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I defend a view on free
will that I call "compatibilist
libertarianism" (or alternatively
"free-will emergentism"). According to this view,
free will requires three things:
(i) intentional agency,
(ii) the possibility of
doing otherwise, and
(iii) an agent's causal
control over his or her actions,
and, crucially, free
will, understood in this way, is a real
(albeit higher-level) phenomenon.
The view is
libertarian insofar as it entails
that free will requires indeterminism at
the agential level; and it is
compatibilist insofar as it asserts
that agential-level indeterminism is
compatible with physical-level
determinism.
My book, titled "Why free
will is real", was published in
2019
(look
inside).
See here for further information about
the book. For an earlier background
paper,
click here. |
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Media and social media coverage
For interviews
about my book, see
here (Nautilus),
here (Scientific American Blog),
here (Philosophy Bites),
here (Science Salon),
here (New Books Network), and
here (Om filosofers liv och tankar).
For a series of
blog posts, see
here (Brains Blog).
For a short
informal article, see
here (Boston Review).
For earlier coverage of my work on free
will in the media or social media, prior to my
book, see
Scientific American,
George Musser's blog,
Philosophical Disquisitions (Part 1),
(Part 2), and also
(Part 1),
(Part 2).
Highlighted papers
Free will: real or illusion? (A debate with G. D. Caruso and C.
J. Clark) The Philosopher 108(1), 2020
What's wrong with the consequence argument: In
defence of compatibilist libertarianism,
Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 119(3):
253-274, 2019
Emergent Chance (with M. Pivato),
The Philosophical Review 124(1): 119-152, 2015
My brain made me do it: The exclusion argument against free will, and
what’s wrong with it (with P. Menzies), in
H. Beebee, C. Hitchcock, and H. Price (eds.),
Making a Difference, Oxford (Oxford University),
2017
Two Intuitions about Free Will: Alternative
Possibilities and Intentional Endorsement (with W.
Rabinowicz), Philosophical Perspectives 28:
155-172, 2014
Free Will, Determinism, and the Possibility of
Doing Otherwise,
Nous 48(1): 156-178,
2014
Public lectures
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Lecture podcast, "Free will in a
deterministic world?", LSE, December 2012
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Science,
especially the idea that everything in
the universe is physically determined,
is often thought to challenge the notion
that we, humans, have free will and are
capable of choosing our own actions. The
aim of this lecture is to argue that
there is room for free will in a world
governed by the laws of physics. |
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Lecture
video, "Free will in a physical
world", University of Turin, November
2018 |
This is a recording of
the 2018 Logic, Language, and Cognition
Lecture at the University of Turin. |
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