Punishing Without Free Will

Ethics without Free Will

Moral theories typically rest upon the assumption that conscious deliberation plays a causal role in action; however, a growing body of scientific evidence supports a physicalist account of causation that leaves no causal role for mental activity. In response, I develop a moral theory (including moral truth, motivation, and meaning) that excludes considerations of conscious free will. I then co...

The Scope of Man's Free Will

Derk Pereboom: Meaning in Life without Free Will

Here is what is sure to be a good piece, since it comes from a good and strong philosopher. Its title tells all -or anyway a lot. But because of the distractions of your editor's philosophical life, in particular a conference in a schloss in Bavaria after a conference in the gentler hills of Idaho, it takes its place without any words of proper introduction. Indeed without having been properly ...

Free will

Much of the best biological work in decision-making has been carried out in bacteria and insects because the genetics of these organisms is better understood and they provide the most physically accessible nervous systems. With the advent of modern imaging and neurophysiological techniques, however, decision-making by human and non-human primates has become a bustling area in the early stages o...

Free Will

A criterion for the existence of human free will is specified: a human action is asserted to be a manifestations of human free-will if this action is a specific physical action that is experienced as being consciously chosen and willed to occur by a human agent, and is not determined within physical theory either in terms of the physically described aspects of nature or by any non-human agency....