[SydPhil] Seminar This Week!

[David Braddon-Mitchell]

Hi everyone,

This week's speaker in the University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series is Dominik Perler, (Humboldt-Universität, Berlin)

The title of the talk is "What is a Free Will? Reflections on Suárez”.

The seminar will take place at 4:00pm on Wednesday Mar 04 in the Philosophy Seminar Room (N494).


Abstract:

Suárez claims that we are free agents because our will can always accept or reject the action-guiding judgement that is presented by the intellect. But why is the will not obliged to accept this judgement? The paper discusses this question by relating Suárez’s theory of the will to his theory of causation. It first examines his arguments against intellectual determinism, paying particular attention to his claim that the intellect is not an efficient cause: it cannot act upon the will and force it to accept a judgment. The paper then analyses Suárez’s account of the relevant cause by focusing on the goal of an action. The goal acts as a final cause, and if the goal is not perfectly good, it does not fully attract the will; consequently, the will can reject it. The paper spells out the functioning of the final cause as a form of normative attraction and argues that the issue of normativity is at the centre of Suárez’s theory of the will: we are free because our will can resist normative attraction.


Brief Biography

Dominik Perler is Professor of Philosophy at Humboldt-Universität, Berlin, and co-director of the research center “Human Abilities.” His research focuses on medieval and early modern philosophy, mostly in the areas of metaphysics, epistemology, and theory of action. His recent publications include Feelings Transformed: Philosophical Theories of the Emotions, 1270-1670 (author, 2018), Eine Person sein: Philosophische Debatten im Spätmittelalter (author, 2020), Causation and Cognition in Early Modern Philosophy (co-editor, 2020), Powers and Abilities in Early Modern Philosophy (co-editor, 2024).



Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to david.braddon-mitchell at sydney.edu.au