, we will look at seminal papers that seek to elucidate what it is to be morally responsible independently of our practice of blame and praise.   In particular, we will examine views that assume that an agent must be free in order to responsible and that seek to determine the relevant sense of freedom.  For example, does moral responsibility require freedom in the sense of the ability to do otherwise, freedom in the sense of the ability to get what you want, or something else?

In his landmark paper “Freedom and Resentment,” Peter Strawson rejects the idea that we can understand what it is to be morally responsible independently of our practice of praise and blame. Instead, he argues that our responsibility practice is basic, and we must understand what it is to be responsible in relation to it.  In the second part of the course, we will examine Strawson’s paper and explore some views of responsibility that follow Strawson’s lead in taking our responsibility practice to be basic.  We will ask whether such views are plausible and whether they avoid the traditional worry about the compatibility of moral responsibility and determinism.  We will also ask whether they adequately capture our practice of blame and praise.

In the third part of the course, we will delve deeper into the nature of blame.   Is it a certain type of judgment, a reactive emotion like resentment, or something else?  Does it express a demand or issue a protest?  Is blame a good thing, or would our moral lives be better if we got rid of it?   We will answer these questions with an eye toward further elucidating the nature of moral responsibility.

Required Texts:

1)   Gary Watson (ed.), Free Will, 2nd edition, Oxford University Press, 2003.

2)   D. Justin Coates and Neal A. Tognazzini (eds.), Blame: Its Nature and Norms, Oxford University Press, 2012.

3)   George Sher, In Praise of Blame, Oxford University Press, 2006.

4)   R. Jay Wallace, Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments, Harvard University

Press, 1994.

Assessment: Final Paper

I am considering additional options for assessment, such as presentations or short papers.

Topic 1: Moral Responsibility and the Metaphysics of Freedom

Session 1: Does moral responsibility require the ability to do otherwise?

Jan 14             Frankfurt – “Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility” (Watson)

Widerker – “Libertarianism and Frankfurt’s Attack on the

Principle of Alternative Possibilities” (Watson)

Session 2: Does moral responsibility require the ability to get what you really want?

Jan 28             Frankfurt – “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person” (Watson)

Watson – “Free Agency” (Watson)

Session 3: Does moral responsibility require the ability to get it right morally?

Feb 4               Susan Wolf – “Sanity and the Metaphysics of Responsibility” (Watson) Watson – “Two Faces of Responsibility” (Blackboard)

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Topic 2: Responsibility from Within our Moral Practice

Session 4: Strawson’s View

Feb 11             Strawson – “Freedom and Resentment” (Watson) Pereboom – “Living Without Free Will” (Blackboard)

Wallace – Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments, Chapter 4 (optional?)

Session 5: Wallace’s View

Feb 19             Wallace – Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments, selections from the Introduction & Chapters 1-3

Session 6: Wallace’s Compatibilism

Feb 25             Wallace – Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments, Chapters 5 & 6

Rosen – “The Case for Incompatibilism”

Session 7: Scanlon’s Theory

Mar 4              Scanlon – “Blame”, Chapter 4 of his Moral Dimensions: Permissibility, Meaning, and Blame (Blackboard?)

Scanlon – “Interpreting Blame” (Coates and Tognazzini)

Session 8: Sher’s Theory

Mar 18            Selections from In Praise of Blame