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Marion Smiley
Brandeis University
Fall 2015
110 Humanities Building
Phone: 781-736-2792
smiley@brandeis.edu
Philosophy 214/Graduate Seminar in Normative Philosophy
Causation and Blame
Philosophy 214 explores a variety of philosophical controversies surrounding
moral responsibility, casuation, and blame. The course begins with an examination of
how particular philosophers have brought causation and blameworthiness together in
their views of moral responsibility and then asks: Is the notion of free will associated
with moral responsibility defeated by determinism (or by anything else)? The course
then turns to the works of P. F. Strawson, R. Jay Wallace and others who construe moral
responsibility as steeped in reactive attitudes and relationships rather than in moral
agency per se. Among other things, it asks whether Strawson, Wallace, and others are
right to make individuals out to be blameworthy in virtue of our holding them responsible
or whether blameworthiness is in the end always a matter of being responsible. The
course then moves on to analyze the nature of blameworthiness itself, as well as the
nature of “fair blame”, and asks how, if at all, the practice of excuse-giving might help us
to ascribe blameworthiness in practice. Two kinds of excuses in particuar become key
here: those based on ignorance and those that have come to be known as cultural excuses.
(“My culture made me do it.”) The course ends with an exended discussion of what
kinds of harm individuals can be blamed for in the world. Can they be blamed for harm
that they failed to prevent? (Are omisisons causally effective?) Can they be blamed for
harm that they caused out of ignorance but should have known that they were causing? If
so, what is the basis for saying that they should have known here?
Course Requirements/ Students will have the option of writing either two 8-9 page
papers or one 18-20 page final paper. The first option will be best for most students.
Class attendance is mandatory and class participation is greatly encouraged.
Readings/ The following two books – both which are required reading – can be
purchased at the Brandeis University Bookstore.
Gary Watson, ed., Free Will.
R. Jay Wallace, Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments.
All of the other readings for the course will be included in a course pack (CP) for
sale at cost during the first class meeting -- with the exception of the two preliminary
readings, which can be found on LATTE.
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READINGS
Note: Please read the following works by the date cited.
Sept. 1: Introduction to the Course. I have placed two overview works – selections from
George Lucas’s Responsibility and Andrew Eshleman’s Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy essay on moral responsibility -- on LATTE for the purpose of providing a
general sense of the subject matter. Please read them by the first day of class.
Sept. 8: Roderick Chisholm, “Human Freedom and the Self” in Free Will,
ed. Gary Watson;
Paul Edwards, “Hard and Soft Determinism” (CP);
J. J. C. Smart, “Free Will, Praise, and Blame” in Free Will;
David Wiggins, “Towards a Reasonable Libertarianism” in Free Will.
Sept. 22: Galen Strawson, “The Impossibility of Moral Responsibility” in Free Will;
Tim O’Connor, “Agent Causation” in Free Will;
Randolph Clarke, “Toward a Credible Agent-Causal Account of Free Will”
in Free Will;
Tim Scanlon, “The Significance of Choice” in Free Will.
Oct. 6: Harry Frankfurt, “Alternative Possibilities and Moral Responsibility”
in Free Will;
Harry Frankfurt, “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person”
in Free Will;
Gary Watson, “Free Agency” in Free Will;
Susan Wolf, “Sanity and the Metaphysics of Responsibility” in Free Will.
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Oct. 13: P. F. Strawson, “Freedom and Resentment” in Free Will;
Marina Oshana, “Ascriptions of Responsibility”, American Philosophical
Quarterly 34 (1997): 71-83. (CP);
Leonard Kahn, “Moral Blameworthiness and the Reactive Attitudes”,
Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 14 (2001), pp. 131-142 (CP);
Andrew Snedon, “Moral Responsibility: The Difference of Strawson and the
Difference It Should Make”, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 8
(2005), pp. 239-264 (CP).
Oct. 20: R. Jay Wallace, Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments, pp. 1-83.
David Shoemaker, ”Moral Address, Moral Responsibility, and the Boundaries
of the Moral Community, Ethics 118 (2007), pp. 70-108 (CP).
[Note: This is a long article. While I have included it in its entirety
in the course pack, you need read only pp. 70-79 for class.]
Oct. 27: Angela Smith, “On Being Responsible and Holding Responsible”, Journal of
Ethics 11 (2007), pp. 465-484. (CP);
Holly Smith, “Does Being Morally Responsible Depend on the Ability to Hold
Responsible?”, Philosophical Studies 171 (2014), pp. 51-62 (CP);
Carolina Sartorio, “How to Be Responsible for Something Without Causing It”,
Philosophical Perspectives 18 (2011), pp. 81-102 (CP);
Zophia Stemplowskia, “Holding People Responsible for What They Do Not
Control”, Politics, Philosophy, and Economics 7 (2008),
pp. 355-377 (CP);
Nov. 3: Christopher Evan Franklin, “Valuing Blame”, in D. Justin and Neil Tognazzini,
eds, Blame: Its Nature and Norms (Oxford: 2013) (CP);
Neil Tognazzini, “Blameworthiness and the Affective Account of Blame”,
Philosophia 41 (2013), pp. 1299-1312 (CP);
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Pam Hieronymi, “The Force and Fairness of Blame”, Philosophical Perspectives
18 (2004), pp. 115-148 (CP);
Marilyn Friedman, “How to Blame People Responsibly”, Journal of Value
Inquiry 47 (2013), pp. 271-284.
Nov. 10: Marion Smiley, selection, “Volitional Excuses, Self-Narration, and Blame”,
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences (2014) (CP);
Gideon Rosen, “Culpability and Ignorance”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian
Society 103 (2003), pp. 61-84 (CP);
Mairi Levitt and Neil Manson, “My Genes Made Me Do It. The Implications
of Behavioral Genetics for Responsibility and Blame”,
Health Care Analysis 15 (2007), pp. 33-40 (CP);
John Forge, “Moral Responsibilty and the ‘Ignorant Scientist’”, Science and
Engineering Ethics 6 (2000), pp. 341-349 (CP).
[NOTE: If you are writing a paper on either Jay Wallace’s Responsibility
and the Moral Sentiments or on excuses and blame, you might also want
to take a look at Wallace, pp. 118-152. Not required for class.]
Nov. 17: Cheshire Calhoun, “Responsibility and Reproach”, Ethics 99 (1989),
pp. 389-406 (CP);
Michele Moody-Adams, “Culture, Responsibilty, and Affected Ignorance”,
Ethics 104 (1994), pp. 291-309 CP);
Tracy Isaacs, “Cultural Context and Moral Responsibility”, Ethics 107
(1997), pp. 670-684 (CP):
M. Tunick, “Can Culture Excuse a Crime?”, Punishment and Society 6 (2004),
pp. 395-409 (CP);
[If you have time and especially if you are writing on this topic, you might
want to take a look at: Mark Peaccock, “Inability, Culpability, and
Affected Ignorance: Relflections on Michele Moody-Adams”,
History of the Human Sciences 24 (2011), pp. 65-81 (CP).]
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Nov. 24: Jeol Feinberg, “Action and Responsibility”, Doing and Deserving (CP);
Michael Bratman, “What is the Accordion Effect?”, Journal of Ethics
10 (2006), pp. 5-19 (CP) [pp. 5-11 for class];
Elazer Weinryb, “Omissions and Responsibility”, Philosophical Quarterly 30
(1980), pp. 1-18 (CP);
Jeremy Byrd,”Moral Responsibility and Omissions”, Philosophical Quarterly
57 (2007), pp. 56-67 (CP).
Dec. 1: Bernard Williams, selection, “Negative Causation”, Utilitarianism:
For and Against (CP);
R. B. Perry, selection, General Theory of Value (CP);
Marion Smiley, selection, Moral Responsibility and the Boundaries
of Community (CP);
Phillip Mullock, selection, “Causing Harm: Criminal Law”, Law and
Philosophy 7 (1988) (CP);
Dec. 8: Anders Schinkel, “Causal and Moral Responsibility for the Harmful
Consequences of Climate Change”, Ethics, Policy,
and the Environment 14 (2011), pp. 35-37 (CP);.
R. C. H. Brown, “Moral Responsibility for Unhealthy Behavior”, Journal of
Medical Ethics 39 (2013), pp. 695-698 (CP);
M. Millar, “Moral Permissability and Responsibility for Infection”, Public
Health Ethics 5 (2012), pp. 314-317. (CP);
David Mapel, “Coerced Moral Agents? Inidivdual Responsibility for
Military Service Journal of Political Philosophy
6 (1998), pp. 171-189 (CP);
Thomas Hellstrom, “On the Moral Responsibility of Military Robots”,
Ethics and Information Technology 15 (2013),
pp. 99-107 (CP).
--- Over---
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NOTE: While we will not be embarking on a study of experimental philosophy in this
course, please feel free to incoporate those aspects of the field dealing with casuaion,
blame, and moral responsibility into your papers. Here are some interesting pieces:
The first three are from Joshua Knobe and Shaun Nichols, Experimental Philosophy
(Oxford: 2008).
Joshua Knobe and Shaun Nichols, “An Experiemtnal Philosophy Manifesto”;
Woolfolk at al., “Situational Constraint and Social Cognition: Studies in the
Attribution of Moral Responsibility”;
Joshua Knobe and Shaun Nichols, “Moral Responsibility and Determinism: the
Cognitive Science of Folk Intuitions”;
Adina Roskies and Shaun Nichols, “Bringing Moral Responsibility Down
to Earth”, Journal of Philosophy 105 (2008), pp. 371-388;
E. Nahamas, T. Nadelhoffer, and J. Turner, “Surveying Freedom: Folk Intuitions
about Free Will and Moral Responsibility”, Philosophical Psychology 18
(2005), pp. 561-584.
Manuel Vargas, “Philosophy and the Folk: On Some Implications of Experimental
Work for Philosophical Debates on Free Will”, Journal of Cognition and
Culture 6 (2006), pp. 239-254.
Alicia Finch, “Experimental Philosophy and the Concept of
Moral Responsibility”, Modern Schoolmen 88 (2011), pp. 146-160.