Reading Vincent

My Ph.D. student Stephanie Hare – a.k.a. @neuroSteph on twitter – is every kind of awesome.

Steph’s awesome for many reasons, but what prompted this particular instance of my gushing of praise is that, despite having lots on her plate already, she still nevertheless followed up on my suggestion that we do a focused reading course on my work.

The result is a 10 week seminar/reading course that we’re calling “Reading Vincent”. =) Here’s a provisional list of papers we’ve chosen and the order in which we’ll be reading them:

  1. A Structured Taxonomy of Responsibility Concepts. In Nicole Vincent, Ibo van de Poel, and Jeroen van den Hoven (eds) Moral Responsibility: Beyond Free Will and Determinism, Springer, (2011), pp 15-35. DOI: 10.1007/978-94-007-1878-4_2
  2. Responsibility, dysfunction and capacity. (2008) Neuroethics, 1(3):199-204. DOI: 10.1007/s12152-008-9022-8
  3. Neuroimaging and Responsibility Assessments. (2011) Neuroethics, 4(1):35-49. DOI: 10.1007/s12152-008-9030-8
  4. Responsibility: distinguishing virtue from capacity. (2009) Polish Journal of Philosophy, 3(1):111-26.
  5. On the Relevance of Neuroscience to Criminal Responsibility. (2010) Criminal Law and Philosophy, 4(1):77-98. DOI: 10.1007/s11572-009-9087-4
  6. Madness, Badness, and Neuroimaging-Based Responsibility Assessments. In Michael Freeman (ed) Law and Neuroscience: Current Legal Issues (Vol 13), OUP, 2011, pp 79-95. ISBN: 978-0-19-959984-4
  7. Legal responsibility adjudication and the normative authority of the mind sciences. (2011) Philosophical Explorations, 14(3):315-31. DOI: 10.1080/13869795.2011.594937
  8. Restoring Responsibility: promoting justice, therapy and reform through direct brain interventions. (2014) Criminal Law and Philosophy, 8(1):21-42. DOI: 10.1007/s11572-012-9156-y
  9. Blame, Desert and Compatibilist Capacity: a diachronic account of moderateness in regards to reasons-responsiveness. (2013) Philosophical Explorations, 16(2):178–194. DOI: 10.1080/13869795.2013.787443
  10. A Compatibilist Theory of Legal Responsibility. (2013) Criminal Law and Philosophy, Available via Springer’s OnlineFirst. DOI 10.1007/s11572-013-9249-2

It makes every kind of sense for a graduate student to know their adviser’s work. For instance, it saves bucket-loads of time having to explain and re-explain why the adviser says the stuff they say, why they focus on the problems that they focus on, and why they make the particular suggestions that they make in discussions about how the student should proceed in their research. In my view it’s the grease that makes the gears run smoothly in an adviser/student relationship, and hopefully it also gives the student a leg up that others don’t get — namely, the ability to discuss a particular author’s body of work with that author.

For me it also provides a golden opportunity to spend time reflecting on some central themes in my work over the past few years with a really intelligent person, to figure out what really needs to be re-though, to get an overview of how bits of what I’ve written (do not) fit together, and also hopefully to notice stuff about my own work that I otherwise might never have noticed.

It’s also particularly timely since I’m currently working on my plan for CTLR and drafting chapter descriptions as I go along.

So, hurrah to Steph! =D

PS In the coming days we’re probably going to add my papers related to the Enhancing Responsibility project, as well as my work in the philosophy of tort law and on luck egalitarianism – i.e. the above list is a work-in-progress that will get updated over the next few days – but for now I thought I’d post this blog while I’m excited by how lucky I am to have such an awesome grad student as Steph! n