PHIL 1.16 Morality and Freedom
In this course, we will focus on classic philosophical questions about morality, and their relation to questions about free will. We all have to address moral questions in our everyday lives, but how should we go about answering them? What makes actions right and wrong—is it the consequences of the action, or the principle followed, or something else? We all feel like we are free when we make important decisions. But does it make sense to think we might have free will, given that we are natural creatures, in a world governed by deterministic physical and biological laws? If we don’t have free will, can we be held morally responsible for our actions? Could the idea that there are things that we ought, morally, to do or not do even make sense? We will examine a variety of approaches to these central topics through studying both historical and contemporary philosophical texts.
Instructor
Thomasson