Abstract:

Freedom of will seems to demand alternative possibilities: in order to be able to choose, we should be able to choose one way or another. The Consequence Argument (CA) aims to prove that physical determinism is incompatible with free will, because it rules out alternative possibilities. The CA is often considered one of the most serious challenges for compatibilism. In the talk I will review the standard formulation of the CA and argue that one of its premises, the Principle of the Fixity of the Past, should not be accepted by the compatibilists. The compatibilists should instead rely on an analysis of ‘could’ that explains what kinds of changes in the past of the possible worlds close to the actual world ensure that the statement ‘the agent could have done otherwise’ is true. 

Speaker:

Dr. Maria Sekatskaya is a post-doc at the Düsseldorf Center for Logic and Philosophy of Science (DCLPS), Chair of Theoretical Philosophy of Prof. Dr. Gerhard Schurz at the University of Düsseldorf, Germany. She defended her PhD Dissertation at the Saint-Petersburg State University, Russia in 2010, and is currently employed as a member of the Inductive Metaphysics research project by Prof. Dr. Gerhard Schurz. Her main re-search interest is within the free will debate. She also works on the problems of personal identity and moral responsibility, especially in connection with the free will problem.