Where the action is

Over at the Leiter reports, Brian gives an overview of the state of Nietzsche studies, and asks philosophers to post on 'where the action is' in their own  subfields. Since I'm interested in folks' perception of the state of the art in our subfield(s) (one or many?), I encourage you to comment on where the action is in free will/moral responsibility. Are Frankfurt-style cases the cutting edge or now passe? The consequence argument? X-philosophy?

Comments

[Eddy Nahmias]

I think that there is still some interesting work being done on Frankfurt cases and Consequence-style arguments, but I think that the debate is now moving towards (1) manipulation arguments (in part because ultimate sourcehood has become more significant than alternative possibilities) and (2) clarifying what conception of moral responsibility we should be concerned with (e.g., tighter connections between free will/agency and ethical theory). What I (but not some of the bearers of the label) like to call "free will skepticism" is obviously hotter than it once was, as are agent-causal accounts and complex compatibilist theories. As for experimental philosophy, who knows? I suspect it won't have too much impact in the way we initially were doing it, but it may in the way it is getting developed.

[Neil]

Seems to me that there is some tension beween x-philosophy and other approaches: FSCs, consequence arguments, manipulation, and so on. These latter are all intuition-mongering cases, whereas a central (though not a necessary) strand of x-philosophy is devoted to demonstrating the unreliability or the irrelevance of intuitions. Do you reject that part of x-philosophy (I'm thinking of Stich, Weinberg and Nichols, or Bishop and Trout)? Or do you have some other means of reconciling these strands?

[Kip Werking]

The following reflects where I *wish* the action was as much as where the action *actually* is:

1. Experimental philosophy
2. "Hard compatibilism" and compatibilist approaches to manipulation/design scenarios
3. Strawson's The Basic Argument
4. The intersection (if any) between the free will problem and (meta-)ethics
5. evolutionary psychology approaches to the free will problem

About the last, I think Tamler's paper suggesting that the illusion of free will evolved to preserve adaptive reactive attitudes is a good start.

I think the following are either out of fashion, or I sometimes wish that they were (because they seem to invite a dialectical stalement, instead of getting to the heart of the matter):

1. Frankfurt examples
2. the consequence argument
3. analysis of "can" and powers
4. PF-Strawson sentiment-based compatibilism

[Joe Campbell]

Time to interject a little empirical philosophy into the debate. So far, there are 6 submissions to the INPC in the area of free will/moral responsibility. (An equal number have been submitted in the areas of ethics and action theory.) Thus far, the tally is:

1 Consciousness and moral responsibility (Humm!)
1 Folk intuitions and free will skepticism
1 Frankfurt examples
3 Source incompatibilism

Based on this survey, I conclude that source incompatibilism is the next hot topic! This will soon be followed by the revival of traditional compatibilism (once everyone realizes that source incompatibilism is false).

By the way, the deadline for submissions for INPC 2006 is January 10. Check out the INPC website for a copy of the Call for Papers:

http://www.class.uidaho.edu/inpc/9th-2006/cfp.htm

[Neil]

Alternative explanation, Joe: source incompatibilists are better organized.