Workshop ‘Complex Systems and Free Will’

The aim of this interdisciplinary workshop is to explore new perspectives on the concept of free will, with a particular focus on how free will can be understood within complex systems. Talks will address topics ranging from the role of freedom-related concepts in the criminal justice system to the emergence of agential control from quantum indeterminacy.

12-1 pm: Kenneth Silver – "The Busy and the Burdened: Thick Concepts of Freedom”

Kenneth Silver will present on the role that concepts—such as being busy or burdened—play in contemporary free will debates.

1-2 pm: Sergei Levin – “She Killed her Mother, so What? Free Will and Crime Risk Assessment”

Sergei Levin will demonstrate the negative consequences of replacing the assumption of free will with risk assessment tools in criminal justice systems. He focuses on the challenges posed by the quarantine model, including the difficulty of predicting recidivism, the ethical costs of preventive detention, and the lack of deterrence for low-risk offenders.

2-2:30 pm: Coffee Break

2:30-3:30 pm: Kevin Mitchell – “The Emergence of Control in an Indeterministic Universe”

Kevin Mitchell will present evidence against physical pre-determinism - at quantum or classical levels - and will argue that the resultant under-determination of the future states of physical systems by their microscopic states opens the door for the sorts of macroscopic causation and control needed for free will.

3:30-4:30 pm: Henry Potter – “Choice, Chance and Control: Re-evaluating the Luck Objection to Libertarian Free Will”

Henry Potter will defend libertarian free will against the long-standing ‘challenge from luck’, by arguing that most versions of the so-called Luck Objection presuppose a conceptual model of indeterministic decision-making that is not well-aligned with recent advances in the natural sciences.

No prior registration is required to attend.