Real Brain Manipulation?

Here's an interesting article on controlling human beings by remote control.  Is it only a matter of time before Frankfurt-cases become a live possibility?  Dah dah DAH. (That's ominous music, in case you were wondering.)  Thanks to Casey Hall for the pointer.

Talk Announcement

On November 17th at 3pm, Ted A. Warfield will give the Marshall Weinberg
Professor lecture at the Universitiy of Michigan, Ann Arbor. The title of the
lecture is:

"Ecumenical Necessary Conditions on Free Action (and other problems for
compatibilists)"

As you know, Ted, aka, "Fritz," is a regular contributor to the blog, and I'm sure he'll
uncover many problems for (traditional!) compatibilism.

Return of the Willies

Last year Tamler put together a humorous set of free will awards he dubbed "The Willies." His categories included:

Best Essay Title; Truest Essay Title; Best Opening Paragraph; Greatest Paper to Have Had a Positive Impact on the Debate; Greatest Paper to Have Had a Negative Impact on the Debate; Most Underappreciated Participant in the Debate; Most Respected Position within the Industry; Least Respected Position within the Industry; Best Neglected Paper; Best Writer; Most Neglected Aspect of the Debate; . . . and perhaps my favorite category: Best Derogatory Remark about Compatibilism!

With Tamler's cooperation and blessing, we'd like to try a similarly humorous run at these things involving the whole GFP community. The basic idea is that you nominate candidates and categories, and through some yet-to-be-fully-determined process (insert your favorite libertarian joke here, followed by your favorite complaint about equivocation about indeterminism), and Tamler and I will cull that list down and pass it on to be voted upon by some Famous People Whose Judgment is Way Better Than Manuel's But That Manuel and Tamler Happen To Know And Happen to Ask.

A Counterexample to the 'Belief in Ability Thesis'

I’m gradually reading my way through the recent issue of Midwest Studies in Philosophy, on free will and moral responsibility. I’ve read over the half the volume now, and I’m pleased to say that it’s all excellent. My impression is that the standard is actually higher than in comparable general journals. Some of you may have seen the discussion of all invitation journals and their problems on Brian Weatherson’s blog. I share some of the worries expressed there, but issues like this one go a long way towards allaying them.

Here, I want to address Coffman’s and Warfield’s paper, ‘Deliberation and Meatphysical Freedom’. The topic will be familiar to most of you: it’s the link between  deliberation and our belief in freedom. Specifically, Coffman and Warfield want to defend what they call the Belief in Ability Thesis (BAT), which they attribute to van Inwagen and Searle, against putative counterexamples.

Recent work on moral responsibility

Elinor Mason (The University of Edinburgh) has written an overview article on recent work on moral responsibility, titled (appropriately enough) "Recent Work on Moral Responsibility." It can be found here:

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1468-0149.2005.00375.x

For those without the relevant electronic subscription, here's the citation: Philosophical Books
Volume 46 Issue 4 Page 343 - October 2005.

Weekend Tidbits

On Resources, we’ve added Olle Blomberg’s bibliography of cognitive science and ethics, which lists some material that is relevant to Garden pursuits (e.g., some papers on responsibility and psychopathy).

Also, you might want to know that Al Mele’s Motivation and Agency (2003) is now available in paperback. You can check it out here. (Thanks Joe Olechnowicz for the pointer).

The Contours of Being Causa Sui

I finished Smilansky’s Free Will and Illusion, which I recommend to anyone interested in the denial of free will.  Smilansky was supervised by Galen Strawson—author of perhaps the best argument against the existence of free will.  Smilansky is an eloquent spokesperson for free will denial.  As he says, “we are the unfolding of the given.”  In this book, Smilansky elaborates on Strawson’s ideas and reaches a more ambivalent conclusion. 

I don’t agree with this conclusion. Smilansky’s mistake, I think, comes early in Free Will and Illusion, when he rejects consequentialism.  Like Smilansky, Pereboom also takes issue with a prominent form of consequentialism, utilitianism, in his Living Without Free Will.  I want to challenge both Smilansky and Pereboom on this issue in (work in progress) article “Who’s Afraid of Creeping Exculpation?”

1st Annual On-line Philosophy Conference

I wanted to let everyone know that for the past few weeks Thomas Nadelhoffer (with some help from Adam Feltz and I) has been organizing the 1st Annual On-line Philosophy Conference (OPC)--which will tentatively run from April 14th to 27th (2006) and which will be hosted on the newly created OPC blog.  Thomas has received incredibly positive feedback from the people he invited and put together a remarkable list of invited speakers, including a few from our ranks (Fischer, Mele, Vargas, Levy) plus 18 other well-known philosophers from a wide-range of fields. 

While the first installment of OPC is a mostly invited affair (since so many people accepted), we are nevertheless issuing a call for papers for both junior philosophers (PhD in the past five years) and graduate students (the call for papers and directions for submissions can be found on the OPC blog).  Hopefully, some of you will be interested in (a) submitting a paper for the conference, (b) offering to give commentary on some of the invited papers, or (c) both (a) and (b). Minimally, I hope all of you will participate in the comment threads once the conference begins. Please let us know if you have any questions or suggestions concerning the format of the conference, etc. Hopefully, others are as excited as I am about the line-up and the tentative format. Tomorrow will be the first day that the blog and the call for papers become publicly available, but I figured it would be OK for me to give the readers of this blog a head's up.