Assignment Instructions/ Description
Carefully read the brief Monterosso and Schwartz (M&S) article 'Did your brain make you do it?' from New York Times (It’s attached; sorry for the minor formatting issue in the lower corners). Explain their position in detail and provide a criticism of it. To do this successfully, you should respond to the following:
Where in the range of possibilities regarding human freedom (that we considered) do M&S fall? Use in your answer the terminology that we used when discussing the options. Support your answer with textual evidence. Quote or identify and paraphrase (e.g., “in the second sentence of the third paragraph they say …”) the shortest passages you can that show your answer is correct What do M&S believe is the correct view regarding the existence of spiritual or material minds? Again, use our terminology when answering, and support your answer with textual evidence. M&S are critical of the participants of their experiments. They even give a disparaging name to the participants’ view. Give M&S’s argument in standard form against the view they criticize. Make the reconstructed argument valid if possible; you might have to add a premise or two to capture their argument.Describe the specifics (to the extent that M&S give them) of the authors’ specific position with respect to human freedom and responsibility; they give this at the end. Without rehearsing general criticisms of their general view, present a criticism uniquely applicable to their specific position. You may organize your answers into a coherent essay or you can simply present your numbered answers to the questions. As usual, you will be graded on your adherence to instructions, depth of understanding, reasoning, organization, accuracy, clarity, grammar, spelling and punctuation.
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