Course Syllabus

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PHILOSOPHY 109/ UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY

  • Spring 2025
  • Monday/Wednesday/Friday 2:10-3:00 p.m.
  • 222 Wheeler

R. Jay Wallace.

  • Office: 134 Philosophy Hall
  • Email: rjw@berkeley.edu
  • Office Hours: Thursday 3:00–4:00 p.m. (other times by appointment)

GSI:

 Course Description:

The goal of the course is to provide a selective introduction to historical and contemporary debates about the issues of freedom and responsibility. We will look at the following questions (among others): What is freedom of the will?  What is it to be a free agent, or to have freedom of thought? What is involved in moral blame and moral accountability? What kind of freedom do we require to be morally responsible or blameworthy for what we do? Are freedom and responsibility possible if our actions are ultimately governed by deterministic laws? Can moral agency be realized in a world of natural causal processes?

Readings will be drawn from both historical and contemporary sources. 

Texts:

  • Watson, ed., Free Will (Oxford, 2003): 0-19-925494-X
  • Anselm, Three Philosophical Dialogues (Hackett, 2002): 0872206114
  • Chappell, ed., Hobbes and Bramhall on Liberty and Necessity (Cambridge, 1999): 0521596688

Requirements:

Two papers, 5 pages in length, due February 18 and March 24; and one paper of approximately 8 pages (or "take-home exam"), due on May 13. Note that all three of these written assignments must be completed and submitted in order to receive a passing grade for the class. Regular attendance at lectures and conscientious participation in discussion sections should also be considered requirements of the course.

Each of the first two papers will count toward 22.5% of the final grade; the third, longer paper will count toward 45% of the final grade; and 10% of the final grade will be based on performance in discussion section.

Course Policies:

  1. The class will be taught in-person at the scheduled times and places. Lectures will be recorded using Course Capture, and the recordings will be made available to those who are not able to attend particular sessions (e.g. on account of illness or temporary quarantine). Lecture notes (power point slides) will be made available on bCourses in advance of each class meeting.

  2. Plagiarism and cheating are not acceptable (though they are also pretty rare), and they will not be tolerated in this course. Students who violate the Student Code of Conduct will automatically receive a grade of F for the course, and their infraction will be reported to the Center for Student Conduct.

    Information about plagiarism, acceptable and unacceptable paraphrasing, and other aspects of our academic integrity policies may be found at the following links; if you have questions, please ask the instructor or your GSI!
    https://conduct.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Code_of_Conduct-July_2023.pdf
    http://teaching.berkeley.edu/berkeley-honor-code
    http://gsi.berkeley.edu/teachingguide/misconduct/paraphrasing.html

  3. Turnitin will be enabled for the two assigned papers. Your submission will be compared to a database of other papers and materials. (It will be added to the database too, but only for the purposes of future comparisons within UC Berkeley.) About 15 minutes after you submit, an originality report will be generated, which should be visible to you on the page where you submitted. (Don’t worry if the report shows some incidental matches; that's almost inevitable, even if your work is entirely your own.)

    What if the originality report shows that your work was not entirely your own? If you do nothing further, then your plagiarism will be reported to the Center for Student Conduct, and you will receive an F for the course (see #2 above). But you will also have the option of rewriting your paper or exam so that it is entirely your own work, and resubmitting it. So long as your final submission is your own work (and not, say, the product of just enough tweaking to get past Turnitin), we will ignore the earlier submissions. The aim is not to catch anyone, just to make sure that everyone fulfills the course requirements. (Note, however, that final submissions that are submitted after the deadline will be subject to the penalty scheme explained in #5 below.)

  4. It will also be regarded as cheating to have your papers written by Chat GPT or other AI tools. You are free to make use of these tools during the semester if you can think of effective ways to deploy them in support of your learning. But an AI summary is not a substitute for reading the assigned texts on your own, and it is certainly not okay to have a chatbot write a paper that you submit under your own name. A main aim of the course is to develop your ability to understand and analyze challenging arguments and to critically engage with them. You will acquire these skills, however, only if you read the assigned texts for yourself, and only if you write up your critical analyses of them on your own. A philosophy course is an opportunity to learn to think for yourself about hard problems, and this isn't the sort of thing that you can really outsource to an app or an AI tool!

  5. Due dates for written work will be enforced strictly. Students who submit late papers will ordinarily be penalized one grade interval (e.g. from B+ to B) for each 24-hour period that their paper is overdue. Extensions will be granted only for exceptional situations that could not have been anticipated and coped with through careful advance planning (e.g. family emergencies, illnesses, personal crises, etc.). It is your responsibility to contact your GSI and/or the instructor immediately if you think that you have encountered a circumstance of the kind that might merit an extension.

  6. Our goal is that this classroom should be a participatory community where everyone can fulfill their potential for learning; there is no place for sexual harassment or violence. If your behavior harms another person in this class, you may be removed from the class temporarily or permanently, or from the University. If you or someone you know experiences sexual violence or harassment, there are options, rights, and resources, including assistance with academics, reporting, and medical care. For more information, visit survivorsupport.berkeley.edu or path to care. You may also wish to consult the Department’s statement about equity and inclusion, which includes links to additional resources.

Resources:

Here are some links to helpful resources for reading philosophy texts and writing papers in philosophy.

Readings:

I. Historical Perspectives

Week of January 20

Week of January 27                                    

  • Anselm, On Freedom of Choice
  • Anselm, On the Fall of the Devil

Week of February 3

Week of February 10

[February 18: paper #1 due]

II. Freedom of Action, Freedom of Will, and Personhood

Week of February 17

  • Van Inwagen, "An Argument for Incompatibilism" (in Watson)
  • Wiggins, "Towards a Reasonable Libertarianism" (in Watson)

Week of February 24

  • Lewis, "Are We Free to Break the Laws?" (in Watson)
  • Williams, "How Free Does the Will Need to Be?", sec. 3 (bCourses)
  • Albritton, "Freedom of Will and Freedom of Action" (in Watson)

Week of March 3

  • Chisholm, "Human Freedom and the Self" (in Watson)
  • Clarke, "Toward a Credible Agent-Causal Account of Free Will" (in Watson)

Week of March 10

  • Frankfurt, "Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person" (in Watson)
  • Watson, "Free Agency" (in Watson)

Week of March 17

  • Bok, "Freedom and Practical Reason" (in Watson)
  • Moore, Ethics, chap. 6 (also available on bCourses

[March 24: paper #2 due]

Week of March 24

  • Spring Break

III. Moral Responsibility 

Week of March 31

Week of April 7

  • Wolf, "Asymmetrical Freedom" (bCourses)
  • Frankfurt, "Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility" (in Watson)

Week of April 14

  • Smart, "Freewill, Praise and Blame" (in Watson)
  • P. F. Strawson, "Freedom and Resentment" (in Watson)

Week of April 21

Week of April 28

[May 13, 11:30 a.m.: Final paper due]

 

Course Summary:

Course Summary
Date Details Due