Doppelganger Garden of Forking Paths

New Garden Feature: Discussion Boards for Books We Are Reading

On the left column, under the Contributors and Categories lists, you will see Current Garden Reading, a list of books that some of us are reading. Each item has a link to the book (via Amazon.com) and a link to a discussion board where we can post questions and comments concerning that particular book. Check them out!

Feel free, Gardeners, to send the Coordinators a list of books you are (or are planning on) reading. We will update the Current Garden Reading section periodically, picking material from those lists. Comments and suggestions welcome, as usual!

John Fischer on Randolph Clarke’s New Book

Those of you who live in sunny and free will-driven Southern California will have the opportunity to attend John Fischer’s seminar on Randolph Clarke’s new book, Libertarian Accounts of Free Will, starting Tuesday, Sept. 28th, from 2 pm to 5 pm, at the UC Riverside Philosophy Department.

Special guests: Harry Frankfurt, Stewart Goetz, and the author of the book himself, among others.

Philosophy of Art Blog

Another topical blog, this time devoted to Philosophy of Art. Contributors include grad students and faculty from Columbia, Temple, Tel Aviv University, Minnesota State University, Auburn University, California State University, and Central Michigan University. Check it out here.

Help us with the Agency Calendar

We would like the Garden to include a calendar of agency-related events throughout the country. We are working on it, but it would be great if you could e-mail us to let us know about upcoming events (i.e. talks, seminars, conferences, etc.). We will post them in the calendar, which hopefully will become a useful resource for those interested in these issues.

Experimental Philosophy Blog

This new blog on "experimental" or empirically informed philosophy focuses on interdisciplinary research in philosophy, legal theory, and psychology. It's run by one of our contributors, Eddy Nahmias, along with Al Mele, Josh Knobe, and Thomas Nadelhoffer. Right now there's a discussion on whether incompatibilism is intuitive, and another, related one, on the role of intuitions in philosophy. Check them out!

New Papers!

Don't forget to check our Papers on Agency Blog, which now has new pieces by John Fischer, Pamela Hieronymi, Neil Levy, Saul Smilansky and Manuel Vargas. (To regularly access the Papers on Agency Blog, go to the the right-hand column, scroll down, and between "Archives" and "Other Homepages" you will find the link Online Papers).

A brief overview: Fischer's papers address recent criticisms to his r.r. view; Hieronymi argues that, although belief is not voluntary, it is subject to two robust forms of agency; she then draws a parallel between intention and belief which yields the following conclusion: in the same sense that you cannot believe at will, you cannot intend at will; Levy's paper discusses new Trolley Problem type examples; Smilanksy examines Fischer's recent approach to the moral luck problem (which allegedly threatens compatibilism). Finally, Vargas's PPQ paper will be helpful to better understand the discussion that Dan Speak has just launched here in the Garden on the need (or not?) to revise our folk concepts regarding moral responsibility.

New Philosophy of Religion Blog

You might find this new blog interesting. I took a quick look and found postings on free will and necessitation, God's foreknowledge and freedom, and even one on the Consequence Argument. The blog is appropriately called Prosblogion.

Blogging norms

Here's another posting in Brian Weatherson's blog on "Blogging Etiquette", which addresses interesting issues on discussing people's ideas in public fora like blogs. It's worth looking into...

Free Humor...

Well, yes, this blog has its bit of humor. I wanted to point that there is a posting in Brian Weatherson's blog that records philosophical break-up lines. I posted the following there, so I guess I can safely reproduce it here:

The Compatibilist I (Frankfurt-type version): Honey, you have to understand this: I freely decided to break up with you, but I couldn’t have done otherwise.

The Compatibilist II (Fischer version): I am moderately receptive but weakly reactive to your love.

And here's John Fischer's contribution, that you can read in the same blog:

The Semicompatibilist: We weren’t completely compatible, and I only sort-of loved you anyway. But don’t worry: nothing we really care about will be lost…

Collective Decision-Making and Its Discontents

Here's an overview and bibliography on the discursive dilemma, prepared by Christian List. The dicursive dilemma, List explains, "concerns the aggregation of several individuals' judgments on multiple propositions into corresponding collective judgments on these propositions", where this aggregation of judgments yields paradoxical results. Aggregation problems of this kind occur in collective decision-making bodies like committees, legislatures, judiciaries and expert panels.