OPTION 1:
(a) Write a conventional philosophy paper. (See Shelly Kagan, “How to Write a Philosophy Paper,” if you
haven’t written a paper for me before. Most of you have.)
There should be a clear statement of your thesis in the first paragraph.
There should be an exposition of the argument of the article or articles you are engaging with that would be
accessible to someone who has not read that article or those articles. One of the most difficult things in
philosophy is to write a good exposition of someone else’s argument, but if you succeed, it becomes much
easier to spot potential problems with their reasoning.
You will need to argue for your thesis, and also entertain and reply to at least one possible objection to your
If you agree with the author, then you should try to give their argument a hard time by raising the best
objections you can think of to it, and then defend their argument against those objections.
If you disagree with the author, you should try to defend their argument against your objections as well as you
can, and then explain why those replies still do not succeed.
OPTION 2: (b) Write a philosophical dialogue, like Alfred Mele’s “Dialogue on Free Will and Science” that you
read in Week 9. There is a long tradition of writing philosophy in this form, dating back to Plato. I have also
posted a famous dialogue by John Perry on personal identity to give you a better sense of the genre.
You will need at least two characters to advocate for each side of the issue, but you are welcome to introduce
more characters than that.
One of the characters should represent your own views. But this character should not dominate the dialogue
with long uninterrupted speeches. This should be a good debate, with compelling presentations of both sides.
Your own character’s views could develop throughout the dialogue–they needn’t be correct about everything
right from the start. There might be aspects of their initial position that they subsequently abandon or revise
under questioning from the other characters. That would be a nice touch.
Before you start writing you should first carefully study the article or articles you will be engaging with, so that
you can be an effective advocate for the author in your dialogue, whether you ultimately agree with the author
or not. (You could make the author a character in the dialogue, or instead you could have different characters
advocating for different components of the author’s arguments.)
But you should also go beyond the readings by inventing new arguments, new objections, new replies to
objections, and so on.
TOPICS:
Personal Identity-
(1) Derek Parfit, “Personal Identity.”
Derek Parfit argues, on the basis of the two brain hemispheres example, that identity does not matter. He
thinks that you would have no reason to prevent the other hemisphere of your brain from being transplanted
into another body, even though as a consequence you would not be identical to either of the resulting people,
and so would no longer exist. He also thinks that if after committing a murder, you arranged to have each
hemisphere of your brain transplanted into a different body, each of the resulting people would deserve to be
punished for the murder you committed, even though neither of them would be you.
Is Parfit right? (Tackling both of these claims might be too much, so it might be better to focus on just one of
them.)
(2) Stephen Law, “Brain Transplants.”
In the beginning of his article, Stephen Law presents some examples (Brain Transplant, Brain Recorder) that
seem to support the psychological theory. Towards the end, he gives two examples involving a duplicator gun
that seem to support animal theory. (The Parfit story I asked you about on the midterm also appears to support
animal theory, since we’re inclined to think that when the teletransporter malfunctions, the person with the heart
condition is obviously still you.) Each theory yields a different answer to the puzzle he raises at the very end of
the article, namely, whether it’s a good idea or bad idea for Joe Jones to step into the teletransporter.
Law himself does not tell us which theory he thinks is correct, and so does not take a position on the puzzle
about teletransportation. Take a position on this question and argue for it.
(3) Elyn Saks, “The Criminal Responsibility of People with Multiple Personality Disorder.”
This was not a course reading, but I recall some students expressing an interest in multiple personality disorder
when we were discussing personal identity. Below is the question she addresses. (The whole article is in this
folder, it’s not long.) Is her argument persuasive?
Let us hypothesize a multiple (“Multiple”), who has two personalities, John and Joe. John is good, Joe bad. Joe
is aware of John, and very scornful of him, but John is not in the least aware of Joe, although he knows he
“loses time.” One day Joe, consistent with his personality, kills a man. The police quickly arrest him for the
crime. The problem is that Joe has left the scene psycho- logically, and it is John who wakes up in jail charged
with murder. He is mystified by the charge, and vehemently denies having killed anyone. When hypnosis elicits
the later personality, how- ever, Joe proudly confesses to the crime. Can John now argue that he is not guilty,
because it was not he who committed the crime, but Joe?
Topic:
Free Will and Moral Responsibility-
(4) David Eagleman, “The Brain on Trial”
Focus on Charles Whitman and Alex. Do you agree with Eagleman that neither one of them is responsible for
their actions? Is one more responsible than the other? What would a compatibilist say about them?
For some additional information about Alex, here’s a Radiolab podcast (they call him “Kevin.”)
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/episodes/317421-blame
(5) Ted Sider, “Free Will.”
This topic would be best handled in dialogue form. Ted Sider distinguishes between hard determinism,
libertarianism, and soft determinism. Assign characters to advocate for each of these three positions and have
one of the character (the one who represents your own point of view) ultimately prevail in the debate.
(6) Benjamin Libet, “Do We Have Free Will?” and John-Dylan Haynes, “Unconscious determinants of free
decisions in the human brain.” https://www.nature.com/news/2008/080411/full/news.2008.751.html
The Haynes article was not a course article. It is an updated version of Libet’s experiment that has gotten a lot
of attention. John-Dylan Haynes believes that he has a better method than Libet and has made an even more
surprising finding, namely, that whether subjects press a button on the left or the right is strongly influenced by
a brain process that begins up to 10 seconds before the subjects felt they had made the decision of which
button to press.
What’s the difference between his experiment and Libet’s? Does Haynes’s experiment improve on Libet’s? Do
his results show that we lack free will?
Topic:
The Neuroscience of Morality
(11) Joshua Greene makes an influential argument that science