Dr Tillmann Vierkant - How serious is the zombie challenge to free will?

Name: Dr Tillmann Vierkant - How serious is the zombie challenge to free will?
Start: 2025-05-07T19:30:00+01:00
Location: The Banshee Labyrinth

Schedule

Wed, 07 May, 2025 at 07:30 pm

UTC+01:00

Location

The Banshee Labyrinth | Edinburgh, SC

Dr Tillmann Vierkant - How serious is the zombie challenge to free will?
Whether free will is compatible with the scientific worldview, according to which the world is just driven by blind deterministic causes is a fascinating question about which I will have little to say. This is because my brief is to talk about what neuroscience can tell us about free will and despite contrary claims, I don’t think that modern neuroscience has very important things to say on this question. We will quickly explore why this is but more importantly we will look at a different question about free will where neuroscience has been rightly enormously influential. Research in neuroscience (but also social psychology) has sparked a fascinating debate about whether we have enough conscious control over our actions to be free. The bulk of the talk will explore this so called zombie challenge and discuss a couple of interesting potential moves one could make in reply to it.
Dr Tillmann Vierkant is a Professor of Neurophilosophy of Agency and Free Will at the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences (PPLS) at the University of Edinburgh. His research interests are centered around questions on the nature of mental actions. His monograph on related issues The Tinkering Mind has appeared in October 2022 with Oxford University Press. He has also worked extensively on topics relating to free will and voluntary action in an interdisciplinary context and was part of a multi million dollar project on the Neuro Philosophy of Free Will (see more here ). He has written also on willpower and the extended mind, implicit bias, self-knowledge, mind reading and connections between language evolution and voluntary action. He has also been involved in X phi exploring folk intuitions on freedom and responsibility and has edited two volumes on the cognitive science challenge to free will, most notably “Decomposing the Will” (OUP).
This event is free to attend, although we will be asking for donations at the end of the talk. Participants are under no obligation whatsoever to donate, however please rest assured that the money we collect doesn't end up in anyone's pocket - it is used to fund our overhead costs, and travel/accommodation for our speakers who come from further afield.
Please note there are some steps in the venue so if you have motor difficulties, please let us know and we may be able to make other arrangements.