Nomy Arpaly: Three Dogmas and One Myth Revisited

The Yeoh Tiong Lay Centre for Politics, Philosophy and Law is delighted to invite Professor Nomy Arpaly (Brown University) to open the 2022/23 Lecture Series in Practical Agency.

 

Title:

Three Dogmas and One Myth Revisited

 

Abstract:

Analytical philosophers working on agency take it to be almost self-evident that 1. Actions on which you did not deliberate are somehow not quite yours or not quite actions 2. Actions that you do despite believing you shouldn't do are somehow not quite yours or not quite actions, and 3. Actions from which you feel alienated are somehow not quite yours and not quite actions. I argue that these are three dogmas that there are good reasons not to believe, related perhaps to a misleading variat of the old myth of humans as divided into a divine part and a beastly part.

 

Speaker Bio:

Nomy Arpaly is a professor of Philosophy at Brown University. She is the author of three books (one co-authored with Timothy Schroeder) and several journal articles. She is interested in ethics, agency, moral responsibility and moral psychology (not the kind with FMRIs).