The Research Seminar Series in Philosophy invites you to a seminar with Christian Löw, "Free Will, Preemption, and Doing Otherwise".
All interested are welcome to attend this seminar.
A natural idea is that free will requires the ability to do otherwise: if you freely do φ, you must have been able to do otherwise than φ. Philosophers who accept this requirement face two pressing questions: Is it compatible with determinism, where your action is entailed by the past and the laws of nature? And how should we understand Frankfurt-style cases, where an agent seems free despite apparently lacking genuine alternatives? A promising compatibilist strategy holds that the ability to do otherwise is preserved in both scenarios because, when assessing an agent’s abilities, we may abstract away from background factors such as the exact past or external interference. The challenge, however, is to articulate a principled account of what must be held fixed and what may be varied. In this talk, I argue that this problem has an exact analogue in the metaphysics of causation, where counterfactual theories must likewise abstract away from interfering factors in cases of redundant causation. This parallel is significant: it both supports the viability of a compatibilist account of the ability to do otherwise and illuminates what such an account should look like.
This seminar is intended primarily for presentations of PhD work and other research in philosophy conducted at the Department of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies. Guest lectures sometimes take place in the seminar as well. The seminars are given in English and all interested are welcome to attend these events.
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