Free Will: 2nd Annual Conference

We have an intuitive sense of ourselves as free agents, capable of effectively controlling ourselves and altering the external world. We typically view ourselves as the cause of our actions, our thoughts, and our decisions. Yet, what reasons do we have to believe that we are free, or that at any moment we have the capacity to be free? The more we learn from physics, neurosciences, biology, medicine and psychology about how we and the world operate, the more it seems there is no room for a genuinely free will.

The theme should be interpreted broadly. Proposal topics may include, but are not limited to (for others, please see the website):

• What is a free will—is it a capacity, a “trying,” a choice, a decision, or something else?
• Does having a free will give meaning to human life, to human existence, or can a human life be meaningful without believing in free will?
• Is a capacity for a free will the reason humans have moral agency (assuming they do—which is, itself, a questionable assumption)? If a human lacks the capacity to will freely, does she lack moral agency? lack moral worth? lack moral personhood?
• What are the social and cultural costs of assuming that moral culpability necessitates having free will?
• Can neurological studies of decision-making processes provide insight into the notion of free will–why or why not?
• Do all humans have free will at all moments of their life? What are the social, moral and/or legal implications if they do not? What policies do we have in place, or what policies should we have in place, to recognize and accommodate individuals with a temporarily or permanently diminished capacity to will freely?
• Assuming that there is free will, do children have free will? Is free will a capacity that develops slowly (matures)? If so, what exactly is the nature of a partially developed or incompletely developed capacity for free will?

Submission guidelines:

Submissions of abstracts (not exceeding 800 words) are invited for presentation of papers (not exceeding 3000 words). Please email your abstract as a Word.doc prepared for anonymous review. Please include your full contact information in the email only, including institutional affiliation. We welcome proposals for panels; if you wish to submit a panel proposal, send all the abstracts of the panel participants and biographical information in one email and clearly indicate your preference for participating in a panel. All submissions, either for papers or for panel presentations should be of previously non-published work.

We welcome submissions from a wide range of disciplines, including philosophy, the social sciences, critical studies (including gender and sexuality studies, disability studies, race studies, and critical legal theory…), law, education, linguistics, the neurosciences, and the pharmaceutical and medical sciences as well as other relevant disciplines and fields.