Philosophy of Mind Seminar
Determinism is often philosophically the guideline in which we see a threat to free will: another is psychopathology.
Often, mental disorders does mitigate moral responsibility, but there is no general inference. It is less about the possession of a mental disorder but rather the operation of the symptoms in each case.
It is tempting to think of the mentally ill generally as someone to be treated, and not to be sent to prison.
Naive view:
Mental disorders are pathological, so actions unfluenced by mental disorders inherit the property of being pathological. One is not responsible because one is not ultimately responsible for the having the disorder (the same goes for all our actions..). Mentally disordered are except from usual practices of holding people responsible.
If mental disorder → some conclusion about their responsibility.
Moral responsibility requires agency. Thus a mental disorder plausible excuses ana action only if it completely bypasses one’s agency.
Evaluation:
King & May presentation:
I think the first presenter spoke very well and showed the topic very succintly. The content about the cases were easy to understand.
The second presenter probably had a bit too much to present on, because it seemed like he had to read from his script and work on the computer quite avidly. It was a bit difficult to follow. His speaking was very clear however. I guess it would have been good if they were more people doing the presentation, I don’t know whether people just didn’t show up or if no one else signed up for this group.
I didn’t necessarily understand how the presentation is philosophical, but then again the text was not particularly philosophical either.
Strawson presentation:
The first presenter was quite slow and difficult to listen to despite only introducing the presentation.
The second presenter was very easy to listen to, and her explanations were fairly clear. The difference between compatibilism and incompatibilism was clear.
The third presenter spoke quite low but it was still audible, then again, I was directly in front of them. Pessimism was fairly well explained but I was a unsure what ’mental construct’ refers to. I was a little uncertain about who ’they’ were in their second slide.
The same problem as before was present when the first presenter came back. The explanation of ultimate moral responsibility still worked. The fact that they split up their sentences make it a bit hard to follow.
The last presenter spoke in a clear voice and his explanation of Strawson was also good. It was clear that prior philosophies has argued that we may not have free will but we certainly believe in it.
When the third presenter spoke again her voice was clear. It seems she was more interested in presenting on this topic.