B33: Free Will and Moral Responsibility - 3 units
George Thomas                    
Thurs. 1:00–2:30 p.m. - Oct. 30, Nov. 6, 13, 20, Dec. 4  
Meadows Presbyterian Church - Limit: 25

George Thomas is a professor emeritus, retired from the Philosophy Department at UVa, although he still teaches the occasional course there.  He has written about and taught courses in the areas of ethics, the philosophy of mind, Kant, and free will and responsibility.

The main focus of the course will be on the question whether the advances of science require us to revise or abandon our traditional conceptions of moral responsibility and legal punishment. In ordinary life, and in the law courts, people are held responsible for many of their actions and are praised, blamed, rewarded or punished accordingly. But this attitude and these practices seem difficult to justify if our actions are determined by psychological or physiological states that, in turn, are caused by events over which we have no control. Therefore, it is important to decide whether our picture of ourselves as free, responsible persons is compatible with a picture of ourselves as human organisms whose behavior can be given a scientific explanation. We will try to arrive at answers to the question by examining such topics as the nature and explanation of human action, the implications of scientific causal explanation, and the kind of freedom required for moral and legal responsibility.