Contest winner: A fog of philosophers

. . . all credit to the inimitable V. Alan White for the suggestion.

On Thursday morning at the Pacific APA I announced my choice for a new collective noun for philosophers. As the header says, the winner was a fog of philosophers. (Thanks, by the way, to everyone who attended the session, even those of you with devastating objections to my view.) I settled on 'fog' because where there is one philosopher there is hope for clarity; where there is two there is none. Plus, I do like alliteration.

As readers of this blog will know, there were a lot of really great suggestions for a new collective noun for philosophers. My personal favorites were Saul Smilansky's suggestions, including a Vargas of philosophers. And, I loved obviously excellent choices like 'gruep' and 'group*', among several others. However, I decided to deploy a set of standards that ruled out many worthwhile choices. These standards included (1) no confusing collective nouns (e.g., an argument of philosophers), (2) nothing cutesy, necessarily pun-involving, or insider-y (the last two ruled out many of my favorites), (3) nothing that presumed a particular philosophical tradition, subfield, or time period of philosophy, (4) nothing pre-existing, only because that would ruin the fun (and plus, my sense was that no existing convention had stuck), so I ruled out Lipton's wrangle of philosophers, rightly recommended by Hilary Kornblith, (5) nothing so offensive that it would make someone blush or offend delicate sensitivities. These standards narrowed the scope for me, and fog just seemed like the best choice at the time.

So, I hereby encourage the use of 'fog' as the collective noun for philosophers. However, if you don't like it or find it altogether intolerable, I can remind you that there are several species that admit of multiple collective noun terms. So, feel free to add your own unless you can't. :-)

CONTEST: What is a group of philosophers to be called?

Hi all-

What's the proper term for a group of philosophers?

My sense is that there is no widely accepted term for a group of philosophers. I do think there ought to be one. So, I thought I would tap the wisdom of the philosophical crowds for some nominees. I'm looking for something pithy, clear (so, no 'argument of philosophers'), and the kind of thing that in retrospect seems almost obvious.

The winning suggestion, as judged by me, will be announced during a talk I will give at the Pacific APA. Fame and fortune are sure to follow, or failing that, infamy and life as usual. Moreover, should I publish the paper in which I plan to use your suggestion, full credit will be given to you for suggesting the term, which will surely be grounds for admiration by the two or three people who read the paper.

Nominations are now open, and the contest will continue up until I give the paper around 9am-ish on Thursday March 20th, or whenever I last check the GFP before giving said paper.

Thanks in advance for you help with this crucial piece of soon-to-be immortal linguistic convention, or at any rate, the convention used in that sentence of my talk.

Moral Psychology Conference at USF

For people in the Bay Area, or those interested in making a trip to it, there will be a small conference entitled "Mind, Agency, and Emotion: New Perspectives on Moral Psychology" held at the University of San Francisco on November 9th and 10th.

Speakers will include Chrisoula Andreou, John Doris, Anne Jacobson, Jeanette Kennett, Benoit Monin, Shaun Nichols, Jenefer Robinson, and Christine Swanton.

For more information, go here. 

New Political Philosophy Blog

. . . called "Public Reason" is here. Organized by Simon Cabulea May, the contributors roster looks impressive. Good luck to 'em.

Start your engines . . .

I'm told that if you are clever, you can find a way to see JFP 175 on the APA website, even though there isn't an official link to it. Good luck to those Gardeners who are job marketeering.

And consider this an invitation to start working on your entry to the annual Angsty-ist Job Market Post  at the Garden!!!! Although, maybe the sheen of the glorious award is gone, now that there is a whole blog dedicated to documenting the misery of the job market.

At any rate, may those of you looking for jobs be showered with offers in places you'd love to be, at salaries that are embarrassingly generous with teaching loads that are unexpectedly reasonable.

This week's popular press article on free will

is here.

<http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/earticle/3893/>

Responsibility, Agency, and Persons Conference at USF

The lineup and schedule is now set for the upcoming Responsibility, Agency, and Persons Conference at the University of San Francisco on October 26th and 27th.

Gardeners are more than welcome to attend (indeed, lots of Gardeners are on the program!). Attendance is free, and the website lists some hotel options near the conference site, as well as directions for getting to and from the conference. For more information, go here.

YAFWSA

Yet another free will science alert . . .

Just thought you should know that once again scientists have found the location of free will in the brain. It seems to have moved a bit from last time. In all fairness, the article only claims to have found free will's "center" in two places (neat trick, that).

Deaths in the greater free will community

Benjamin Libet recently passed away. An obituary can be found here.

And, if you didn't already hear the very sad news, Susan Hurley recently passed away as well. No obituaries seem to be up yet, but here's a link to the announcement on the Leiter Reports.

Physics, Free Will, Nobel Prizes

Check out this article for physicists, free will, and fun for everyone. It starts in an extremely promising fashion- you will have to excuse me while wait by my phone for the big news, though maybe Jack Smart already got the call- but then it deteriorates from that splendid beginning.

New book by Smilansky

Saul Smilansky has a new book out: 10 Moral Paradoxes. I can confirm that it is, not surprisingly, a fun and very worthwhile read. He doesn't directly engage with free will issues in this book, but there are chapters on punishment, moral worth, and moral badness. Good stuff- check it out!

ANNOUNCING: The New and Improved GFP Reading Group of Excellence!

I’m stepping down from running the GFP reading group (I'll still be hanging out here otherwise, so don't get too excited). It has been a lot of fun but over the next few months my commitments are going to outstrip my time, so this is one of the things that had to go. Moreover, it seemed to me the right time for new blood to run the reading group. So, I’ve found someone who has graciously agreed to make things better than they have been.  Your new reading group coordinator is Neil Levy, the guy who puts the cosmopolitan back in compatibilism, the multi-hemispheric Man from Melbourne and homme d’Oxford.

Neil will be organizing things from here on out. So if you promised me you would be willing to do a commentary at some point, I hereby transfer that promise to Neil (can I do that? Someone should post this question over at PEA Soup). More generally, please say yes if he comes a knockin’. I’ve been told by a number of people that they’ve enjoyed the reading group discussions. A crucial part of the success, such as it is, of the reading group seems to be the willingness of folks to take the role of lead commentator. So, please help Neil out if you can. It doesn’t take much time but it is one of the things that may make the Garden a fruitful place to hang out.

I also want to take a moment to thank everyone who has participated in the reading group over the past year, and I especially want to thank our lead commentators, without whom not. So, my thanks and appreciation to the efforts of Al Mele, Tim O’Connor, John Doris, John Fischer, Randy Clarke, and Saul Smilansky, all of whom delivered terrific commentaries on a range of interesting papers. And, of course, thanks to all the authors who permitted us to have public discussions of their papers, including: John Doris, Joshua Knobe, and Robert Woolfolk, Al Mele, Shaun Nichols, Peter van Inwagen, Kadri Vihvelin.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

The Gangster of Thought

Not free will-related, specifically, but notable in a Tony Soprano sort of way:

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/article2663731.ece

Why the Garden is Great, Why is the Garden Great?

This was a post I started to write before the announcement that the blog is 3 years old and the comments that followed, so apologies for some of the redundancy. I guess some of these thoughts are in the air right now.

This past week (now, almost two weeks ago) I was struck by the vitality and energy of the free will-focused part of the online philosophy world. First, there was the OPC2. I didn’t monitor the comments with anything like mathematical precision, but my sense is that comments on the free will papers outpaced all the other comments, and maybe even all the other comments combined. Then, there is the fact of the GFP itself. Blog activity seems to outpace many comparable blogs in fields that are ostensibly bigger (ethics, epistemology) and in some cases where there isn’t any comparative group, topical blog out there (political philosophy anyone?).

To be sure, we’ve had dry spells. But, overall we seem to have successfully made the transition to a middle-aged philosophy blog (relative to the lifespan of blogs, anyway).

I take it that it won’t be particularly tough to sell this crowd on the thought that we are mighty bloggers. What I’m really interested in is why we seem to be so active in the blogophere.

Several possible answers occurred to me:

USF Conference on Responsibility, Agency, and Persons

I'll be hosting a small conference on things free will-ish at the University of San Francisco on October 26th and 27th, 2007. The papers will be by Up-And-Coming-Philosophers and commentary by Already-Really-Famous-Philosophers.

Info and the lineup of speakers can be found here: http://www.usfca.edu/fac-staff/mrvargas/Conferences/Indexical/CRAP/Welcome.html

Talks are open to the public and Gardeners are especially welcome.

Fear and Fancy: Free Will Fruit Flies

Tom Clark called my attention to a couple of recent news articles that should excite and horrify Gardeners on several levels.

http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070514/full/070514-8.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSN1532077920070516

As far as I can tell, the principle upshot of this data is that vegetarians must now give up eating fruit because of the risk of inadvertently killing free agents.

Smilansky, Van Inwagen, and You

Once again, the Indomitable GFP Reading Group of Destiny returns with another action-packed episode, with enough chills, thrills, and spills to keep you bathed in the glow of your monitor just a bit longer. In this episode, the Hero of Haifa - a mild mannered professor usually known as Saul Smilansky-  swings into action to test the the Sultan of South Bend, his excellency Peter van Inwagen. The target? The Sultan's forthcoming edict: "How to Think About the Problem of Free Will."

Will the edict stand? Will the Hero prevail? Who will the people favor? Dear reader, only YOU can decide.

Saul's comments begin below . . . .

(Thanks to Saul and Peter)
---------------
Peter van Inwagen’s paper “How to Think about the Problem of Free Will” is written with his usual admirable clarity, force, and scope. Anyone working or thinking seriously about the free will problem, whatever his or her position, will benefit from reading this challenging paper. It can help us to open up a meta-free will debate, about what it is valuable to discuss at all, and how. And the stakes are high: Peter calls for no less than a radical change in the whole direction of the contemporary free will debate. The fact that this proposed transformation is traditionalist, wishing to take us back to the golden past, should not hide from us the truly revolutionary nature of this paper. If Peter is right, many (and perhaps most) of us have been wasting our time, while if he were to be widely followed and is mistaken about the debate, as I believe that he is, this would set back the philosophical investigation of the free will issue enormously.

Peter does a number of things in his paper, and I will not be able to address them all. After briefly presenting some of his main contentions, I shall make a preliminary point, and then sketch a very different construal of what the free will problem is about.

David Brooks on the Morality Line

David Brooks has an article at the NYT (behind a pay wall) on moral responsibility in the Virginia Tech shootings. A version of the article has also been posted here (free).

By the Hoary Hosts of Hoggoth!

Coming to this very blog, a display of mystery, illusion, and philosophical prestigiditation! The Haifan Illusionist (aka Saul Smilansky) will expound on the recently discovered text "How To Think about the Problem of Free Will." Ancient sources attribute the text to the Mysterionist of South Bend, Peter van Inwagen.

The prestige will be unveiled sometime during the week of April 30th. Prepare to be amazed.

Warning: The Garden of Forking Paths is not responsible for any fainting that should occur from laws of nature being defied or the revelation of other arcana best not seen by the weak of mind. Indeed, the Garden may not be responsible for anything at all.

(Thanks to Saul Smilansky and Peter van Inwagen for agreeing to comment and provide the paper, respectively).

The level after next: Clarke on Vihvelin

You've heard of taking it to the next level. Now witness the spectacle, nay, the earth-shattering event of Randy Clarke taking it to the level after next! As Beyonce taught us all to say, I don't think you can handle this. So, get your mama, get your copy of Kadri Vihvelin's paper, and get ready to join in the extraordinary experience of the latest edition of the GFP Online Reading Group.

Thanks to Ed Minar and Phil Topics for letting us post a copy of Kadri's paper.

Randy's comments begin below the line:
----------------------------------------------------

Compatibilists have long argued that having an ability to act is having a causal power or disposition. Incompatibilists have long disagreed. The dispute was, for a long time, side-tracked by the mistaken assumption, on both sides, that causal powers or dispositions are analyzable in terms of simple conditionals: e.g., x is water soluble iff, if x is immersed in water, x dissolves.

Incompatibilists were right that having an ability to act is not analyzable in terms of any such conditional. But the core compatibilist claim, that having an ability to act is having a causal power (or a bundle of dispositions) is nevertheless correct. Seeing where the simple conditional analysis of dispositions goes wrong allows us to see where the simple conditional analysis of ability to act goes wrong, and we can then see that the latter mistake leaves untouched the thesis that an ability to act is a disposition (or a bundle of dispositions). With this correct view of ability to act, we can see that having free will–having the ability to make choices on the basis of reasons--is compatible with determinism, and, indeed, that even in Frankfurt scenarios, agents are able to choose and act otherwise.

So, in brief, argues Kadri Vihvelin in “Free Will Demystified: A Dispositional Account” (Philosophical Topics 32, nos. 1 & 2 [2004]: 427-50).

Vihvelin, Clarke, and Your Mama (if she's a philosopher)

It's that time again- time for the sweet sound of the GFP Reading Group . . .  of DESTINY!!!

Sometime during the week of February 26th, Randy Clarke is going to bring some class to this barely-reputable joint. He'll be remarking on a recent paper by Kadri Vihvelin, available in a recent edition of Phil Topics (guest edited by John Fischer). For those who don't already own the volume, you can get a copy of the article here, thanks to the generosity of both Kadri and Ed Minar, editor of Phil Topics.

After Randy posts his thoughts, you (and your mama) are welcome, nay, encouraged to join in.

So a mysterianist and a semicompatibilist walk into a bar . . .

1. You've read Peter van Inwagen's chapter on philosophical failure.
2. Now you can* read John Martin Fischer's reply.
3. It is now up to you** whether to reply, however it is true that you should*** do so.

Go!

* 'can' in some sense profoundly indeterministic, ultimacy-bearing sense
** 'up to you' in some sense compatible with your deliberating about whether to reply
*** 'should' relative to some justified standards concerning your individual conduct given your aims and the Objective Value™ of the Irrepressible GFP Online Reading Group.

---------Fischer's comments on van Inwagen's "Philosophical Failure":
"I should begin by saying that I admire this book greatly. It is beautifully written, and very interesting and stimulating throughout. Not surprisingly, the book is filled with ingenious argumentation and penetrating insights. Here I shall focus solely on van Inwagen's fascinating suggestions about philosophical methodology in Chapter 3.

For your reading pleasure

In case you need more reading:

In the current issue of Ethics, see our own John Fischer on "Punishment and Desert" (requires a subscription). Also in that same issue, James Lenman on "Contractualism and Free Will"

As ususual, the current issue of Phil Studies is exploding with Gardener-produced or Gardener-relevant pieces: Saul Smilansky on Control, Desert, and Justice, Eddy Nahmias on "Close Calls and the Confident Agent", as well as an article on doxastic voluntarism and an article on temptation and deliberation by Chrisoula Andreou.

See also a recent issue of JPhil for a couple of free will articles (VOLUME CIII, NUMBER 4
April 2006): Widerker on "Libertarianism and the Philosophical Significance of Frankfurt Scenarios" and Marius Usher on "Control, Choice, and the Convergence/Divergence Dynamics: A Compatibilistic Probabilistic Theory of Free Will."

As usual, please feel free to add additional recently published articles via comments— I'm sure there is lots of great stuff I've missed.

Fischer on van Inwagen on why your arguments don't work

Just a reminder of the impending Return of the Invincible GFP Reading Group.

Sometime around Jan 15th, John Martin Fischer will drop some deep thoughts into GFP-space on the topic of Peter van Inwagen's remarks about philosophical failures, taken from the latter's recent book The Problem of Evil. Get ready to ghostride the dialectical whip.

Many thanks to OUP and PVI for making this chapter available to the blog. You can get your copy of it here. Once you read that chapter, go buy the book.

Free Will in the NYT

Go here.

If you will it, 2007 will come.

1. If you weren't at the Eastern, be glad. It was the year they brought back the smoker for a blazing good time. In other words, the hotel was on fire. Apologies for the bad and overused puns.

2. Good luck to the various Gardeners doing job hunting at the Eastern. May you receive at least as many call-backs as you had interviews!

3. Although this isn't my blog and thus perhaps not my place to say so, many thanks to all the recently-participating folks who've made the blog rebound in a big way over the past month or so! Sadly, I missed much of the discussion because of travelling and other committments, but many thanks to you and everyone over the past year for all the good conversations. I keep learning from you all.

4. Happy New Year!

Even better than latkes and Xmas fruitcake!

The Invincible GFP Online Reading Group will be taking a short siesta over December. But that is only because we will have to store up our energy to handle the Return of the Invincible GFP Online Reading Group. Around January 15th, the Sensei of Semicompatibilism — the one, the only John Martin Fischer — will post opening comments on a chapter by the Incompatibilist Man of Mystery, Peter van Inwagen.

The subject matter is philosophical failure, and the reading comes from van Inwagen's new book The Problem of Evil, OUP (2006). Mad props (i.e., many thanks) to Oxford UP and Peter van Inwagen for allowing us to post a pdf of the chapter. Now go buy the book.

The reading is available now on a webpage near you.
The discussion kicks off here at the Garden of Funky Philosophers around January 15th.

Most cited, most sighted lists

Congrats to John Fischer, Susan Wolf, and Tom Nagel for writing free will-related books that made it into Eric Schwitzgebel's list of most-cited books in Ethics in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Not a bad showing for free will at all.

Now if the list were of the most sighted, I think John would be even higher on that list.

Doris on Nichols: The Return of the Unstoppable GFP Reading Group

Dear Gardeners:
It’s my honor to comment publicly on Shaun Nichols’ “How Can Psychology Contribute to the Free Will Debate?”, since I’ve been consulting his work with great profit for years.  As is the philosophical convention, I offer repayment in the form of “higgling and haggling.”

Disclosures
My haggling commences early, with Nichols’ opening query.  Questions like  “Are people free and morally responsible?” (1),  invite the unwary to suppose that two questions “Are people free? And “Are people morally responsible?” require one answer; the implication is that the fate of freedom (in some to be specified metaphysical sense) and the fate of moral responsibility are intermingled.  But as Nichols is well aware, not everyone accepts this commingling of philosophical fates; like lots of folks, I’m inclined to answer “No and Yes”; people aren’t free, but they are (sometimes) morally responsible.  My reasons for thinking this are numbingly familiar:  I’m (something like) an incompatiblist about determinism and freedom and (something like) a compatiblist about determinism and responsibility (see Fischer 1999), and I share the suspicion, voiced by people like Pereboom (2001) and Sommers (2005), that it wouldn’t help much if determinism were false.  I’m moved by considerations in the neighborhood of what Nichols (9) calls “Hobbes’ libertarian dilemma,” and I join the chorus of cranky metaphysical philistines in claiming to find agent-causal libertarian accounts of freedom verging on unintelligible.   In short, I’ve P-Strawsonian sympathies of a decidedly unpanicky sort, and that makes me think that the tractable questions in the areas of action theory and moral psychology have to do with responsibility rather than freedom, and that these tractable questions are all the questions we need.

Enough about me.  What do I think about Nichols (1) Three (interrelated) Projects?  By way of kicking off our discussion, I’ll say something about the descriptive, prescriptive, and substantive projects, in that order.

Reminders, new articles, and whatnots

1. Doris vs. Nichols vs. You vs. Everyon else on this blog! Or, Doris+Nichols+You+The Rest of this Bog = Reading Group Love. Consider this your reminder to do this month's reading for our ongoing online reading group. This month's masterpiece is Shaun Nichols' "How can psychology contribute to the free will debate." This paper is available here.

2. Special issue on the work of our very own John Martin Fischer in the current issue of Journal of Ethics. Available here.

3. Article by our very own Kevin Timpe in the latest issue of Philosophical Studies, available here.

4. A review by our very own Saul Smilansky of our very own Al Mele's latest book, available at NDPR here (and free!). Lots of "very owns" around here.

5. I'm sure there's been other stuff that just made its way on to the internets. Apologies for anything I missed from the past month. Feel free to post more current publications of interest in the comments below.

6. Lots of explicating and debating things free will-ish at the University of San Francisco this Friday. Gardeners who can make it are more than welcome. More info here.

Back with another one of those blog-rocking posts

Now that the magnificent Mele melee has subsided a bit, we can announce #3 in the ongoing Garden of Forking Paths Unstoppable Online Reading Group of Excellence!

For your reading pleasure and conversating delight, next month we will discuss a paper by Shaun Nichols that dares to ask that forbidden question:

"How Can Psychology Contribute to the Free Will Debate?"

Through the arcane power of the internets, the delight that can only be found in Nichols' paper is available here:

http://www.usfca.edu/fac-staff/mrvargas/GFP/gfprg.html

As initial commentator, John M. Doris — the world-famous sensei of psychology and philosophy— will show us The Way of The Lurking Tiger.

The opening bell will sound around November 13th.
Your comments will follow soon after.
While you are at it, go grab a psychologist and make him or her comment, too.
Just do it.

Reminder: Read Mele's paper

Hi all-

Just a reminder to do your reading for our Second Ever Garden of Forking Paths Online Reading Group of Extraordinary Distinction. Soon, we'll be kicking off discussion of Al Mele's paper "Manipulation, Compatibilism, and Moral Responsibility." Paper is available here.

Everybody's free

. . . to join the second edition of the landmark GFP Online Reading Group.

Continuing our tradition of excellence in group blogging, the next paper we will read and discuss in our customarily death-defying and erudite way will be:

Al Mele, "Manipulation, Compatibilism, and Moral Responsibility" available here.

Initial remarks will be provided by everyone's favorite agent cause and Philosophy Ping-Pong World Champion, Tim O'Connor.

Initial comments will be posted somewhere around September 27th.
You will post your comments soon thereafter.

So, flex your neck, loosen fingers, and get to reading and comment-formulating.

Thanks to everyone who has participated so far, and admonishments to join it to those of you who are still lurking.

It's on! (Mele on Doris, Knobe, and Woolfolk)

Here's our first ever GFP Online Reading Group Event. Make it awesome.

Initial comments (below) by Al Mele on Doris, Knobe, and Woolfolk's paper "Variantism about Responsibility."

For this to work, you need to start commenting. Al's given us some great reflections below. Now you join in. Thanks in advance.
-------------------

From Al Mele:

DKW’s paper was a pleasure to read. I’ll get the discussion started with some scattered comments.

1. Frankfurt-style and Woolfolk-style stories

Many readers will have noticed a difference between the Woolfolk et al. stories about Bill and Frankfurt-style stories. In F-style stories, the potential controller doesn’t cause the agent to decide to A and doesn’t cause the agent to A. He is prepared to do this if necessary; but the agent does it all “on his own” and the potential controller stays on the sidelines. In Woolfolk’s story, the “drug makes [Bill] unable to resist the demands of powerful authorities,” and they order Bill to shoot Frank in the head. So it certainly seems that they cause Bill to shoot Frank. Even so, “subjects judged the high identification actor more responsible . . . than the low identification actor” (p. 13).

Why might that be? (I’m assuming that “more responsible” here is short for “more responsible for killing Frank” and that the kind of responsibility at issue is moral responsibility.) Consider the following suggestions about part of what the subjects might be thinking about Bill in the high-identification condition:

A. (1) the bad guys caused Bill to kill Frank, and (2) Bill’s desire to kill Frank (or Bill himself, as in agent causation) also caused his killing Frank. (This is consistent with causal overdetermination and with joint causation.)

B. A1 is true, A2 is false, and Bill has some responsibility for killing Frank because he would have killed him even if the bad guys hadn’t made him do that.

(These suggestions aren’t meant to be exhaustive, of course.)

Possibly, suggestion B has led some of you to wonder whether some subjects would say that Bill has some responsibility for killing Frank in a strange story in which it is clear that Bill does not kill Frank. Wait! Am I nuts? Well, consider a story along the following lines. Bill makes his discovery about Frank and is extremely upset. Bad guys paralyze his arms and hands, put a gun in his right hand, raise his right arm (by electronically stimulating his arm muscles) so that the gun is pointed at Frank’s head, and (by further electronic stimulation) cause Bill’s paralyzed right index finger to depress the trigger. “Bill was certain about his feelings. He wanted to kill Frank.” What’s more, Bill thought that he was acting: he did not realize that his arm and hand were paralyzed. And he felt no reluctance about blowing “his friend’s brains out.”

Suppose that “subjects judged” this Bill “more responsible [for killing Frank] . . . than the low identification” Bill. What should we make of that? Well, given that these rational subjects know that Bill did not kill Frank (even though Frank was killed), they cannot be expressing the belief that he has some moral responsibility *for killing* him. They are doing something else with their words. This certainly is possible, and it makes one wonder whether some of the respondents to Woolfolk’s own high-identification story are doing something similar with their words. Running the story I sketched would produce some evidence about this. (Suppose it turned out that the responsibility rating is not significantly higher in Woolfolk’s high identification case than in my high identification case.)

Lots more below the fold.

You, Mele, Doris, Knobe, and Woolfolk

Because YOU demanded, because it cannot be stopped— at most we can only hope to contain it — the GFP is hereby announcing . . .

The Inaugural Session of The Garden of Forking Paths Reading Group!!!!

(imagine majestic music and dancing spotlights)

Here's the scoop:

If you are down (and you know you want to be): You will read Doris, Knobe, and Woolfolk's paper "Variantism about Responsibility." It is available on ye olde Papers Blog here.

You will read this before the week of August 21st.

Sometime during the week of August 21st, resident Super Famous Philosopher Al "Da Shark" Mele will unload some ruminations and deliberations pertaining to the afore-mentioned paper. You will then post responses and thoughts of your own. Electronic conversating will ensue, and the legend of the GFP Reading Group will be born.

You have a month. Be ready or it won't be purty.

New Perspectives on Free Will and Moral Responsibility

On November 10, 2007 some people you may have heard of will be at USF talking about free will, moral responsibility, and the like.

Speakers will include Joshua Knobe, Eddy Nahmias, Angela Smith, and Dan Speak. Responses will be given by Randy Clarke, John Fischer, Michael McKenna, and Dana Nelkin.

The motivating idea behind this one day conference was to create an opportunity where some up-and-coming-but-not-yet-tenured folks could give invited papers and receive replies by already-well-known-and-tenured stars. This will be something of an experiment, but if it all goes well I hope to repeat the process in subsequent years, thereby providing a semi-regular venue whereby junior folks could receive feedback by established stars and get some additional pre-tenure visibility. I would have loved to double the roster for this round, but given that this is an experiment and given time and space constraints I had to keep it to only four speakers and four respondents. Still, any Gardeners who feel like coming to SF in November to hang out at the conference are more than welcome.

(I've heard rumors that elsewhere there may be a general free will conference coming together for next year, so conference-interested people should keep their antenna up.)

More information and updates on the USF free will/moral responsibility conference, including the TBA schedule, will be posted here.

Evil and Psychopathy Symposium at USF

Maybe of interest to a few Gardeners:

At the University of San Francisco we'll be hosting a one day symposium entitled "Evil and Psychopathy" on Saturday, April 8th, in Lone Mtn 100. Papers will be given by Agnieszka Jaworska (Stanford, philosophy), Dominic Murphy (Caltech, philosophy), Dana Nelkin (UCSD, philosophy) and James Waller (Whitworth, psychology). Attendance is free and open to the public. So, if you happen to be in the Bay Area or were looking for an excuse to come up to the Bay Area, come to the symposium!

For questions, email me at mrvargas at usfca dot edu.

Taking libertarianism back from those pretenders . . .

Do you ever get tired of explaining that 'libertarian' also refers to a view about free will, in addition to referring to a view in political theory? Now you can add some sneering to your explanation. Try saying "I mean libertarian in its truest and original sense" or "I mean libertarian in the sense it had before it was debased" or "I don't mean libertarian in the vulgar way."

Here's why you should feel entitled to say those sorts of things (on the assumption that your highest degree came with the usual serving of haughtiness):

The Oxford English Dictionary lists the first use of the term "Libertarian" for philosophy as 1789 BELSHAM Ess. I. i. 11 "Where is the difference between the Libertarian..and the Necessarian?"

And, the first usage of libertarianism was about 40 years later: 1830 W. TAYLOR Hist. Surv. Germ. Poetry III. 10 note, "The general drift of his [Kant's] system..is not libertarianism."

In contrast, it took those political theory thieves almost a century to steal the good word from us. The first political use of the term comes in: 1878 SEELEY Stein III. 355.

Take that, libertarians-in-the-johnny-come-lately-POLITICAL sense!

(Thanks to Katharine Denson and Annie Barrows for the info.)

Annual Job Market Post

Somehow we seem long overdue for the annual angsty job market discussion on this blog. I don't have any special desire to do so and I tried to talk a few other people into doing it. There were no takers, but since I'm willing to blog for the team, here goes:

It seems to me that one might reasonably believe that the following well-discussed observations from last year remain true:

1. The job market is bad.

2. Free Will/Phil Action types run into special problems on the job market because they are neither fish (ethics) nor fowl (metaphysics or mind) <insert joke about 'foul' applying to your least favorite associated fields>, and no one ever advertises jobs for phil action or philosophers working on free will.

3. This affects people in the job market at all levels of their career.

4. Complaining about these things is fun or at least an engaging waste use of time.

I'm inclined to think that (1) is probably less true than it has been in a while. While I don't have any real data on this, it seems to me that there are a good number of jobs out there relative to job marketeers (albeit few to none that list phil action). The relatively little blogging about the topic this year also speaks against (4). Maybe it is less fun to complain about these things or maybe there isn't as much cause to complain. (Although I imagine there will be a spike of discussion after the Eastern, whether or not it is in the blogosphere.) So maybe things have changed a bit. I doubt they have changed alot.

One thing that I don't think anyone on this blog has mentioned in connection with the usual woes about the job market is the way in which membership in different subfields tends to bring with it the opportunity or cost of having colleagues with overlapping research interests at your institution. People who work in ethics have it pretty good, I think. Most mid-to-large departments have multiple ethicists around. Good luck have multiple colleagues in a mid-to-large departments, though, if you work in aesthetics. I suspect that things are comparatively good for "core" analytic types in major research institutions but less good in the majority of jobs out there (i.e., in more teaching-oriented places).

Philosophy of action is a bit strange in this respect.

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.

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.

CFP: INPC

9th annual
Inland Northwest Philosophy Conference

Topic: Action, Ethics, and Responsibility

Dates: March 31-April 2, 2006
Location: Moscow, ID & Pullman, WA

The Inland Northwest Philosophy Conference is a topic-focused, interdisciplinary conference, co-sponsored by the Philosophy Departments at the University of Idaho and Washington State University.

Shameless self-promotion is the new modesty

In addition to the recent orgy of free will articles in Midwest Studies that Kip mentioned, the latest issue of Metaphilosophy features the symposium on Daniel Dennett's Freedom Evolves (or, as Al Mele suggests in his essay, Elbow Pad) that was presented in draft form on the papers blog a while back. The authors include Dennett, John Fischer, Al Mele, Tim O'Connor, and yours truly.

Not that anyone needs more free will reading at this point in the summer.

Who's your daddy?

This is probably old news to most of you, but Josh Dever (Texas) is putting together a "family tree" for the intellectual genealogy of philosophers, as decided by dissertation advisor. You can learn about all sorts of family you didn't realize you had. At this point the genealogy has gotten pretty big, especially in the weeks since Brian Leiter first noted it on his blog, but he seems to be continuously updating it as more information comes in. Updates, etc., can be found on his blog.

According to current stats, the most "procreative" dissertation advisor was a free will guy: Roderick Chisolm, with a whopping 57 students.

Hat tip to Ben Bradley at PEA Soup for the links.

A graphic depiction

The title of my previous post was a reference to the marketing slogan of the terrible movie "Aliens vs. Predator." In response to my previous post, Kip Werking put together an image of Dennett as Alien and van Inwagen as Predator. I should note that in the movie the Predators (Incompatibilists) win. But maybe that's just another instance of a long line of endoskeletocentrist fiction, as my student Kirk Davis noted.

As far as I know, Dennett isn't really an Alien and van Inwagen really isn't a Predator and neither has starred in a bad movie, so this should be taken to imply that about either of these distinguished gentlemen. And besides, we needed some more pictures on this website. With apologies to Dennett and van Inwagen, here's the picture Kip sent me . . . (below the fold). Sorry I couldn't get the resolution better.   

Compatibilists vs. Incompatibilists: The Intuitions Wars, part 446: Whoever Wins, We All Lose?

Recently Shaun Nichols and Joshua Knobe have argued (in a paper available on the papers blog) that there are circumstances under which a majority of us have incompatibilist intuitions and circumstances under which a majority of us have compatibilist intuitions. If it turns out that we (i.e.,both philosophers and large segments of the non-philosophical population) really do have incompatibilist intuitions in some cases and compatibilist intuitions in others, who wins?

Nichols and Knobe generously note that given the data they are getting (compatibilism in cases structured one way, incompatibilism in cases structure another) “both [incompatibilists and compatibilists] are right.” But that doesn’t seem altogether right to me. It looks to me like there is no reason why an incompatibilist couldn’t admit that we have, in various occasions or contexts, compatibilist intuitions. We might imagine that an incompatibilist could admit that there are some cases where incompatibilist intuitions don’t come out at all. But as long as there is a significant range of cases where responsibility does require the satisfaction of some incompatibilist condition, then incompatibilists are right that we have to grapple with the various issues that face incompatibilism. Compatibilists can’t say the same sort of thing, in part because incompatibilists typically aren’t averse to compatibilist analyses (other than insisting that they need further supplementation). What seems to be most at stake, at least for people who want it to turn out that we’re responsible, is whether our story of responsibility is going to have to include incompatibilist elements. If it does, then incompatibilism “wins” in the sense that we all have to develop incompatibilist accounts (at least if you think that our positive accounts are beholden to commonsense intuitions). There are, of course, lots of qualifications to throw in here (imagine that I have here inserted an acknowledgments of your favorite methodology that makes this a more complicated issue- e.g., reflective equilibrium or paraphrasing conceptual analysis).

As much as I like incompatibilists (and some of my closest friends are incompatibilists . . . I don’t think incompatibilism is the clearest winner. So who really wins if we get split reactions on the intuitions?

Frankfurt & NYT

In my ongoing role as the guy who posts non-philosophical content to the blog, I thought some of you might be interested in the following article in the NYT on Frankfurt and bullshit.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/14/books/14bull.html?pagewanted=1

Thanks to John Fischer for the link.

UPDATE 4/17/05: The SF Chronicle has also done a review:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/04/17/RVGBTC5FK31.DTL

Posner on Free Will

Happy New Year!

The blogosphere seems to be on vacation, but if you are looking for some free willin', and you haven't already seen it, you might be interested in Richard Posner's brief remarks and subsequent posts on Brian Leiter's blog at this link:

http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2004/12/a_note_on_free_.html

Ethics, Metaphysics, or Mind?

Soon, the new Gourmet Report is going to be out, with the customary ranking of graduate programs in philosophy. Already some of the area rankings have been released, but I gather that the complete report won’t be out for another week or so. One innovation this year is that participants in the survey also ranked schools for their strengths in particular areas, including the stuff that we here at the Garden tend to work on. I’ll be really surprised if UC Riverside (three cheers for our blog hosts!) isn’t in the top tier for the Philosophy of Action.

Something I have always found interesting about the Report is the way it groups work on free will and moral responsibility under the heading of Philosophy of Action.

Go west, young man (or woman)!

Over the past few years the Pacific APA has been pretty good on the free will front. I haven’t seen the full program yet, but I know that a number of Gardeners will be going this year (including at least Randy, Andrei, Michael M, and yours truly). So come to the Pacific APA, and cheer and jeer at your favorite gardeners. I’m guessing they still need people to comment on papers and such, so join the party.

Hard Determinism and Distributive Justice

I know this is going to seem weird, but here's a post from me with at least some philosophical content. This is mainly in response to Tamler's prior post, concerning the consequences of hard determinism, but I thought it was lengthy enough to merit a post, and besides, now we can claim that our blog includes posts on political philosophy, too!

Anyway, Tamler sez this: "Suppose for a moment that the hard determinist thesis is correct. Determinism is true and conseqently we do not have free will and no one is robustly morally responsible--deserving of blame or praise--for anything. Gardeners: what do you think follows from this state of affairs? How would it affect (a) your individual perspective on life, assuming the world stayed pretty much the same as it is now, and (b) social policy and legislation in a society that attempted to be consistent with hard determinism?"

With respect to (a): I sez "It wouldn't (much)," and with respect to (b) I sez "I don't know, but below are some thoughts."

SPP Conference

Our own Eddy Nahmias is way too well-mannered to crassly advertise in every forum available to him a conference with which he is involved. Fortunately, he has some ill-mannered friends who will do this without even getting his okay. So, here's a call for papers that recently came across my desk that might be of interest to readers of this blog. More information can be found in the link indicated below, and below the fold. (Neal or Gustavo, would you do the favor of listing this in the conferences part of the page? Thanks!)

CALL FOR PAPERS
THE 31st ANNUAL MEETING OF THE
SOCIETY FOR PHILOSOPHY & PSYCHOLOGY
June 9-12, 2005
Wake Forest University
Winston-Salem, North Carolina

The Society for Philosophy and Psychology (SPP) invites submissions of
papers to be presented at it 31st annual meeting to be held June 9-12,
2005 at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Further information about the conference, including speakers and
symposia, will be distributed as it is available.
The SPP website is http://www.hfac.uh.edu/cogsci/spp/spphp.html

Compatibilism is wussy

Sorry for so many posts from me devoid of philosophical content, but when I saw this I had to post it:

http://www.unc.edu/~megw/WussyBadAss.html

Sadly, my favorite view is more wussy than not, I suspect. Though I hasten to add that it definitely less wussy than "totally wussy" compatibilism.

Cheers to all you philosophers who hold not-totally-wussy views.

Hat tip to Brian Weatherson.

Free Will and Geography

This is one my philosophically useless posts, so don't bother reading any more of this if you want real philosophy.

What's with the amount of free will work being done in southern parts of the United States? There is a hugely disproportionate number of people working on Free Will who live in either (as far as I can tell) the South or Southern California. Sure, there is a not insignificant concentration of excellent work on free will that happens in the Midwest, so maybe this is the telling exception to my hopelessly broad generalization. But think about Southern California, where I was hanging out last year: The Large Free Will Posse at UC Riverside (Fischer, Watson etc., (where 'etc.' covers faculty there who are interested in free will but maybe don't principally publish on it, as well as any visiting folks working on free will of which there always seem to be some there)), The USC Agency Gurus (Khadri, Gideon), Pamela at UCLA, Dana at UCSD, all of their students, and the host (and I do mean) host of other folks from San Diego up to Santa Barbara who work on these things (shout-out to my man Dan at Azuza P!).

Florida displays a somewhat smaller but nonetheless outstanding embarassment of free will riches- Al Mele and Eddy Nahmias at FSU, David Copp and Marina Oshana at Florida, and good number of others who have pitched tents in the area (Andrew, you are in the South, right?). I'm not even going to try to name names for the rest of the South. The point is, there is a disproportionate number of free will thinking going on in those warmer-climate areas. Places with lousy weather are less potent (at least in numbers) in reflection on free will, though there are some smaller concentrations, e.g., Indiana. Draw what conclusions you will. I like to think that it is because subtler minds generally prefer good weather. :-)

And, of course, apologies to everyone I missed in my catalog of people working in these regions, and apologies to the regions less infected with free will thought. You have some good folks too, of course. You just don't have as many. Too bad for you.

Postscript: another way to carve things up would be by state, as opposed to regional groupings: (1) California (bear in mind that Northern California has Jay Wallace and Michael Bratman, who has written a bit on these things) (2) Florida (3) Indiana (4) Everyone else. (okay, so maybe there is some differentiation to be had in 4, but I'm not going to try and do it). Bear in mind that I'm going by approximate numbers of people who have published on free will in these states, as decided by my guessing. Anyway, I dare someone to start the argument about where the highest quality of work on free will is done. I'll just claim that if someone were to start that argument, California would still win. Go California!

Visit Exotic Alabama

Well, school's back and I have no time to think about free will right now. But maybe you do have time. And if so, maybe you have time to write up a proposal for the conference "Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context." Here's a link to the call to papers:

http://www.uab.edu/philosophy/mawposter2005.htm

Here's the date, location, and lineup:
University of Alabama at Birmingham
March 18 - March 21, 2005
Confirmed principal speakers:
George Ainslie (Veteran's Affairs Medical Centre, Coatesville, and Temple University)
Andy Clark (University of Edinburgh)
Daniel Dennett (Tufts University)
Dan Lloyd (Trinity College, Connecticut)
Thomas Metzinger (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz)
Daniel Wegner (Harvard University)

Samba and Responsibility

I recently watched a pair of interesting movies out of Brazil- City of God and Bus 174. In various ways, the movies are about the enormous population of street kids in Brazil, and its effects on society and the kids themselves. The conditions these kids are growing up in (they certainly aren’t being “raised”) makes you wonder how any of these kids manage to get out the cycle of poverty, violence, etc. Naturally, it also raises interesting issues about moral responsibility, including: whether these kids can appropriately be said to be responsible, and the point at which it makes sense to think of them as responsible (some kids start robbing and killing before they are 8), the extent to which social institutions can be said to be responsible for this state of affairs, and the generally under-explored issue of the extent to which circumstances plays an important role in agents becoming responsible and giving them opportunities to act that do not require an unreasonable amount of what Bernard Williams once aptly called “moral weighlifting.”

I don’t have anything especially insightful to post about these issues (or, at any rate, I want to think more about them before I got out on any limbs), but I really recommend watching ‘em (and thanks to John Fischer for recommending Bus 174 to me originally!).

If you do see “City of God” you should also take a look at the documentary also on the disk- the interview with the police chief is amazing.

New (potential?) Free Agent

Congratulations to Sam, Cheryl, and Eddy Nahmias on the recent arrival of Sam to the World Outside of the Womb!

Really, having multiple kids is practically a requirement for professors who work on free will (so get started, the rest of you who don't already have them).

Plus, we now have an excuse to argue about *when* a child gets free will . . . .

(and yes, I know the skeptics will say never- but they are wrong). :-)

What is incompatibilism?

Things have been a bit quiet here at the Garden, so I figured it was time for me to see if I could get another “chippy” discussion going. And, though it isn’t yet Friday (and thus time for a polemical post) I’m heading out of town tomorrow so it feels like Friday to me . . . .

Here’s the issue on my mind: how should we characterize incompatibilism? Before you start laughing at me for not knowing what anything important in the free will debate m