11-14 November 2024, 18:30-20:00, Charles Wilson LT (11th&12th); rm 745 James McCune Smith Building (13th & 14th)
Professor Pamela Hieronymi, Philosophy, UCLA: Minds Matter
The lectures are open to the public and free, but registration is required via Eventbrite.
About the lectures:
Lecture One: Problems in Life and a Problem in Theory
Lecture Two: Mind Control
Lecture Three: The Ethical Challenge
Lecture Four: Matter that Matters
My immodest ambition, in these Lectures, is to unwind what I take to be the problem of free will and moral responsibility. I think the problem can be unwound, because I believe it is a philosophical problem in the pejorative sense: It is created by certain philosophical pictures to which we are naturally (or culturally) prone. We model our life and experience in ways that, upon reflection, lead to difficulty and paradox. In this case, there are two problematic models. One concerns control. Our picture of what it is to control things is too narrow. The other concerns moral responsibility. Our model of moral responsibility is badly off center. The solution is to do some remodeling: to expand our too-narrow notion of control and recenter our off-center ideas about responsibility. This is what I will attempt. I believe the modifications I advocate still yield natural pictures of our experience. Nonetheless, making them can result in a noticeable shift in our understanding of both our place in the world and our relations to one another. I find that shift welcome. I believe the modifications not only avoid the philosophical problem; they also leave our models both more attractive and with a greater claim to being correct.