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Free Will | Munk Debates

SEASON TWO - EPISODE #59

Free Will

Be it resolved, humans have free will.

Guests
Christian List
Gregg D. Caruso
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About this episode

Life is full of decisions, big and small. What to eat for breakfast, what to wear to work, who to ask for advice, where to send your kids to school. But are any of these decisions truly our own? A growing movement of psychologists, philosophers, and neuroscientists believe that these decisions may feel like a tossup, but in reality, are predetermined, merely the firing of neural pathways forged over time that lead to predictable conclusions. Despite how we feel, free will is an illusion. Supporters of this deterministic worldview argue that our choices are no more under our own control than our own biology. The myriad decisions we make over the course of our lives emerge from background causes of which we are unaware and over which we exert no conscious control.

But detractors of this worldview argue that free will and the modern understanding of our brains is not mutually exclusive. They argue that free will exists on a higher order beyond our physical selves and cannot be reduced to our mere biology. Much of human thought and action cannot be explained at the physical level, but that renders it no less real. Today we ask the question, do we make our choices, or do our choices make us?

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Guests

Christian List

“Free will is the capacity to choose and control our own actions, and common sense suggests that we humans have this capacity."

Christian List

“Free will is the capacity to choose and control our own actions, and common sense suggests that we humans have this capacity."

Christian List is a German philosopher and political scientist who serves as professor of philosophy and decision theory at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and co-director of the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy. He was previously professor of political science and philosophy at the London School of Economics. List's research interests relate to social choice theory, formal epistemology, political philosophy, and the philosophy of social science. 

List earned his Bachelor of Arts and Master of Philosophy degrees at St Peter's College, and his Doctor of Philosophy degree at Nuffield College, both University of Oxford. He was elected to the British Academy in 2014, the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences.

Gregg D. Caruso

“Who we are, and what we do is ultimately the result of factors beyond our control."

Gregg D. Caruso

“Who we are, and what we do is ultimately the result of factors beyond our control."

Gregg D. Caruso is Professor of Philosophy at SUNY Corning, Visiting Fellow at the New College of the Humanities (NCH London), and Honorary Professor of Philosophy at Macquarie University. He is also Co-Director of the Justice Without Retribution Network housed at the University of Aberdeen School of Law. His research focuses on free will, moral responsibility, punishment, philosophy of law, jurisprudence, social and political philosophy, moral philosophy, philosophy of mind, moral psychology, and neurolaw.

His books include Rejecting Retributivism: Free Will, Punishment, and Criminal Justice (2021), Just Deserts: Debating Free Will (w/Daniel C. Dennett) (2021), Free Will and Consciousness: A Determinist Account of the Illusion of Free Will (2012), ​Exploring the Illusion of Free Will and Moral Responsibility (2013), Science and Religion: 5 Questions (2014), Neuroexistentialism: Meaning, Morals, and Purpose in the Age of Neuroscience ​(co-edited w/Owen Flanagan); and Free Will Skepticism in Law and Society (co-edited w/Elizabeth Shaw and Derk Pereboom).

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