It matters a great deal to most of us that our decisions are really up to us; when philosophers have argued that whatever it was you did, you couldn't have helped it, that comes across as a skeptical nightmare. But explanations of what that amounts to go off in startlingly different directions: Is it being somehow exempted from the causal order of the world? Or on the contrary, is having your decision processes embedded in the causal order in the right way -- is that what it takes? Is it rather about having the sort of integrated personality that lets you own what you did and act as a responsible person? Or does it have to do with the way that when you choose, you see yourself as facing options? We'll examine these and other positions, in the service of trying to articulate that underlying concern: What is it we want, when we want our will to be free, and why does it matter?
PHIL 4400/6400
Fall 2026
Time: Th 2:00-5:00
Location: CTIHB 459