Flickers of Freedom

Brian O'Shaugnessy (1925-2010)

I learned about this from Leiter's Blog.  Brian O'Shaugnessy has died. 

I did not know O'Shaugnessy.  But, while I rarely found myself in agreement with the positions he defended, I can say that I learned a lot from his writings and always found his essays stimulating. 

Those familiar with his work know that O'Shaugnessy's contributions to the philosophy of action and philosophy of mind were often difficult, sometimes frustrating, but always challenging and innovative.   For those unfamiliar with his work, O'Shaugnessy was one of the main figures in the philosophy of action who attempted to revive volitionism and helped make it one of the main contenders for a theory of action  Recently, his work focused on self-awareness.  But his work on the topic focused on self-awareness of agency.  For an introduction to O'Shaugnessy, the best place to start is his essay, "Trying (as the Mental 'Pineal Gland')," Journal of Philosophy 70 (1973), pp. 365-386 (it can also be found, with an appendix, in Al Mele's edited collection, The Philosophy of Action (OUP, 1997)).  If you are brave and have a lot of time, read O'Shaugnessy's The Will, 2nd ed., 2 vols.(CUP 2008).   A website for a recent conference held in his honor, with audio files of talks by a number of prominent philosophers of mind and action (e.g., Christopher Peacocke, Paul Snowden, Lucy O'Brien, Tyler Burge), can be found here.

Does Consciousness Matter?

These days, I am by trade a neuroethicist (no, I don’t know what that means either). This brings me into day to day contact with scientists. When I mention that I am a free will specialist, they tell me that Libet showed there could be no such thing. Of course we all know that Libet did no such thing. They are a whole bunch of criticisms out there in the literature which are each sufficient on their own to show that Libet did not succeed in that. Al Mele has shown that there is no reason to identify whatever mental event that subjects choose in these experiments with a conscious intention; Daniel Dennett has shown that fine-grained judgments of simultaneity of the kind Libet requires cannot be reliable; Owen Flanagan has questioned the ecological validity of the experiments… and so on. But what is the motivation for refuting Libet? Elsewhere, I have argued that despite the problems with Libet’s experiments, the results are precisely what we should expect, given any kind of broad physicalism. Intentions are neural events; the impulses from the event of intention formation ought to be registered later than the event itself (given that it takes time for impulses to travel across the brain). So: why the effort put into refuting an experiment that, for all its genuine problems, is aimed at demonstrating something we ought to expect?

Recent Work on Agency and Responsibility

I just noticed that John Martin Fischer has a new piece in the latest volume of The Philosophical Review entitled, "The Frankfurt Cases: The Moral of the Stories."  So, readers of this blog should definitely check it out.

I also thought I should take this opportunity to piece together a more thorough list of recent work on free will that has been published between 2009 and 2010.  And it dawned on me that the simplest strategy would be to simply use the Phil Papers data base.   So, below the told, you will find two extensive (but admittedly incomplete) lists of free will-related articles for 2009 and 2010.  If you notice any glaring omissions--and I am sure there are several--just post a reference in the discussion thread.  As always, happy reading!

An NPR Three-peat on Science and MR

Barbara Hagerty recently ran three pieces for NPR on the relationship between recent advances in science--especially MAOA research and work on psychopathy--and responsibility:

1. "A Neuroscientist Uncovers a Dark Secret"
2. "Inside a Psychopath's Brain"
3. "Can Your Genes Make You Murder?"

As always, happy reading!

p.s.  I plan to post something soon here on Flickers about both psychopathy and MAOA--which are two things I have been working on as of late.