Free Will and Moral Responsibility
HUMS S260 (CRN: 30230)
Instructors: Lawrence Vogel
Dates: Session A, May 26 - June 27, 2025
Course Mode: In-Person
Meeting Times: MWF 9.00-11.15
Distributional Requirements: Humanities
Eligibility: Open to pre-college and college students
In-person Course. The question of free will matters because it seems fair to hold people morally responsible for what they do only if they act of their own free will. But do human beings have free will? If so, what is it, and how is it related to moral and legal responsibility? If we don’t have free will, how can we justify our ordinary moral responses: judgments of praise and blame, morally laden emotions like pride, indignation, shame and guilt, and practices of reward and punishment? Even if much of our behavior is freely chosen, there are times when people are excused for wrongful acts or even exempted from moral responsibility altogether. How do excuses and exemptions function? Are we becoming a society that diminishes the value of personal responsibility by accepting too many excuses? Or are we more enlightened and humane when we appreciate how limited personal responsibility is in the face of biological and environmental “givens” and historical and social circumstances that move people to behave as they do? We shall pay special attention to the phenomenon of complicity in the wake of social pressure to comply with wrongdoing. Enrollment limited to 20 students. 1 Credit. Session A: May 26 – June 27. Tuition: $5270.