PHIL 860.001 – Research Seminar in Moral Theory

Instructor: Susan Wolf. This course meets R 4:00 – 6:30 p.m. in CW 213.

What is responsibility? What kinds of beings can be responsible for anything, and what can they be responsible for? What are the conditions of responsible agency ? (Is responsibility compatible with determinism? What is the relation between responsibility and control?) What is the relation of responsibility to the appropriateness of praise and blame and to the reactive attitudes? We will begin by reading some twentieth-century classics in the field (Strawson, Frankfurt, Watson, etc.) and proceed to more recent work.

Please note: This course counts toward the “value theory” distribution requirement for PHIL grad students.

Permission of the instructor is required to enroll in this course. PHIL grad students are exempt from this enrollment requirement.