Goodness – I cannot believe that it is almost April. I have been inundated with work these last few months, working hard on my honors thesis, organizing a philosophy conference, figuring out where to go to grad school, finishing up the requirements for my psychology major, taking a philosophy seminar on rules (for fun!), and taking an advanced psychology stats class (also for fun!). Unfortunately, I have also been increasing my intake of cheap instant coffee while decreasing the amount of time I spend sleeping each night. But it’s been worth it!
Nov
30
Semester Roundup
Are we seriously in the last week of classes already? This semester has flown by. I have had quite a bit going on in addition to writing my honors thesis—applying to grad school in particular comes to mind—but these are all good things.
Aug
08
Summery Summary
Alas, I am nearing the end of my summer research. As an RA, I head back to school on Thursday to begin training on Friday. I am genuinely blown away by how fast this summer went by. For someone whose days were primarily spent reading philosophy article after philosophy article (with the occasional psychology article thrown in), I would have expected this summer to drag, if anything. Sometimes the days did seem to take awhile to get through, but more often than not I would think to myself as I nodded off at night, “Didn’t I just do this?” I take this as a good thing.
Jul
13
A Brief Note on the Coherence of Constitutive Luck
Lately I’ve been thinking about luck, mostly because I think luck is really the driving force behind most arguments against free will and moral responsibility. The basic thought here is that we usually think that in order for someone to be morally responsible for something, they must have been in control of it. The thing is, it seems quite plausible that all of our actions and decisions are traceable to factors outside our control—say, our genes combined with our environment. If this is right, how can we be morally responsible for what we do?
Jun
21
Thinking out loud about evolution and anger
Time since my last post has consisted of quite a bit of reading, outlining, and, well, lots of thinking. Thinking about what? What I’m arguing for, how exactly it differs from positions other people have defended, and how best to argue for it. While nothing very significant has changed about my formulation of consequentialist compatibilism, I am constantly challenging myself to find novel and effective ways of arguing for it. Here I’ll talk about one family of arguments I have been throwing around in my head. But first, some background.
May
30
Mapping the Terrain
In my previous post, I promised that I would elaborate on the consequentialist compatibilist thesis, which I then vaguely described as the view that the justifiability of holding people responsible is somehow tied to whether holding them responsible produces beneficial consequences. There are a number of ways this relationship might be understood. This post represents my first go at mapping out the conceptual terrain.
May
25
What Do You Mean, “Morally Responsible”?
Even within philosophical debates, the term “responsibility” is exceptionally ambiguous. In order to forestall the perpetual worry that I might be talking past my opponents, one of the first tasks I’ve set out for myself this summer is to clarify what it is I aim to be giving an account of when I say I am giving an account of moral responsibility.
Apr
22
Rehabilitating the Consequentialist View of Moral Responsibility
Hello everyone! My name is Adam Lerner, and I’m a junior here at the College majoring in both philosophy and psychology. Although I’m officially doing my honors thesis in the philosophy department, finding satisfactory answers to the questions I’ll be pursuing will also require getting out of my philosophical armchair and conducting some empirical research as well. In order to see why, let me give you some background to the philosophical problem I’ll be tackling.