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PH1102E

Week 1

Introductory themes

Plan for today:

I. Administrative matters

A. Workload & assessment

B. Readings & other material

C. IVLE forum & contacting me

II. Background on free will and responsibility

A. Moral responsibility

1. Definition

2. Not always a bad thing

3. Illustrative examples

a. The Canteen

b. The Gestapo

c. The Drowning Child

B. Free will

1. Definition

2. Contrasted with freedom from constraint

C. The philosophical question about freedom and responsibility

1. Determinism

a. Definition

b. Contrasted with fatalism

2. Four theories

a. Radical Will Theory (Jean-Paul Sartre)

b. Compatibilism (David Hume)

c. Deterministic Moral Nihilism (Friedrich Nietzsche)

d. Radical Nihilism (Galen Strawson)

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I. ADMINISTRATIVE MATTERS

A. Workload and assesment

1. Requirements = 10% tutorial attendance, 50% weekly summaries, 40% final exam

2. Weekly summaries

Summary task announced at the end of each lecture, starting next week

Summary to be uploaded to your tutorial group submission folder by 11:00pm the following

Tuesday (

NO LATE SUBMISSIONS

Maximum of 200 words

File in Word or plain text

File name: W[#] Week[#] [your name]

Summaries will be marked by your tutor (on a scale of 1 to 10) and returned to you in tutorial

3. Final exam

MCQ

Closed book

Comprehensive

Preparation: keep up with readings and lectures, attend tutorials, review material posted on IVLE

B. Readings, notes, etc.

1. Required readings

All readings are available as Library E-Reserves, accessible through IVLE

Caveat: the readings for weeks 6 and 11 are not posted yet, but will be next week

Plan to read each assigned text at least twice before writing your summary

I’ll post my lecture notes the week after each lecture, so, put down your pens...

2. IVLE forum

I’ve set this up for you to use or not, according to your preference.

3. Contacting me

Office hours: Thursdays, 10:00 - noon.

I welcome your email, subject to two rules:

Rule #1: the subject line must be PH1102E STUDENT INQUIRY (in all caps)

Rule #2: if I don’t reply to your message within 3 business days, resend your message,

letting me know you’re still awaiting a response

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II. BACKGROUND ON FREE WILL AND RESPONSIBILITY

A. Moral responsibility

“Moral responsibility” is the jargon that philosophers use to talk about what normal people call

“personal responsibility.”

1. Definition

Generally speaking, you are morally responsible for those of your actions that give other people a good

reason to think well or badly of you. This will serve as a good working definition:

“So-and-so is morally responsible for doing such-and-such” means: “The fact that So-and-so has

done such-and-such gives us a good reason to think well or badly of So-and-so.”

2. Not always a bad thing!

In day to day life, the word “responsibility” tends to carry a negative connotation. It’s always: “Who is

responsible for this mess?” rather than: “Who’s responsible for this beautiful flower arrangement?” But

the fact is that moral responsibility can be a good thing. A tyrant can be responsible for ending hundreds

of lives, but a doctor can be responsible for saving hundreds of lives. So don’t be misled by the negative

connotations of responsibility-talk in everyday life.

3. Illustrative examples

Just to make sure we are all on the same page, here are a few examples contrasting scenarios in which

moral responsibility is present with similar cases in which it is absent. I’ll be referring back to these

scenarios in next week’s lecture.

a. The Canteen

Case A: You buy a plate of fruit from the fruit stall, sit down at your table, only to remember that you

meant to buy mango juice as well. You leave your plate on the table, get your juice, and come back to

discover a bird eating your fruit. In this case, you feel annoyed, but you have no reason to think badly of

the bird. It’s only a bird, after all. So, we wouldn’t say that the bird is morally responsible for eating your

lunch.

Case B: Same as Case A, except that when you return to your table, you find another student eating your

fruit. In this case, you are likely to feel outraged, and you will definitely think badly of the student, and

rightly so, unless he has some good excuse. If he does not have an excuse, we will judge him morally

responsible for having eaten your lunch.

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b. The Gestapo

Case A: It is 1942, and Franz is letting his Jewish neighbors hide in his house to avoid being caught by the

Gestapo and sent to a concentration camp. In the middle of the night, there is a knock at Franz’s front

door. It is the Gestapo, asking whether you know the whereabouts of your neighbors. Even though it is a

cool autumn night, Franz begin to sweat profusely during the leading officer’s interrogation. This raises

the officer’s suspicions, leading him to search the house thoroughly and discover the Jewish family,

which he promptly sends to Auschwitz. In this case, the family Franz were harboring will regret that he

broke into a sweat, and perhaps be annoyed that he did so, but they have no good reason to think badly

of Franz. He is not morally responsible for revealing the Jewish family’s whereabouts to the Gestapo.

Case B: Same as Case A, except for that when the officer asks Franz about his neighbors, Franz tell him

that they are hiding in a secret room in his basement. The officer promptly arrests them and sends them

to Auschwitz. In this case, the family Franz was harboring will definitely have a good reason to think

badly of him. They, and we, deem him morally responsible for divulging their location to the Gestapo.

Of course, there might be mitigating circumstances. Perhaps the Gestapo has a policy of killing anyone

who is caught harboring Jews. Under these circumstances, one might do something that one later

regrets. The point is that even in this case, we have some good reason to think badly of Franz, at least to

the extent of regarding him as having done something cowardly.

c. The Drowning Child

Case A: While going for a walk along the beach, I notice a child struggling out beyond the surf. Although

there have been reports of sharks in the area, I jump into the ocean and save the child, fortunately

without being attacked by sharks. In this case, you have a good reason to think well of me. I am morally

responsible for my action, in a good, praiseworthy way.

Case B: I am walking along the beach lost in deep thought, and don’t notice the child struggling out

beyond the surf. However, I happen to bump into a beach ball, which rolls into the sea, and floats out to

the child just in time for her to grab onto it and paddle to safety. In this case, we don’t have any good

reason to think well or badly of me. I am neither morally responsible for saving the child, or for having

failed to try to save the child. My role is morally neutral, like that of the wind, if it had blown the ball

into the sea.

Case C: I am walking down the beach after a successful day of fishing, with a bucket full of fresh fish.

Suddenly I notice a child struggling out in the water. Knowing that there have been reports of sharks in

the area, and always having wanted to witness a shark attack first hand, I begin to throw my fish into the

sea, hoping to attract sharks to the area. However, I only succeed in attracting a friendly pod of

dolphins, one of whom allows the child to climb on its back and ride it safely to shore. In this case, we do

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have a good reason to think badly of me. I am morally responsible for trying to instigate a shark attack

on the child.

B. Free will

As you’ll soon learn, some philosophers think that there is no such thing as free will. But we can still give

a definition for it. (Likewise, we can define a unicorn as a horse with a horn growing out of its head,

without implying that there are creatures satisfying this definition.)

1. Definition

Generally speaking, to say that someone (or, something) has free will is to say that it has a capacity for

moral responsibility. Here is a working definition:

“So-and-so has free will” means: “So-and-so is capable of doing things for which he or she is

morally responsible.”

If you put this definition together with the definition of moral responsibility, you can see that to deny

that a person has free will is to say that he is incapable of doing anything that would justify us in thinking

well or badly of him.

2. Contrasted with freedom from constraint

Suppose an armed robber puts a gun to your head and says: “Your money or your life.” Wisely, you give

him your wallet. If we later ask you why you gave the man your money, you might say that you had no

choice. But this is not true. You did have a choice: your money OR your life. (Practically speaking, the

choice was really between life and death, since presumably the thief would also have taken your wallet

if he had killed you. But this is still a choice: life OR death.) If you had refused to give the thief your

money, your widow, upon learning the details of the case, would have wondered why you made such a

poor choice. She would be justified in thinking badly of you for throwing your life away so carelessly

when others cared about and depended on you.

The point is that the thief does not rob you of your freedom of will. He just restricts its scope of

operation. He imposes constraints on how you can exercise your freedom, but he doesn’t deprive you of

the freedom to choose among the highly constrained options he is offering you.

In fact, you can have freedom of will even if you literally have only one option. That follows from the

fact that we have defined freedom of will as the capacity to do something for which you are morally

responsible. You can have this general capacity, even if you find yourself in a situation in which you have

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no opportunity to exercise it. But in order to exercise your freedom of will, you do need to have at least

two options available to you.

C. The philosophical question about freedom and responsibility

Do you have free will? More generally: are people capable of doing things for which they are morally

responsible? In other words: can a person ever do something that gives us a good reason to think well or

badly of him?

1. Determinism

Historically, debates over the existence of free will have centered on the question of whether we live in

a “deterministic” universe. The view that we do live in such a universe is called “determinism.” The view

that we don’t is called “indeterminism.”

a. Definition

Determinism is the view that everything that ever happens -- every event or occurrence, no matter how

large or small, and no matter how grand or trivial -- has some prior cause. At least, this is one version of

determinism. A more cautious version says that everything that happens has a prior cause, unless there

is a first event (like the Big Bang), in which case that one (and that one only) does not have a cause.

We’ll define determinism as follows:

“Determinism is true” means: “Every event, except the very first event to take place (if there was

such an event) has a cause that precedes it in time.”

So if we live in a deterministic world, then everything that is happening now-- including everything that

anyone is doing -- is a result of things that happened just a moment ago. And everything that happened

just a moment ago resulted from things that happened just a moment before that. And so everything

that is happening now is the culmination of a chain of events that extends far into the past -- either

infinitely far back, or at least back to the Big Bang. One thing led to another, and to another, and to

another, until we come to the present moment, whose events give rise to the next event, and so on, and

so forth, either forever or at least until the Big Crunch.

b. Contrasted with fatalism

Determinism is not to be confused with fatalism.

Fatalism is the view that our present actions have no influence on the future.

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In other words, fatalism says that there is a certain path that your life is going to follow, regardless of

which choices or decisions you make. (This path is your “fate.” Think of Oedipus.)

2. Four theories

There are four main theories of freedom and responsibility. I’ll discuss these in detail next week. For

now, I’ll just give you a very brief preview of them.

a. Radical Will Theory

According to this, we have free will, but only because we are capable of making spontaneous choices --

choices that are literally uncaused. So we have free will, but we wouldn’t have it, if we lived in a

deterministic world. (And so our world is not, on this theory, deterministic.)

The radical will theory is associated with Jean-Paul Sartre, the French existentialist.

b. Deterministic Moral Nihilism

This is the view that we lack free will because we live in a deterministic universe. In other words,

freedom and determinism cannot coexist, and yet determinism is true; so, we are not free, and cannot

be held morally responsible for anything we do.

This view is associated with Friedrich Nietzsche, a 19th century German philosopher.

c. Compatibilism

According to compatibilism, we have free will even if we live in a deterministic universe. Even if all of our

actions and choices result from events that occurred before we were born, we are still morally

responsible for much of what we do.

Compatibilism is associated with the great 18th century British philosopher, David Hume.

d. Radical Nihilism

According to radical nihilists, we lack free will regardless of whether our universe is deterministic or

indeterministic. So, if determinism is true, we aren’t morally responsible for anything we do, and if

determinism is false, we aren’t morally responsible for anything we do. Freedom is not just something

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that human beings happen to lack: it is something that no being could possibly have, no matter how

intelligent, powerful, or magical.

This is the theory that Galen Strawson argues for in the reading for next week.