DEC 1

26: DEC 1

Stage 4: Back-evaluation: After you receive your peer comments and my evaluation, take a few minutes to fill out this quick "back evaluation" rating form: [1]. Fill out the form for each reviewer, but not Alfino. Up to 10 points, in Q&W.

Stage 1: Please write an 1000 word maximum answer to the following question by December 7, 2020, class time.

Topic: Many contemporary thinkers and researchers (from philosophers to biologists and lawyers) have raised questions about whether our praising and blaming behaviors are really as well justified as we imagine. In the first 3/4 of your essay, develop an organized discussion of this problem(C1), drawing primarily upon information and resources in this unit. Identify and try to answer the key questions you see at stake in the discussion (C2). Then, in the last 1/4 of your essay, try to assess the argument (C3), which some legal theorists are making, that we should move away from retributive punishment and toward a utilitarian approach. Be sure to demonstrate the connection between your analysis of the problem and your assessment of the future of retributive punishment.

Advice about collaboration: For this assignment, we need to modify our collaboration advice. You will have access to all of the rough drafts (with all new animal pseudonyms) and you will have read and commented on three of them before finishing your own. You are welcome to cite any ideas from any of the papers. If you borrow ideas from another author, give credit to the author by citing the animal name in your text. This again is what we do in an academic research community.

Do not put your name in the file or filename. You may put your student id number in the file. Put a word count in the file.
In Word, check "File" and "Options" to make sure your name does not appear as author. You may want to change this to "anon" for this document.
Format your answer in double spaced text in a 12 point font, using normal margins.
Save the file in the ".docx" file format using the file name "MoralResponsibility".
Log in to courses.alfino.org. Upload your file to the "'Final Essay' dropbox.

Stage 2: Rough Draft Review. Please review three student answers and provide brief comments and a score. We will use our regular assignment rubric, but rather than producing a score for the paper I will ask you to evaluate three specific items in the prompt as you find them in the rough drafts you review. Complete your evaluations by December 11, 2020, 11:59pm.

Use [this Google Form] to review four peer papers. The papers will be in our shared folder, but please do not edit or add comments to the papers directly. This will compromise your anonymity.
To determine the papers you need to peer review, I will send you a key with animal names in alphabetically order, along with saint names. You will find your animal name and review the next four (4) animals' work.
Some papers may arrive late. If you are in line to review a missing paper, allow a day or two for it to show up. If it does not show up, go ahead and review the next animal in the list until you have four reviews. This assures that you will get enough "back evaluations" of your work to get a good average for your peer review credit.

Stage 3: Back-evaluation: After you receive your peer comments, take a few minutes to fill out this quick "back evaluation" rating form: [2]. Fill out the form for each reviewer, but not Alfino. Up to 10 points, in Points.

Dennett's stance on free will is compatibilism with an evolutionary twist – the view that, although in the strict physical sense our actions might be pre-determined, we can still be free in all the ways that matter, because of the abilities we evolved. Free will, seen this way, is about freedom to make decisions without duress (and so is a version of Kantian positive practical free will, i.e., Kantian autonomy), as opposed to an impossible and unnecessary freedom from causality itself. To clarify this distinction, he uses the term 'evitability' (the opposite of 'inevitability'), defining it as the ability of an agent to anticipate likely consequences and act to avoid undesirable ones. Evitability is entirely compatible with, and actually requires, human action being deterministic. (from wiki page)

You could also think of free will as the specific cultural form that we use to think about agency

Is the free will issue a distraction? Hard to say. If we talked about free will in terms of capacities would we be denying free will? Maybe liability and negligence standards would work better. The history of free will talk is much shorter than the history of capacities and agency talk.

One more time on praise and blame "talk" vs. realities needed to back it up. The social utility of talk and the everyday cruelties it can cause. (Digression on the happiness question lurking here.)