Criminal Law

You are encouraged not to use any outside sources for this paper. If you do feel the need to use outside materials, please make sure that you provide full and accurate references and that your main argument in the paper goes beyond the ideas found in those sources. Plagiarism is a very serious violation of the student honor code, and it will not be tolerated.
I. After reading the attached excerpt from a 1982 newspaper article by M. Corwin describing the murders committed by Robert Alton Harris as well as the criminal’s history, write an essay in which you answer the following questions: Did Harris exercise free agency when committing the crimes? Could he have done otherwise? Given his background, was it really up to him whether to murder? Is Harris morally responsible for his actions? How can this scenario be used to shed light on the possibility of free will and moral responsibility in a deterministic universe? Provide evidence in support of your main claims. (Please note that you are expected to engage in your presentation with the views and arguments on free will that we discussed in our course, such as van Inwagen’s Consequence argument and Ayer’s defense of Compatibilism. Since the bulk of the essay should be devoted to defending some philosophical thesis about free will and moral responsibility, your summary of the scenario about Harris should be very concise and include only information that you need to develop your philosophical argument.)

https://www.nature.com/news/2011/110831/full/477023a.html
What do you make of neuroscientific experiments purporting to show that the decision to do X is settled by neural events that occur before the conscious awareness of choosing to do X? Such experiments seem to suggest that our brain makes our decisions for us some time before we become aware of them and have the subjective feeling of choosing. In what way are these experiments relevant to the free will problem in your view? Assuming that such experimental results are reliable, would that be enough to show we lack free will and moral responsibility? Provide evidence in support of your main claims. (Please note that you are expected to engage in your presentation with the views and arguments on free will that we discussed in our course, such as van Inwagen’s Consequence argument and Ayer’s defense of Compatibilism. Since the bulk of the essay should be devoted to defending some philosophical thesis about free will and moral responsibility, your summary of these experimental findings should be very concise and include only information that you need to develop your philosophical argument.)
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o use standard font, in 12 point
o double space, using 1 inch margins
o number your pages
o at the top of the first page include your name, date, essay title and word count
o proofread and spellcheck before submitting the paper
o when quoting course materials (which you should do sparingly, since this is a very short essay), it is enough to indicate the name of the author and the page number; example: (Ayer, p. 405)