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Mar 21, 2023

Free Will is Impossible. Interview with Derk Pereboom

Posted by in categories: ethics, neuroscience

Derk Pereboom claims that free will is impossible because of its incompatibility with both determinism and indeterminism. Also he defends a robust nonreductive physicalism. It says that although consciousness can’t be reduced to physical it’s not something over and above physical.
The interview was taken by Vadim Vasiliev and Dmitry Volkov. Below you’ll see a list of questions of the interview.
1. The most influential books.
2. What are the differences between notions of moral responsibility and basic desert?
3. Which type of punishment should be eliminated if we find out that there is no justification for basic desert?
4. Is indignation as a reaction on wrongdoing a kind of irrational emotion?
5. How was the manipulation argument invented?
6. Why you’ve recently changed a presentation of the first case of Manipulation Argument?
7. How does the problem of free will relate to the problem of mental causation?
8. Could the problem of personal identity pose difficulties for moral responsibility and for basic desert? And why causal determinism is at the focus of free will debate?
9. Is there a real difference between hard incompatibilist’s position and that of compatibilists?
10. Can you list or name some differences and similarities between you and Daniel Dennett?
11. Could cognitive science and neuroscience eliminate the discussion on free will?
12. What is a definition of mental?
13. What were the most important changes of your views?
14. What is meaning of life?
15. What is your current research?

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