The Fog Blog

Interesting thoughts here on the subjective experience of punishment.

By all accounts, my fellow UBC graduate student Roger Clarke's paper went down very well at the Pacific APA, which finished in Pasadena, California today, although unfortunately I missed his presentation. The paper is titled “How to Manipulate an Incompatibilistically Free Agent”, and Roger was kind enough to give me a copy ahead of time to read (it's also available here - just scroll down or "find" by title or name, then click on the icon to the left to download as a Pdf); to my mind, this paper breaks new ground in the alternative possibilities debate. Worth reading. Well done Roger!

More here on instituting informal peer review at Philosophy, et cetera. (See my earlier post here.)

The highlight for me of this year's Pacific APA (which starts tomorrow here in Pasadena, California) will undoubtedly be the Invited Symposium “Four Views on Free Will” on Thursday morning. Speaking will be Michael McKenna (Florida State University) on “Compatibilism”; Derk Pereboom (Cornell University) on “Hard Incompatibilism”; Robert Kane (University of Texas–Austin) on “Libertarianism”; and Manuel Vargas (University of San Francisco) on “Revisionism”. Meanwhile, an article by Chris Colin in the San Francisco Chronicle asks whether we deserve what we earn (whether we earn a lot, or – I suppose – a little, as in my case!). Colin asks John Perry, who spoke at UBC last weekend; the short version of Perry’s answer is “No!” – but there is further discussion on this topic (i.e., desert, moral luck, and free will) here. I’ve also only just learned that the 2009 Pacific APA will be held in Vancouver! (At least I won’t have to travel far!)

Neuroethics Launch at Pacific APA -

The big launch of the new journal, Neuroethics, happens this weekend at the Pacific APA conference.  The launch will happen right after the moral cognition session, described here by editor-in-chief Neil Levy:

If you are attending the Pacific APA - or in the area - drop in on us when we launch the new journal Neuroethics (first issue available here). Rather than just talking about neuroethics, we will be doing it with a symposium on moral cognition (4-6 pm, Saturday March 22). The speakers are Adina Roskies (Dartmouth), Matthew Liao (Oxford) and Jim Woodward ( Caltech; kindly stepping in for Jeanette Kennett); the general theme will be neuroscience and moral intuitions.

I'm told there will be free drinks at the launch.  So come for the moral cognition, stay for the neuroethics.

[Neuroethics & Law Blog]

This is an extremely interesting post, I think, and it surely indicates the direction in which things are likely to go. In response to the "technical know how" issue with which Richard ends his post, might I suggest using Drupal as an effective open-source content management system? My own website (this one) uses Drupal, and it's easy to use - although I'm hardly using it to anything like its potential; Drupal is a powerful and currently rapidly evolving tool. In any case, this seems like an excellent idea.

UPDATE [March 16th]: The discussion continues apace here.

Thomas Pink on Free Will -

We often blame people for what they do or fail to do. But that implies that they were free to choose whether or not to act in the way they did. At the same time science seems to reveal prior causes of all our actions. There seems little or no room for free will.  In this episode of Philosophy Bites Thomas Pink, author of Free Will: A Very Short Introduction, discusses the Free Will Problem and outlines his own approach to it.

Listen to Tom Pink on Free Will

[Philosophy Bites]

A mini philosophy of mind conference will be held at the University of British Columbia next weekend, Saturday, March 15th at the Ponderosa Centre. Speaking will be Murat Aydede (UBC), John Perry (Stanford), Kathleen Akins (Simon Fraser), Brie Gertler (Virginia). Should be good! Details here (or above).

Conference at Columbia will address this issue. (A: Seems unlikely, but you never know.)

More from Mark Rowlands. (See his previous post here.)