In honor of the 50th anniversary of the publication of P. F. Strawson’s essay, "Freedom and Resentment" (Proceedings of the British Academy, 1962), the philosophy department at The College of William & Mary hosted a two-day conference last fall. Papers from that conference will make up the bulk of a... Continue reading

An eminently reasonable popular article on free will and neuroscience. Enjoy. Continue reading

Yep, that's right: P.F. Strawson's landmark article was originally published in Proceedings of the British Academy in 1962. In honor of its remarkable influence over the past half-century, The College of William & Mary is hosting a two-day conference this fall, Responsibility & Relationships, that will explore Strawsonian themes in... Continue reading

Speaking of experimental philosophy of free will: one of our best students at William & Mary (Adam Lerner) is writing a thesis on the topic and he is in the process of gathering data on intuitions about punishment. He has worked really hard on constructing this survey, and it would... Continue reading

Alright, here's a relatively straightforward question to kick off the new year (happy 2011, by the way): What work does the word 'moral' do in the phrase 'moral responsibility'? Here's one suggestion: we use the word 'moral' to differentiate the sort of responsibility at issue from other sorts of responsibility... Continue reading

When things around us start to go awry, and other people are somehow implicated in the undesirable turn of events, we are apt to respond to those people in a number of different ways. One of those ways of responding -- blaming -- has received a lot of attention recently,... Continue reading

Suppose I think that if determinism is true, then the only actions any of us *can* perform are those that we *do* perform. Further, suppose I think that if someone is blameworthy for an action, then she ought to have done something else instead. Finally, suppose I accept some appropriate... Continue reading

I mean this question in two senses. 1) What are our primitive terms? Say that a certain term is taken as primitive in a dialectical context if it is supposed in that context that sentences involving that term can't or needn't be given a definition that doesn't invoke the term... Continue reading