The 2024 Garven Lecture on Free will is titled Free Will, Felonies, and Phlogiston, and features Prof Manuel Vargas, UCSD, and Assistant Professor Hannah Tierney, (Andersen Visiting Fellow) UCD.
Abstract:
Some things seem vulnerable to scientific disproof. For example, the contemporary scientific community doesn’t rely on formerly important scientific concepts like phlogiston, luminiferous aether, or elan vital. After lots of effort, scientists concluded that those things don’t exist. Other ideas, though, seem less vulnerable to scientific disproof. For example, it seems unlikely that scientific discoveries will show that marriages, money, or felonies don’t exist. Is free will more like marriage, money, and felonies or is it more like phlogiston, luminiferous aether, or elan vital? Many prominent scientists have thought that free will is more like the latter case, that is, it is the kind of thing that can be (or even has been) disproven by science. This talk makes the case for the other view, that is, that free will has a substantial, but imperfect, degree of insulation against scientific attempts to disprove it. The explanation for why is bound up in the role free will plays in our social practices.
Link to register and further details: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/2024-garven-lecture-in-philosophy-free-will-felonies-and-phlogiston-tickets-994843843717?aff=oddtdtcreator