Abstract:

Strong notions of free will are often closely connected to the possibility to do otherwise as well as to an agent's ability to causally influence her environment via her decisions controlling her actions. In this paper we employ techniques from the causal modeling literature to investigate whether a notion of free will subscribing to one or both of these requirements is compatible with different views of the world such as non-reductive physicalism or determinism. We argue that from a causal modeler's perspective the only possibility to get both requirements consists in subscribing to reductive physicalism and indeterminism.

Speaker:

Alexander Gebharter is a postdoc at the Department of Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Groningen, Netherlands. Before, he was a postdoc at the Düsseldorf Center for Logic and Philosophy of Science (DCLPS) at the University of Düsseldorf, Germany. He obtained his PhD from the University of Düsseldorf and his MA from the University of Salzburg, Austria. His research interests lie in philosophy of science and its intersection with metaphysics and philosophy of mind. He is especially interested in causation and related topics.

For more information, see Alexander's personal website: www.alexandergebharter.com