UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS
PHILOSOPHY 793A: PHILOSOPHY OF ACTION

Vere Chappell                                                                        Fall 1996

TEXTS

Agents, Causes, and Events [ACE], ed. T. O'Connor (OUP 1995). 
Moral Responsibility [MR], ed. J.M. Fischer (Cornell UP 1986). 
Perspectives on Moral Responsibility [PMR], ed. J.M. Fischer and M. Ravizza (Cornell UP 1993).
Books by Austin, Hart, Anscombe, Kenny, and Davidson.
Copies of additional readings (marked 'PC') will be available for photocopying.

SCHEDULE

Sep 04 None: organizational meeting

Sep 11 Austin: A Plea for Excuses; Three Ways of Spilling Ink

Sep 18 Hart: Acts of Will and Respons...; Intention and Punishment; Negligence...; Respons...

Sep 25 Anscombe: Intention

Oct 02 Kenny: Action, Emotion and Will

Oct 09 Kenny: Action, Emotion and Will

Oct 16 None: no meeting

Oct 23 Davidson: Actions, Reasons, and Causes; Agency; Freedom to Act; Intending

Oct 30 Davidson: How is Weakness of the Will Possible?; Paradoxes of Irrationality [PC]
       Bratman: Practical Reasoning and Weakness of the Will [PC]
       Gosling: Weakness of the Will [PC]

Nov 06 Strawson: Freedom and Resentment [in PMR]
       Wolf: The Importance of Free Will [in PMR]

Nov 13 Frankfurt: Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person [in MR]
       Watson: Free Agency [in MR]
       Slote: Understanding Free Will [in MR]

Nov 20 Frankfurt: Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility [in MR]
       Van Inwagen: Ability and Responsibility [in MR]
       Wolf: Asymmetrical Freedom [in MR]

Nov 27 None: no meeting

Dec 04 Dennett: On Giving Libertarians What They Say They Want [in ACE]
       Van Inwagen: The Incomp of Respons and Det [in MR]; The Incomp of Free Will and Det [PC]
       Ginet: Reasons Explanation of Action [in ACE]
       Nozick: Choice and Indeterminism [in ACE]
       Kane: Two Kinds of Incompatibilism [in ACE]

Dec 11 Chisholm: Human Freedom and the Self [PC]
       Rowe: Two Concepts of Freedom [in ACE]; Responsibility, Agent-Causation... [in PMR]
       Clarke: Toward a Credible Agent-Causal Account of Free Will [in ACE]
       O'Connor: Agent Causation [in ACE]