Prof. Ben Vilhauer, from the City College of New York.

“Taking free will skepticism seriously.”

Location: North Academic Center, room 5/144, at 12:30pm.

Abstract: We do seriously harmful things to each other in the name of free will. We say the guilty deserve to suffer because they freely did evil, and on this basis, we justify killing them, or torturing them in prison. But ideas about free will also seem fundamental to the moral reasoning which guides us to do beneficial things for each other.  Reasonable people disagree about whether or not we have free will.  If we take this disagreement seriously, we see that our reasons for believing in free will are not strong enough to justify seriously harmful retribution, but are strong enough to justify the beneficial things we do in the name of free will.

Lunch will be served