Schedule of Readings and Assignments

September

10 Outline of requirements; Introduction to course material

17 Individual Responsibility Frankfurt, “Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility”; Strawson, “Freedom and Resentment”; Watson, “Responsibility and the Limits of Evil”

24 Collective Responsibility Lewis (1948), “Collective Responsibility”; Cooper, “Collective Responsibility” (1968); Downie, “Collective Responsibility” (1969); Feinberg, “Collective Responsibility” (1970)

October

1 Social Dimensions of Responsibility Calhoun, “Responsibility and Reproach”; Benson, “Feeling Crazy: Self-Worth and the Social Character of Responsibility”; Walker, “Charting Responsibilities: From Established Coordinates to Terra Incognita”

8 Kutz Chapters 1 and 2

15 Collective Intention Copp, “Can Societies Be Choosers?”; Gilbert, “What Is It for Us to Intend?”; Bratman, “Shared Intention”

22 Collective Action Gilbert, “Walking Together: A Paradigmatic Social Phenomenon”; Copp, “Collective Actions and Secondary Actions”

29 Kutz Chapter 3

November

5 Kutz Chapters 4 and 5

12 Individual responsibility in collective contexts French, “The Responsibility of Inactive Fictive Groups for Great Social Problems”; Abbarno, “Role Responsibility and Values”; Mellema, “Collectives and the Diluting of Responsibility”; Brunk, “Professionalism and Responsibility in the Technological Society”

19 Kutz Chapter 6

26 Corporate Responsibility French, “The Corporation as a Moral Person”; May, “Vicarious Agency and Corporate Responsibility”; Velasquez, “Why Corporations Are Not Morally Responsible for Anything They Do”

December

3 Kutz Chapters 7 and 8

Assignments

10 commentaries, 2 pages each (20%); commentaries will be used a basis for class discussion (particularly answers to question 2), and will be due at the end of each class. Late papers and papers from absentees will not be accepted. You may choose which classes (after today) you will not hand in a commentary keeping in mind that you are required to hand in 10 (this isn’t an invititation to skip those other two meetings!). Each commentary should answer the following two questions and will be graded out of a total of 10 (5 per question):

(1) What, to your mind, is the two most difficult (or controversial; i.e. no easy answer) question raised in or by the discussion in the last class meeting—and why are those questions difficult?

(2) What, to your mind, are the two most interesting points raised in or by the readings assigned for the class on which the paper is due—and why are those points interesting (i.e., not simply to you)?

One 12-14 page term paper due Monday, December 9, 2002 and presented at the mini-conference (70%). Please hand in two copies, one for me, one for your commentator.

One 3-4 page commentary to be presented at the mini-conference and handed in afterwards for grading (10%). Proposed date: Friday, December 13, 2002. If we cannot fix a date for the mini-conference, commentaries will be due on Friday, December 13 in any case.