In the comments of Manuel's post, there's some interest in doing for philosophy of action what Leiter has done for philosophy more generally: attempt to construct a "Best of the Decade" list. So rather than hijack Manuel's post, I thought I'd start a thread just for coming up with this list.
My list below the fold:
I already listed a couple papers on moral responsibility on Leiter's discussion:
Pamela Heironymi, "The Force and Fairness of Blame"
Angela Smith, "On Being and Holding Responsible"
For other papers, I'd also include:
John M. Fischer and Neal Tognazzini, "The Physiognomy of Responsibility"
J. David Velleman, "Identification and Identity"
G.A. Cohen, "Casting the First Stone: Who Can, and Who Can't, Condemn the Terrorists"
Michael McKenna, "A Hard-line Reply to Pereboom's Four-Case Manipulation Argument"
For monographs:
Derk Pereboom, Living Without Free Will
T.M. Scanlon's Moral Dimensions
And although I haven't finished it yet (and so can't judge), I've found Christine M. Korsgaard's new book, Self-Constitution: Agency, Identity, and Integrity to be quite good thus far.
Finally the best (i.e., the one's I've read and really liked) single author collections that have come out this decade are:
John M. Fischer, My Way
R. Jay Wallace, Normativity and the Will
Gary Watson, Agency and Answerability
Of course this list no doubt reflects my idiosyncratic interests, and obviously, many other good things (e.g., experimental philosophy) have come out in action theory/free will/moral responsibility this decade.
Pamela Heironymi, "The Force and Fairness of Blame"
Angela Smith, "On Being and Holding Responsible"
For other papers, I'd also include:
John M. Fischer and Neal Tognazzini, "The Physiognomy of Responsibility"
J. David Velleman, "Identification and Identity"
G.A. Cohen, "Casting the First Stone: Who Can, and Who Can't, Condemn the Terrorists"
Michael McKenna, "A Hard-line Reply to Pereboom's Four-Case Manipulation Argument"
For monographs:
Derk Pereboom, Living Without Free Will
T.M. Scanlon's Moral Dimensions
And although I haven't finished it yet (and so can't judge), I've found Christine M. Korsgaard's new book, Self-Constitution: Agency, Identity, and Integrity to be quite good thus far.
Finally the best (i.e., the one's I've read and really liked) single author collections that have come out this decade are:
John M. Fischer, My Way
R. Jay Wallace, Normativity and the Will
Gary Watson, Agency and Answerability
Of course this list no doubt reflects my idiosyncratic interests, and obviously, many other good things (e.g., experimental philosophy) have come out in action theory/free will/moral responsibility this decade.
Inevitably one will leave out lots of good stuff in this sort of enterprise. But in thinking about trying to pick just one article and just one written-through book, I would mention:
Dana Nelkin, "Two Standpoints and the Belief in Freedom", in the Journal of Philosophy.
Derk Pereboom, Living Without Free Will.
Posted by: John Fischer | December 19, 2009 at 10:38 AM
I'll follow John and pick just one paper and one monograph.
Michael Huemer, "Van Inwagen's Consequence Argument" in Phil. Review
Randy Clarke, Libertarian Accounts of Free Will
Posted by: Justin Capes | December 20, 2009 at 09:30 AM
This is tough, but I'll follow the trend of picking an article and a book:
Tim O'Connor, *Persons and Causes*
Richard Holton, "Partial Belief, Partial Intention," *Mind*, 117 (2008)
Posted by: Andrei Buckareff | December 20, 2009 at 07:21 PM
Clearly, Justin Coates is being excessively modest in his post here. After all, it seems obvious that one of the best papers of the decade is his own recent article, co-authored with Eddy Nahmias and Trevor Kvaran:
http://www2.gsu.edu/~phlean/papers/Nahmias_Coates_Kvaran.pdf
Posted by: Joshua Knobe | December 22, 2009 at 04:20 PM
A couple of things that I found very thought provoking:
Alfred Mele, Free Will and Luck, OUP 2006
Angela Smith, "Responsibility for Attitudes," Ethics 2005.
Posted by: R. Clarke | December 24, 2009 at 07:25 AM
Michael Thompson's "Naive Action Theory" is excellent.
Posted by: JK | December 24, 2009 at 09:45 AM
If we're including "free will" w/i philosophy of action then:
1. I want to enthusiastically agree with Josh about the Nahmias-Coates-Kvaran article. It's very impressive in both scope (e.g. the sheer amount of data collected) and technical precision (e.g. the application of tools from psychology and statistics to a philosophy problem).
2. For articles, the ones that stand out to me are:
Nichols & Knobe: Moral Responsibility and Determinism: The Cognitive Science of Folk Intuitions
Fischer: The Cards That Are Dealt You
Sommers: More Work for Hard Incompatibilism
Levy: his work on "constitutive luck" (these book chapters no longer seem to be online)
Mele: his work on the Zygote Argument
And, although unpublished, I really like Smilansky's "Egalitarianism, Free Will, and Ultimate Injustice" as well as Brian Park's idea of the Self-Switching Scenario. To be fair, though, these choices just reflect my personal biases. I'm also sure that I'm forgetting things.
In terms of books:
Living Without Free Will; and
Freedom Evolves
Posted by: Kip | December 24, 2009 at 05:29 PM
Thanks for mentioning me in this company, Kip. As agreed, no bills bigger than 20s... The papers went down in the great geocities collapse (because I was too cheap to have proper webhosting). But one paper along these lines is available in Phil Quarterly. Best of all, look kids: open access! (With thanks to the Wellcome Trust for paying the 2k.
Posted by: Neil Levy | December 26, 2009 at 01:30 PM
Thanks, Neil. I just reread that article, and I definitely think that it belongs on this list.
Posted by: Kip | December 27, 2009 at 10:42 AM