The Epistemic Condition Across Cultures

If you haven't read about it already, take a look at this rather disturbing case. In brief, the story is as follows. A British woman teaching in the Sudan asked her class what they wanted to name the teddy bear that was to be the class mascot. The children suggested the name 'Mohammed', and so that became the bear's name. What the teacher didn't know is that it is against the law in the Sudan to name an inanimate object after the prophet. The teacher was arrested, and now protestors are calling for her execution on Socratic grounds: insult to religion and polluting the minds of children.

What's going on here? Is this an example of a culture that rejects an epistemic condition on moral responsibility? Or is this merely a case of strict liability taken to the extreme? (Or something else?)

Call for Papers

Markus Schlosser sends the following CFP. More info below the fold.

Call for Papers and Abstracts:

Normativity and the Causal Theory of Action
One-day conference, 18 July 2008
Department of Philosophy, University of Bristol, UK

Keynote speaker: Michael E. Bratman (Stanford)

The aim of the conference is to bring together proponents and opponents of the event-causal theory of action. Broadly, speakers should address the question of whether the causal theory can capture the normative and first-personal aspects of human agency. Submissions of full papers or abstracts for presentations of about 40 minutes are invited. Abstracts should be at least 400 words long, papers no more than 5000 words.

Submission deadline: Friday 29. February 2008

Full papers for circulation among participants should be ready by the end of May. Please e-mail submissions to markus.schlosser@bristol.ac.uk in doc, rtf or pdf format.

Crazy Quotation Contest

The following is from Al Mele:

"I’m writing a book entitled Effective Intentions: The Power of Conscious Will. I’m thinking now that I’d like to quote (probably in my preface) two or three of the most outrageous claims made in the popular press in the last couple of years about what scientists have shown about free will, consciousness, or conscious intentions or decisions. It might be fun to make a contest out of this. Gardeners can provide crazy quotations (along with documentation) from the popular press about these topics. And then, if you’re willing, we can all vote on which quotation is the most outrageous. What will the prize be? Because I’m not only a modest man but also a man of modest means, how about a free copy of the new book for each of the top three entries? (Of course, the book won’t be out for quite a while, but I’ll make a note of the winners – consciously, I hope.)"

Conference on Action at F&M

Below is a link and the schedule for a conference that should be of interest to gardeners that will be held at Franklin and Marshall College during spring 2008. 

http://www.fandm.edu/x11468.xml

Conference (March 28-29, 2008): Human Action and the Natural World

This conference will bring together philosophers, psychologists, and cognitive scientists to investigate the place human agency has in the natural world.

Friday, March 28

4:30-6:15: Jennifer Hornsby (Professor of Philosophy, University of London; co-director Rational Agency section, Center for the Study of Mind in Nature, Oslo), "The Nature of Actions"

7:00-9:00: Dinner

Saturday, March 29

9:45-11:30: Mark Bickhard (Henry R. Luce Professor in Cognitive Robotics and The Philosophy of Knowledge, Lehigh University), "From Agency to Social Agency"

12:00-1:30: Lunch

2:00-3:45: Carsten Hansen (Associate Professor of Philosophy, Oslo University), "Linguistic Agency and Understanding"

4:00-5:45: Alfred Mele (William H. and Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy, Florida State University), "Free Will and Neuroscience"

6:30-8:30: Dinner

Call for Papers

Wolfhart Totschnig from Northwestern University sends the following call for papers:

Title: 2nd Annual Conference of the Northwestern Society for Ethical Theory and Political Philosophy

Keynote speakers: Susan Wolf (UNC Chapel Hill) and David Velleman (NYU)

Dates: May 15th - 17th, 2008

Conference website (with call for papers): http://www.philosophy.northwestern.edu/conferences/moralpolitical/

Submission deadline: February 15th, 2008 We invite submission from both faculty and graduate students.

Brueckner on Campbell & Campbell on that

Back in April we had a nice discussion here at the Garden of Joe Campbell's Analysis piece, "Free Will and the Necessity of the Past". Well, the discussion continues.

Anthony Brueckner has a reply to Campbell forthcoming in Analysis called "Retooling the Consequence Argument", which he has been kind enough to let us post here.

Also, Joe Campbell has drafted a reply to Brueckner's forthcoming reply that he has been kind enough to let us post here.

Enjoy!

This American Life and Moral Responsibility

Here's a link to a recent episode of This American Life that's brimming with free will/moral responsibility implications. It's the story of a group of prisoners who spend six months rehearsing and staging Act V of Hamlet for their fellow inmates. Many of the actors are murderers, rapists, or child molesters. One of them, Danny, has been in the high security prison for 14 years for murder. He says that when he first got there he thought he ought to die in prison. He was a danger to people outside of it. But, he says, a person changes. "I'm not the criminal I used to be. I know I won't commit any more crimes if I'm out there. But... I took a man's life. Do I deserve to be out there? I cannot say." This is the notion of the desert that I believe is at the center of the moral responsibility debate.

It's an extremely moving story, highly recommended.

Update

Although the navigation bar doesn't look nearly as cool as it used to, I think I fixed the problem it was having with Safari and Firefox.  Let me know if anyone still can't access the tabs above.  Thanks again for your patience.  I'll try to work on making it look a bit cooler, now that it actually works.

Temporary Fix

It has come to my attention that the cool new navigation bar I put right beneath our weblog banner isn't functional in the Safari and Firefox web browsers.  It should work fine in Internet Explorer, though (let me know if you use IE and are having problems with it).  I'm still trying to figure out how to fix this problem, but in the meantime, I've temporarily fixed the situation with the new list at the top of the left-hand sidebar.  Users of Safari and Firefox can access the different tabs by clicking on those links.  I hope to be able to get the tabs working fine for everyone soon.

Thanks for your understanding!

Interview with Michael McKenna

In connection with the new edition of the Perry/Bratman/Fischer anthology Introduction to Philosophy, John Fischer, Patrick Todd, and I have been working on a companion website for students who are using the book, which includes a blog and other online resources.  If you haven't checked it out yet, you might be interested to see it by clicking here.

But what you will be most interested in seeing is the interview with Michael McKenna (conducted by Patrick) that is posted below the fold, which we conducted for the purpose of putting it on the companion website (a shorter version of the interview is up on the blog at the intro site).  Michael was gracious enough to put a lot of thought and effort into answering our questions in a way that would be accessible to undergraduates, and we are very appreciative of his help.  We are posting the full interview here below the fold in the hopes that some Gardeners will find it interesting, as well. Thanks, Michael!