Flickers of Freedom

Question

Does anyone know why Widerker (2002, 316) calls the following assumption "IVD"?

"If determinism is true, then no agent could have avoided acting as he did ..."

NEH Institute in X-Phi, Summer 2012

Ron Mallon asked me to post the following announcement:

Shaun Nichols and I are happy to be reprising the NEH Summer Institute in Experimental Philosophy this July in Tucson.  Details are here: 

 

http://epi.arizona.edu/ 

 

Applications are due March 1st.  

 

Institutes are designed for teachers of American undergraduate students.  Because of recent changes to the program, now up to three spaces may be awarded to graduate students in the humanities.

 

We hope you'll consider applying!

 

 

Tamler's book is out!

Tamler Sommer's Relative Justice: Cultural Diversity, Free Will, and Moral Responsibility is now out.  Here's info at Amazon and here at Princeton University Press.  Congratulations!

Another scientist on free will

This time its Jerry Coyne, an evolutionary biologist of some renown, writing in USA Today.

Apparently he defines " free will"  in "the way most people think of it". As a good scientist, he consulted the  data on this question, right? Right? He wouldn't have relied on intuition; that's the kind of things philosophers do. 

SPP Call for Papers Deadline January 15

Hi all,

Just a reminder about the submission deadline for the annual meeting of the Society for Philosphy and Psychology, June 21-23 in Boulder, CO.   Download a PDF copy  here.

They've been very friendly to free will papers recently and it's an awesome conference every year.  Boulder in late June isn't bad either.