Advanced Topics in Philosophy I

Topic for Fall 2025: Free Will and Moral Responsibility. In this course we’ll engage with a set of perennial philosophical issues: the related questions of what “free will” is, whether any of us have it, and how the answers to these questions bear on our practical lives (especially our moral and legal responsibility and ethical practices). Much of the work in this domain has revolved around the question of whether or not freedom is compatible with causal determinism, that is, whether we can be free if everything that we do is the result of previous causes. We will try and get a sense of the main types of answers to this question, as well as their bearing on responsibility and other ethical concepts. Though this will be the central focus in the course, along the way we may consider related questions such as: Might we be capable of freedom in some sense but not morally responsible? Do all of our moral, legal, and other interpersonal norms, attitudes, and practices stand and fall together, depending on whether we are free and the kind of freedom we have? Can there be degrees of freedom? Are there different kinds of causation relevant to freedom? What is the best way to discover whether we are free or not: philosophy, science, or both?