[SydPhil] University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series, Friday Oct 31, Lucy Allais, (Johns Hopkins University & University of the Witwatersrand)

[Ryan Cox]

 Hi everyone,

This week's second speaker in the University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series is Lucy Allais, (Johns Hopkins University & University of the Witwatersrand)

The title of the talk is "The role of rational capacities in free agency". Here is an abstract for the talk:

My topic for this talk is rational agency. This is based on a work-in-progress book project; I will present an outline of the relation between the first two parts of a three-part book project on human free agency. The idea of the project as a whole is to think about human free agency through thinking about the metaphysical, rational/moral and political aspects of freedom in relation to each other, as parts of one picture. The talk will sketch the project as a whole and then present an account of the role rational capacities play in the kind of agency that makes a certain sort of responsibility attribution apt. In the contemporary literature, rational abilities views commonly see agency as compatible with its being the case that at the time the agent acted the only metaphysical possibility was for them to ‘act’ the way they did. One reason for this is the idea that actions ‘determined’ by reasons or mental states of recognizing reasons don’t require alternative possibilities. I argue against this. I argue that agency, including the agency of other animals, is not consistent with the idea that, when the agent acts, there is only one possible way for the course of events in the world to unfold, and only one thing the agent can do. Rather, in a world in which there are agents, some of what happens – the way events unfold in the world – is up to what agents do. This does not require indeterministic laws of nature, or funny gaps in the laws of nature into which agents insert their causality, or breaking laws of nature, or supernatural or non-natural powers, or generally giving us powers that exempt us from the natural world. And it does not require that actions are caused or otherwise determined by acts of recognizing or judging what you have all-things-considered reason to do. It does require animals with reflexive and meta-cognitive abilities that they exercise with a non-optional commitment to non-instrumental rational constraints.

The seminar will take place at 3:30pm on Friday Oct 31 in the Philosophy Seminar Room (N494).

Note that there are two talks this week. Emily Hulme on Wednesday Oct 29; Lucy Allais on Friday Oct 31.

Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to ryan.cox at sydney.edu.au

Ryan Cox
Lecturer in Philosophy
Discipline of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Sydney
ryan.cox at sydney.edu.au