Philosophers vs. Ordinary Folks

In this class, we will look at some age-old questions concerning (1) free will and (2) morality and read a variety of texts in philosophy, psychology, and cognitive science.  Interestingly, we will find that ordinary people do not actually think about these issues in anything like the way that philosophers had assumed.  For each set of topics, we will first see how philosophers have traditionally answered classic philosophical problems.  Then we will read about current psychological experiments and investigations, which reveal how much philosophers’ intuitions diverge from those of the ordinary person, and attempt to understand why this divergence exists.