philosophy phd free will

Advanced Search
All Categories
Metaphysics and Epistemology
Epistemology
Metaphilosophy
Metaphysics
Philosophy of Action
Philosophy of Language
Philosophy of Mind
Philosophy of Religion
Value Theory
Applied Ethics
Meta-Ethics
Normative Ethics
Philosophy of Gender, Race, and Sexuality
Philosophy of Law
Social and Political Philosophy
Value Theory, Miscellaneous
Science, Logic, and Mathematics
Logic and Philosophy of Logic
Philosophy of Biology
Philosophy of Cognitive Science
Philosophy of Computing and Information
Philosophy of Mathematics
Philosophy of Physical Science
Philosophy of Social Science
Philosophy of Probability
General Philosophy of Science
Philosophy of Science, Misc
History of Western Philosophy
Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy
Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy
17th/18th Century Philosophy
19th Century Philosophy
20th Century Philosophy
History of Western Philosophy, Misc
Philosophical Traditions
African/Africana Philosophy
Asian Philosophy
Continental Philosophy
European Philosophy
Philosophy of the Americas
Philosophical Traditions, Miscellaneous
Philosophy, Misc
Philosophy, Introductions and Anthologies
Philosophy, General Works
Teaching Philosophy
Philosophy, Miscellaneous
Other Academic Areas
Natural Sciences
Social Sciences
Cognitive Sciences
Formal Sciences
Arts and Humanities
Professional Areas
Other Academic Areas, Misc
About PhilArchive
Frequently Asked Questions
OAI Handler
Journal policies
Code of conduct
Create an account

Five Philosophers on Free Will: Plato, Hobbes, Hume, Leibniz, and Hegel

Author's profile.

Archival history

Reprint years.

Round 1 Winners
Round 2 Winners
2023 Annual Meeting
2022 Annual Meeting
2021 Annual Meeting
2020 Annual Meeting
Publications

THE NEUROSCIENCE OF INTENTIONS AND AGENCY

Consciousness and free will: a joint neuroscientific-philosophical investigation.

As humans form intentions that lead to actions, there is little doubt that they frequently experience doing so consciously. But neuroscientific work has been casting doubt on whether consciousness is part of the causal chain leading to action. In other words, are our intentions efficacious? In this project, a group of 17 scholars — neuroscientists and philosophers — join forces to understand intentions and agency in the brain — how the human brain enables conscious, causal control of actions.

The neuroscience of intentions and agency: How does the brain enable causal, conscious control of human decisions and actions?

The disquieting experience of acting unthinkingly is not uncommon. For example, you may find yourself half way to the office when you set out to drive to the store. When consciousness is not engaged over our intentions and actions, we are falling short of an ideal of freedom — that human consciousness guides our conduct, that free agents possess conscious control. The nature of conscious control poses a challenging philosophical question. How frequently, if ever, we exercise conscious control over our intentions and action is a challenging empirical question.

In close collaboration between 17 neuroscientists and philosophers, we will test:

(1) Whether human intentions are causally efficacious for our decisions and behavior;

(2) What is the specific role of consciousness when intentions guide behavior; and

(3) What, if any, is the difference between conscious control in deliberate versus arbitrary decisions.

Beyond progress on one of the most fundamental questions in the debate on free will — this large-scale project will be central to ushering in a new, interdisciplinary scientific field: the neuroscience of intentions and agency (also known as the neurophilosophy of free will).

Questions related to intentions and agency have long been central in some of the longest-standing scholarly debates in human thought— like whether humans have free will and what is the nature of consciousness. But they have always had a practical aspect—for example in relation to moral and even legal responsibility, to some economic theories, and more. More recently, with rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI), they have also begun to take on another practical role in judging what, if any, intentions does AI possess or can even develop.

Research from Maoz group featured on PBS NOVA

May 25th, 2023

Congrats to the Early-Career Joint Talk Competition (Round 2) Winners

Sep 7th, 2022

2022 Worldwide Competition Winners

Feb 11th, 2022

Funding Agencies

Subscribe to our newsletters.

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

We're Hiring!
Help Center

Five Philosophers on Free Will: Plato, Hobbes, Hume, Leibniz, and Hegel

Over the past 2500 years, the concept of free will has been debated by some of the most brilliant minds in ancient and modern history. This paper discusses landmark theories by five well-known philosophers. There are several definitions of free-will. Sometimes, it is described as an innate characteristic possessed by human beings. In juxtaposition, the theory of causal determinism states that free will is limited or does not exist. Philosophical arguments are presented by: Plato, Hobbes, Hume, Leibniz, and Hegel. Plato offers a dual theory that offers limited support for free will. Leibnitz includes theological tenets to make the case for predetermined outcomes. Hobbes and Hume contend that moral beliefs and ethical standards are conditions that support causal determinism. Hegel’s treatise on “Freeing of the Will” aligns with Taoist philosophy and links the evolution of the universe to human spiritual development and self-realization.

Related Papers

austin Omomia

Ulrich de Balbian

Meta-philosophy investigation of the DEATH of philosophy as subject-matter and the doing of philosophy. Meta-metaphysics, meta-ontology, meta-epistemology, art, religion and other subjects

John Nwanegbo-Ben

This edition of THE MIND OF PHILOSOPHY came into being after a careful perusal and sterilization of the first, second and third editions of my introductory work on Philosophy. It is specifically prepared for LAP in order to meet the needs of neophytes of academic philosophy globally. This work is enlarged to accommodate extra topics that will challenge every rational and analytic individual. It is divided into two sections: section A and section B. Topics included in Section A are: The Nature of the Soul, Immorality and Reincarnation. What is Truth? Essence and Existence, Prayer Why? Freewill and Predestination, Jesus: In the light of Esoteric Philosophical understanding, Abortion and Euthanasia. Section B is emphasize man and the Search for an Absolute Being, which is simply an insight into philosophy of religion. In addition is an explanation of various philosophical systems and schools of thought. I have profited a lot from constructive criticism and believe that this text which was solely written to demystify philosophy among neophytes of academic philosophy will be seen as an invaluable material for introductory philosophy. In addition, the book was published, bearing in mind the course content approved for those taking General Studies course in “Philosophy and Logic” in Nigerian Universities and other African countries. John Nwanegbo-Ben Ph. D Dept of Philosophy of Science & Technology School of Management Technology. Federal University of Technology Owerri Nigeria.

Peter Critchley

This book conceives philosophy in terms of philosophizing as an active process. The intention of the argument is to restore philosophy to its origins as an ethos, a practice, a way of living for rational beings. Philosophy is therefore presented more as a practice or an activity than as an intellectual exercise or subject discipline. Philosophy is something that one does as a rational being. This is not an invitation to sloppy thinking; it is an invitation to all to philosophize as rational beings. A questioning, critical approach grounded in the rational faculty is taken to be the most salient characteristic of philosophy. This emphasizes intelligence and its application over knowledge.Philosophy is not a question of knowledge but of the application of intelligence. The book proceeds from Socrates as the key figure in this conception of philosophy as philosophizing. Socrates was no ivory tower philosopher but took philosophy to the men and women of 'the real world' in an attempt to get them to support their views and activities with arguments, with good reasons for doing, thinking, stating the things they did. The 'real world' is not the one revealed to ordinary sense experience. This book shows that only by philosophizing can individuals enter the real world.

Aaron Garrett

Paterno Manalo

Nikos Telan

Sreekumar Nellickappilly

A Brief Overview of some important contributions in European Thought

Benard Omae

Cemile Dogan

Loading Preview

Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.

RELATED PAPERS

Wescley F A Freire

Mitch Green

Secondary Menu

Free will without consciousness, publication links.

Learning Objectives
Departmental Newsletter
Research Highlight
Why Philosophy?
Philosophy Major/Minor
Certificate: Philosophy, Politics & Economics
Graduation with Distinction
Global Education
New to Philosophy?
Related Certificates
Language Requirements
Future Research Statement & Oral Examination
Preliminary Examination
Dissertation
Dissertation Defense
Professional Development
Placement Guide
Financial Support
How to Apply
Center for Comparative Philosophy
Duke Causation Group
Du Châtelet Prize
Graduate Certificate Program
Imagination and Modal Cognition Lab
Project Vox
Summer Seminars in Neuroscience and Philosophy
Affiliated Programs & Centers
Selected Faculty Books
Journal Articles and Papers
Primary Faculty
Secondary Faculty
Affiliated Faculty
Postdoctoral Researchers
Emeritus Faculty
Graduate Students
Visiting Scholars
For Our Students
Assisting Duke Students

The psychology of believing in free will

PhD Candidate of Psychology, University of Essex

Disclosure statement

Peter Gooding receives funding from the ESRC. University of Essex

University of Essex provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK.

View all partners

From coffee table books and social media to popular science lectures, it seems it has has become increasing fashionable for neuroscientists, philosophers and other commentators to tell anyone that will listen that free will is a myth.

But why is this debate relevant to anyone but a philosophy student keen to impress a potential date? Actually, a growing body of evidence from psychology suggests belief in free will matters enormously for our behaviour. It is also becoming clear that how we talk about free will affect whether we believe in it.

In the lab, using deterministic arguments to undermine people’s belief in free will has led to a number of negative outcomes including increased cheating and aggression. It has also been linked to a reduction in helping behaviours and lowered feelings of gratitude .

A recent study showed that it is possible to diminish people’s belief in free will by simply making them read a science article suggesting that everything is predetermined. This made the participants’ less willing to donate to charitable causes (compared to a control group). This was only observed in non-religious participants, however.

Scientists argue that these outcomes may be the result of a diminished sense of agency and control that comes with believing that we are free to make choices. Similarly, we may also feel less moral responsibility for the outcomes of our actions.

It may therefore be unsurprising that some studies have shown that people who believe in free will are more likely to have positive life outcomes – such as happiness , academic success and better work performance . However, the relationship between free will belief and life outcomes may be complex so this association is still debated .

Disturbing dualism

Language and definitions seem linked to whether we believe in free will. Those who refute the existence of free will typically refer to a philosophical definition of free will as an ability of our consciousness (or soul) to make any decision it chooses – regardless of brain processes or preceding causal events. To undermine it, they often couple it with the “determinism” of classical physics. Newton’s laws of physics simply don’t allow for free will to exist – once a physical system is set in motion, it follows a completely predictable path.

According to fundamental physics, everything that happens in the universe is encoded in its initial conditions. From the Big Bang onward, mechanical cause-and-effect interactions of atoms formed stars, planets, life and eventually your DNA and your brain. It was inevitable. Your physical brain was therefore always destined to process information exactly as does, so every decision that you are ever going to make is predetermined. You (your consciousness) are a mere bystander – your brain is in charge of you. Therefore you have no free will. This argument is known as determinism .

But this approach is absurdly dualistic , requiring people to see their consciousness as their true self and their brain as something separate. Despite being an accurate description of the philosophical definition of free will, this flies in the face of what ordinary people – and many scientists – actually believe.

In reality it seems that the functioning of our brain actually affects our consciousness. Most of us can recognise, without existential angst, that drinking alcohol, which impacts our physical brain, subsequently diminishes our capacity to make rational choices in a manner that our consciousness is powerless to simply override. In fact, we tend to be able to accept that our consciousness is the product of our physical brain, which removes dualism. It is not that our brains make decisions for us, rather we make our decisions with our brains.

Most people define free will as simply their capacity to make choices that fulfil their desires – free from constraints . This lay understanding of free will doesn’t really involve arguments about deterministic causation stretching back to the Big Bang.

But how could we learn about the arguments for and against the existence of free will without feeling threatened and having our moral judgement undermined? One way could be to re-express valid deterministic arguments in language that people actually use.

For example, when the determinist argues that “cause-and-effect interactions since the Big Bang fashioned the universe and your brain in a way that has made your every decision inevitable”, we could replace it with more familiar language. For example, “your family inheritance and life experience made you the person you are by forming your brain and mind”.

In my view, both arguments are equally deterministic – “family inheritance” is another way of saying DNA while “life experiences” is a less challenging way of saying prior causal events. But, importantly, the latter allows for a greater feeling of freedom, potentially reducing any possible negative impacts on behaviour.

Quantum weirdness

Some even argue that the notion of scientific determinism is being challenged by the rise of quantum mechanics, which governs the micro world of atoms and particles. According to quantum mechanics, you cannot predict with certainty what route a particle will take to reach a target – even if you know all its initial conditions. All you can do is to calculate a probability, which implies that nature is a lot less predictable than we thought. In fact, it is only when you actually measure a particle’s path that it “picks” a specific trajectory – until then it can take several routes at once.

While quantum effects such as these tend to disappear on the scale of people and everyday objects, it has recently been shown that they may play a role in some biological processes , ranging from photosynthesis to bird navigation. So far we have no evidence that they play any role in the human brain – but, of course, that’s not to say they don’t.

People using a philosophical definition and classical physics may argue convincingly against the existence of free will. However, they may want to note that modern physics does not necessarily agree that free will is impossible.

Ultimately, whether free will exists or not may depend on your definition. If you wish to deny its existence, you should do so responsibly by first defining the concepts clearly. And be aware that this may affect your life a lot more than you think.

Determinism

Service Delivery Consultant

Newsletter and Deputy Social Media Producer

College Director and Principal | Curtin College

Head of School: Engineering, Computer and Mathematical Sciences

Educational Designer

Free Will, Determinism, and Moral Responsibility

--> Arthurs, Frank (2014) Free Will, Determinism, and Moral Responsibility. PhD thesis, University of Sheffield.

The first half of this thesis is a survey of the PSR, followed by consideration of arguments for and against the principle. This survey spans from the Ancient Greeks to the present day, and gives the reader a sense of the ways in which the PSR has been used both implicitly and explicitly throughout the history of philosophy. I argue that, while none of the arguments either for or against the PSR provide conclusive evidence of its truth or falsity, we should adopt a presumption in its favour. The best hope the PSR sceptic has of demonstrating the PSR’s falsity would be to find empirical evidence of something non-deterministic, since the PSR entails determinism. The theory of libertarianism is considered as just such a counterexample; but I argue the evidence for libertarianism is flimsy, and so the presumption in favour of the PSR remains. The second half starts from the premise that the PSR—and hence also determinism—is true, and goes on to examine what implications this has for our moral responsibility practices. We examine incompatibilist arguments by van Inwagen and Galen Strawson, both of which appeal to the origination condition. I contend that these arguments are compelling precisely because the origination condition to which they appeal is compelling. This leaves us with a dilemma: it seems like we can either accept these incompatibilist arguments, which would require us to abandon our moral responsibility practices; or we could save our moral responsibility practices by adopting some form of compatibilism, but at the cost of denying the intuitively appealing origination condition. In fact, to avoid the costs of each horn of this dilemma, we can seek to create a ‘mixed view’ instead. We consider Vargas’s revisionism, Double’s free will subjectivism, and Smilansky’s illusionism and fundamental dualism, which help to shape the mixed view I argue for here: a consequentialist compatibilist theory of moral responsibility. This theory allows us to acknowledge the impossibility of true desert without dispensing with our responsibility practices.

Supervisors:	Shemmer, Yonatan
Publicly visible additional information:	The secondary supervisor for this thesis was Eric Olson. The internal examiner was Stephen Makin, and the external examiner was Peter van Inwagen.
Awarding institution:	University of Sheffield
Academic Units:
Identification Number/EthosID:	uk.bl.ethos.619094
Depositing User:	Mr Frank Arthurs
Date Deposited:	22 Sep 2014 11:51
Last Modified:	03 Oct 2016 11:18

--> Philosophy PhD on Ethics and Metaphysics -->

Filename: PhD - Free Will, Determinism, and Moral Responsibility. Complete pdf File..pdf

Description: Philosophy PhD on Ethics and Metaphysics

Embargo Date:

You do not need to contact us to get a copy of this thesis. Please use the 'Download' link(s) above to get a copy. You can contact us about this thesis . If you need to make a general enquiry, please see the Contact us page.

Why free will doesn't exist, according to Robert Sapolsky

It's hard to let go of the idea that free will exists, but neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky says that society starts to look very different once you do

By Timothy Revell

18 October 2023

Robert Sapolsky is one of the most revered scientists alive today. He made his name from his work studying wild baboons in Kenya, unpicking how their complex social lives lead to stress and how that affects their health.

His most recent focus, however, has been on something rather different – a book that comprehensively argues that free will doesn’t exist in any shape or form.

As he writes: “We are nothing more or less than the sum of that which we could not control – our biology, our environments, their interactions”.

In this episode of CultureLab, Sapolsky outlines his case against free will and what a society without free will should look like.

You can find New Scientist Podcasts on your favourite podcast platform or by clicking here .

Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will is out now.

Timothy Revell: Many of our listeners, they will know you as someone who spent years studying wild baboons, and then, also, as an eminent neuroscientist, so what made you decide to then suddenly look at free will so closely, which is, I guess, more often associated with philosophy? Was there, like, an enticing incident? Did something get you onto it first?

Robert Sapolsky: Yes. I turned fourteen years old, at one point, and had a somewhat existentially unnerving experience and, that night, woke up at around two in the morning and say, “Aha, I get it. There’s no God, there’s no purpose, and there’s no free will,” and it’s been, kind of, like that every since.

More approximately, about five years ago, I published a book called, Behave, The Biology of Humans at our Best and Wors t, and I did a lot of public lecturing about, sort of, the general subject in the years since. And you’d go through, sort of, an hour’s talk of telling people about, the events one second before behaviour and one minute, and one hour, and one thousand years and all these different influences. With some regularity, somebody in the audience, afterwards, with Q&A, would say something like, “Wow. All this stuff, kind of, makes one wonder about free will,” which I, in effect, would say, “You think?” and it just struck me that I needed to write something that, very expectantly, tackled how completely silly and bankrupt the notion of free will is, when you put all the relevant science together.

Then dealing with the bigger issue, I know it seems very straightforward and simplistic by now to me that there’s no free will, but the massive issue of, “Ph my God, what are we supposed to do if people actually started believing this? How are we supposed to function?’

Timothy Revell: It’s funny that you say it’s now so easy to say that free will doesn’t exist, but I think for many people it’s one of those things that, subjectively, it feels very real, but then, you know, a good argument against that is a tale feels solid, but it’s mostly empty space, so we can’t really trust what we think about the world, certainly not our own experience of it. For those that haven’t spent as much time thinking about free will and reached the conclusion that you have, that it doesn’t exist, what is the argument? What does science say about free will?

Robert Sapolsky: Well, my essential song and dance, and I should add about 90-95 per cent of philosophers agree, that there’s free will, and steadfastly hold onto it, and these are folks, who classify themselves as compatibilists, which is to say they’re willing to admit there are things like atoms and molecules and cells out there, but somehow, despite that, can still pull free will out of the hat in their thinking.

In terms of my orientation, my basic approach is you look at a behaviour and someone has just done something that’s wonderful or awful or ambiguously in-between or in the eyes of the beholder, but some behaviour has happened, and you ask, “Why did that occur?” and you’re asking a whole hierarchy of questions. You’re, of course, asking, “Which neurons did what, ten milliseconds before?” but you’re also asking, “What sensory stimuli in the previous minutes triggered that?” but you’re also asking, “What did this morning’s hormone levels have to do with how sensitive your brain would be to those stimuli?”

You’re also asking, “What have the previous months been, trauma, stimulation, whatever, in terms of neuroplasticity?” and before you know it, you’re back to adolescents and your last gasp of constructing your frontal cortex, and childhood and foetal environment and it’s epigenetic consequences, and of course, genes. Amazingly, at that point, you have to push further back. What sort of culture were your ancestors inventing and what sort of ecosystems prompted those inventions, because that was influencing how your mother was mothering you within minutes of birth, and then, you know, some evolution thrown in for good measure.

Free will: Can neuroscience reveal if your choices are yours to make?

Philosophers have wrestled with the question of whether we are truly free to decide on our actions for centuries. Now, insights from genetics, neuroscience and evolutionary biology are shedding fresh light on the issue

What you see at that point is, not just saying, “Wow, when you look at all these different disciplines, collectively, they’re showing we’re just biological machines,” but they’re not all these different disciplines. They’re all one continuous one. If you’re talking about genes, by definition, genes and behaviour, by definition, you’re talking about evolution and you’re talking about neurobiology and genetic variance and neuronal function. If you’re talking about, you know, early trauma in life, you’re talking about epigenetics and you’re talking about adult propensity. So, they’re all one continuous seam of influences, and when you look at it that way, there’s not a damn crack anywhere in there to shoehorn in a notion of free will.

Timothy Revell: You talk about this in your book, but I think, for many people, they still feel like maybe there’s room. You know, with each individual step, it feels like those are influences rather than the 100 per cent determining factor. Is there, when people come to you and say, “Oh, but there’s still a little bit of room,” you know, “These are all things that influence me on a given day. of course, if it’s hot, I’m more likely to go outside and enjoy the sun, but it’s still my decision,” how do you go from that, from influences, to, “It’s not just influences, everything we do is dictated in one way or another, by this whole combination of factors’?

Robert Sapolsky: Well, the jerky, sort of, challenge that I lay down at that point is, “Okay, so you’re still holding out for free will somewhere in there, just because it seems so counter-intuitive if that is all we are,” but look at some behaviour, you just pulled the trigger on a gun, like something very consequential, and you could probably even identify the three-and-a-half neurons in the motor cortex that sent that command to your muscles.

Show me, let’s examine those three-and-a-half neurons that just did that. Show me that what they did was completely impervious to what was going on in any other neuron surrounding them, but at the same time, show me that it was impervious to whether you were tired, stressed, sleepy, happy, well-fed, at that moment. Show me that it’s impervious and would’ve done the exact same thing no matter what your hormone levels were this morning, no matter what your childhood was, no matter what your genome is, the epigenetics. Show me that it would’ve done the exact same thing after changing any of those or all of those variables, and as far as I’m concerned, you’ve just proven free will, and they can’t, because there’s absolutely nothing any of your, like, molecules making you up just did to generate a behaviour that’s independent of every second before.

It is impossible to show that we can act freely of everything that came before.

Timothy Revell: Do you think there’s a reason why we seem so wired to think that free will does exist? Is there some evolutionary benefit to us believing that? If we just accepted it from the beginning, that it doesn’t exist, would that maybe actually be better for us, overall?

Robert Sapolsky: Oh, well, at first pass, it’s depressing as hell and alarming and unsettling and all of that, and all sorts of wise evolutionary biologists have thought about the evolution of self-deception, and by the time you’re as smart of a primate as we are, we had to have developed a robust capacity for not believing in what might be the case, because otherwise, it would be all too overwhelming and despairing and just existential void and all that stuff.

You know, there’s a very, very strong emotional incentive to feel agency, and endless aspects of experimental psychology has shown that you stress people or frazzle them or give them an unsolvable problem, and they get a way distorted sense of agency, at that point, as a defence. The really critical issue there though is the assumption that believing there’s no free will, okay, there’s no free will and you better believe it, and that’s about as appealing as, like, swallowing cod liver oil or something but, you know, suck it up, that’s the way the world works.

The hard problem of consciousness is already beginning to dissolve

Science can solve the great mystery of consciousness – how physical matter gives rise to conscious experience – we just have to use the right approach, says neuroscientist Anil Seth

My overwhelmingly emphasis is, if you suddenly are convinced there’s no free will, and that’s a total bummer for you, because that makes your, like, egregiously privileged salary seem like something you did not necessarily earn and your prestigious degrees and your circle of loving friends and all the other things that you feel like you, in some manner, earn, deserve, you’re entitled to, oh, bummer, if that’s not the case. If that’s your response to the idea of there being no free will, by definition, you were one of the lucky ones.

For most people on earth, who were dealing with far less privilege, the notion that we are not the captains of our fate is, like, wildly liberating and humane. I mean, just ask someone who’s genetic profile and metabolism dooms them to obesity and being subject to a lifelong of unhappiness and societal stigma over that, and that’s just one of the billion ways in which the discovery that we’re nothing more or less than the biology over which we had no control and the environment over-, is great news, and is the most humane thing on Earth. All we spent is the last 500 years of scientific insights into seeing that people are not responsible for all sorts of things for which they used to be blamed or made to feel like they are inadequate or burnt at the stake for, and this is wonderfully liberating.

Timothy Revell: Yes, so I want to get into some of those implications, because, as you say, it’s, sort of, liberating to think, “Well, we’re just the products of our biology,” but at the same time, we’ve built a whole society around responsibility. That you have responsibilities to do certain things, but also, we have responsibility as society to hold people accountable for the decisions that they make, and these words are all, sort of, loaded with an intrinsic understanding of free will being baked into it.

Robert Sapolsky: Yes.

Timothy Revell: If everyone read your book overnight and agreed with you 100 per cent, what does a society look like where we accept this principle that free will does not exist?

Robert Sapolsky: Well, I think the first thing to emphasise is the roof isn’t going to cave in, because over and over and over, we have subtracted responsibility out of our views of human behaviour in the natural world, and it’s been okay. People haven’t run amok, society hasn’t, you know, gone to hell, at that point, because 400 years ago, we figured out hailstorms are not caused by witches and, like, old crones would not be held responsible for hailstorms and burnt at the stake. About 200 years ago, people figured out, definitely, that an epileptic seizure is not a sign of demonic possession. Responsibility is subtracted out.

About 50 years ago, the damn physiatrics, sort of, old boy oligarchy figured out that schizophrenia is not caused by mothers with psychodynamic hatred of their child, and instead, it’s a neurogenetic disorder. 30 years ago, we figured out that kids at school that simply are not learning to read, it’s not because they’re lazy and unmotivated, it’s because their cortical abnormalities are making them reverse letters that have, like, closed loops in them or whatever. We’ve done it over and over and over, and things have been just fine, and in fact, things have gotten much better and much more humane.

So, the challenge is to just imagine what things people a century from now will be saying about our time period and things we still thought were volitional and things that we punished people for and things that we rewarded people for, where there was absolutely no basis for it. More practically, like, how are we supposed to function? It seems like the first, sort of, thing to get off the table is, “Oh my God, we’re all going to run amok, because people will be unconstrained by, you know, “I can’t be held responsible.”

Revealed: What your thoughts look like and how they compare to others’

We finally have a grasp on the many different ways of thinking and how your inner mindscape affects your experience of reality

Really careful studies suggest that people won’t run amok. Some pretty superficial ones say that, as soon as you prime people physiologically to believe less in free will, they start cheating like mad on their economic games, two minutes later, but, sort if, deeper studies show that that’s really not the case, and there’s a great parallel example. Instead of thinking, “Wow, I can do whatever I want, because I’m not responsible for my actions,” thinking, “Wow, I can do whatever I want because I won’t be held responsible in an ultimate sense.” Atheists are, if anything, more ethical in their behaviour than the highly religious. The running amok thing is not a worry.

The next one that’s got to be disposed of is, like nonetheless, dangerous people need to be contained and, yes, absolutely. Just because someone is not responsible for them being a damaging person, because they’ve been damaged as hell, like all of the rotten luck they’ve gotten, adversity in life, that doesn’t mean, you know, you shouldn’t constrain them from damaging. What people emphasise more and more is a quarantine model. Like, if somebody is infectious, through no fault of their own, they’re quarantined.

If a car’s breaks don’t work and it will run you over, keep it in a garage. If a person’s frontal cortex has been so done in by childhood trauma that they can’t regulate their emotional behaviours, make sure they can’t damage people. Make sure if all of that can strain them with the absolute minimum needed to prevent that and not an inch more in the name of retribution or rotten souls or anything that they deserve. And, as the flip side of it, like recognise that some people are better brain surgeons are better basketball players or something than others and that’s great. We really do want to have competent brain surgeons and I presume basketball players out there and they should be doing that stuff but don’t tell that they’re entitled to a greater salary than anyone else and don’t give them a greater salary. The meritocracy makes as little sense as does the criminal justice system when you really think about this.

Timothy Revell: Yes, it’s very interesting that as you present the things from history and you reel through them. Things like the not believing that people are influencing hail storms or that you’re-, in some way it’s a sign of the devil if you have epilepsy or the same with dyslexia. Those things feel so obvious to us now sitting here and I think that the vast majority of people will go of course it’s ridiculous we ever thought anything else but yet when you say for the criminal justice system it needs to be reframed so that it is no longer about responsibility but instead about quarantine I think there are lots of people who maybe have a harder time reaching that same conclusion. Is that what you find? That when you talk to people-, so historical examples that all makes sense but maybe the next step just seems almost unfathomable.

Robert Sapolsky: Exactly, and the real challenge is to think back that somewhere, I don’t know, 400 years ago there was some very learned, reflective, compassionate, empathic, introspective smart guy who is some sort of judge or something, and he believed in helping the underdog. And if there had been national public radio then to contribute money to, he would’ve done that and gotten a little button saying, “I support, like, everything they believe in.” He would’ve been like a total bleeding heart liberal of the time, and he’d come home at the end of the day and say, “Wow, tough day. We had this guy. Had to burn him at the stake. Had seizures. He obviously welcomed in Satan, I mean, kids. He had a wife, kids who were really upset. It was, like, hard to do but what can you do?” Nobody told him to welcome in Satan, so of course, we had to burn him at the stake, but tough day. And that would’ve been a compassionate liberal at the time and it would’ve been inconceivable then in the same way that it’s inconceivable now that somebody’s IQ or somebody’s capacity to master tough difficult things or somebody’s inability to regulate their emotions and thus be really damaging makes just as little sense.

Timothy Revell: Can you talk us through a little bit about that because quite a lot of those historical examples there about-, sort of, parts of the human condition becoming medicalized, us appreciating that their diseases or conditions that are really affecting things that happened to people. For example them having seizures but when it comes to crime I think some people will not see the immediate link there. So if you have someone who has committed a crime, how does the medical side of this, the neuroscience, all of that, fit into the point where they commit a crime?

Robert Sapolsky: Well, the examples you bring up first are the easy ones or the edge cases. Society is pretty good at recognising, at least in the American legal system, that if somebody has a sufficiently low IQ they shouldn’t be held legally responsible for a violent act or whatever. There’s, like, a cut off and people fight over what the cut off should be and all of that. If someone has had massive damage to their frontal cortex or a tumour there, I don’t know, about half the states in the United States are willing to say, in this edge case, there was not actually responsibility.

But yes, then we get to the normative range of like people doing awful stuff or people doing commendable stuff, where there isn’t an obvious whatever that presents, you know, this is a special mitigating case. There’s no special mitigating cases because it’s a continuum of the exact same biology. The second you can show stuff like what a paper a couple of years ago showed which is brain imaging on fetuses that by the time you’re a third trimester fetus the social economic status of your parents are already influencing the rate in which your brain is growing. By the time you can take kids and adolescence and show like a formal checklist of childhood adversaries and traumas, what somebody’s score is on this scale.

Brain scans are putting a major theory of consciousness to the test

A proposed way to measure consciousness called integrated information theory has been tested using data from human brain scans, and seems to work

The ace score, adverse child experience score. Like, we had a score from zero to ten depending on just how unlucky and awful your childhood was and for every additional point you get on the scale there’s about a 35 per cent increase chance that a guy by age 20 will have done something antisocial and violent. There’s about 35 per cent increase change that a female will have had a teen pregnancy of either unsafe sex, of by adulthood, a major mood disorder like anxiety or depression. If you can show that one extra step, whoa. Not only were they sexually abused as a kid but somebody in the family was incarcerated. That one extra point makes him 35 per cent more likely to be that way as an adult. You’re looking at what has to come into any of these factors which is we’ve just scratched the service on the things that move you from a 35 per cent chance of a particular outcome to a 100 per cent chance. And what I endlessly go on about is, like, ace scores adverse childhood experience scores.

You can have the exact same conclusion if there was such a thing as, like, RLCE ridiculously lucky child who experiences and you can get a whole scale on that. Did your parents read books to you? Did you, like, play and laugh a lot? Did you never wonder where your next meal was coming from? And no doubt for every one of those a 35 per cent increase chance that you’re going to have the corner office in some corporation some day. Like, you look at those and any of these myths of somebody being responsible ultimately for the bad or the good just isn’t supportable and eventually is morally repugnant as well.

Timothy Revell: I think for many-, like for me certainly when reading the book, I can accept all of that but part of me also wants to think but I’m different. There’s a certain sense of-, like, I totally understand that if you’ve gone through these horrible life experiences that is of course going to affect you later in life but it’s so hard to drop that idea that maybe I would make different choices but I think it is quite compelling that argument you put forward that I think would it be fair to say it boils down to if you had the same life experiences and you had the same biology you would do the same things.

Robert Sapolsky: Exactly. And feel the same sense of agency and captain of your fate, sort of, delusions. Something I try to emphasise though throughout the book is this is incredibly difficult to think this way. Like, I’ve believed this since I was, like, early adolescence and 99 per cent of the time I can’t manage to pull this off.

I think I recount in there a few years back there was some, like, appalling hate crime. Some guy showed up with an automatic weapon in a place of worship and killed a bunch of people and listening to the radio that next Monday morning saying whoever is being arraigned and is going to be charged with a federal hate crime as well which makes him eligible for the death penalty. I thought, “Yes. Fry the bastard.” Wait. I’m working on death penalty cases right now to convince juries that-, yet no one says this is going to be easy.

I’m terrible at it 99 per cent of the time. Not only am I violating my intellectual beliefs but my moral beliefs as well because these are really strong reflexes to both get pissed off at people who do awful things but in addition probably more fundamentally to feel, kind of, good about yourself if someone says well nice job on that. Yes. I did a nice job. I’m entitled to that praise. This is going to be incredibly hard but we’ve done it over and over and over again and it’s not that hard to identify the corners of society where it’s most important to make that emphasis first.

Timothy Revell: You hinted at it there but can you talk a little bit about your direct experience with the criminal justice system where you have appeared as a, sort of, expert on the brain. What has your role been there and how does it play into all of this?

Robert Sapolsky: Oh, this has been this little, minor hobby of working with what are called public defenders, who are the people who are assigned when some defendant can’t afford their own attorney, and this is a whole world of, like, liberal, do-gooder attorneys who lose 95 per cent of their cases. I’ve been working on a bunch of these, and what has always been the scenario is this is someone who has done something very, very bad. And where, initially, they were threatened and did something that could pass as self-defence, they stabbed the guy before the other guy could stab them who came at them first and they’re then lying there on the ground incapacitated and ten seconds later they come back and stab the guy an additional 72 times.

At which point the jury says well, you know, the first stab was self defence but 10 seconds that was enough time to premeditate and figure out that the threat was over with. But whoa, 72 additional times. That counts as premeditated murder and it’s always that, sort of, scenario and it is always somebody who was already virtually guaranteed to do this by the time they were 5 years old. Substance abuse at home, psychological abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, prenatal exposure drugs of abuse, shuttled through foster homes. Stabbed for the first time at age 10, you know, that repeated concussive head traumas from people abusing them, all of that and you look at someone like that and this is screamingly this is a broken machine.

Why are we conscious? The answer lies in other animals’ heads

The thing that I always do with these juries is take them through, like, what’s going on in the brain when you make a decision and how we’re much more likely neurobiologically to make an awful decision if we’re under a whole lot of stress. Like somebody coming at us with a knife and we’re a gazillion times more likely to make the wrong decision during that 10 seconds if we have a brain that’s been pickled in adversity from day one because your brain would’ve been constructed in a way where you’re going to make a terrible impulsive decision at that point and then I dramatically look at the jury and say the same thing you said before which is if they had gone through this fetal life childhood etc, etc, all the things that-, they would’ve done the exact same thing and the juries all nod and look like they’re following and then they go into the jury room and they look at the pictures of the corpse with the head almost decapitated from stabs number 36 through 43 or something out of the 72 and they vote to convict the guy. I’ve done 12 of these trials by now over the years and we’ve lost 11 of them and that’s even arguing, like, the edge cases. Wow, this is a guy whose frontal cortex was destroyed in a car accident when he was eight.

He spent two months in a coma, came out of it, no prior history whatever and did his first murder at age 12 and here you guys have just convicted him of his 8th and 9th murders and he’s a broken machine. And you know, they go and sit about it for a while and they come back with the death penalty so it’s a real uphill battle even with these edge cases of, whoa, traumatic examples of, like, terrible like or then look at like, Ivy League students or my undergrads at Stanford and look at their histories and you know by age 5 they already had their paths set to have a higher of an average income sometime later and would go to a prestigious college and the same exact thing. It’s very hard to just work with the gears that made them who they are.

Timothy Revell: Alright, one last question for you. What are you planning on tackling next? Is it the meaning of life?

Robert Sapolsky: Oh, I don’t know. I hope something interesting comes along, building on-, not to get all preachy and stuff, but at the end of the day this stops being an issue for neuroscientists or behaviour geneticists or early childhood develop-, and it becomes a social justice issue. It’s really great, philosophically, if people believe less in free will and all of that. The number of people on earth who are made to suffer because of the miserable luck in their life, starting with their ancestors picking the wrong, god-awful corner of the planet to live in, and centuries later, that has something to do with this person’s cerebral malaria when they were five.

The social justice aspects of this, at the end of the day, are really the things that matter most about this, because we have a constructed a world with an awful lot of myths of free will, and culpability and responsibility. And most people who don’t have the corner office in their, like, fancy corporation, most people have mostly suffered because of this so that’s, kind of, the end that is galvanising me the most at this point. At the end of the day, that’s what this stuff is really about.

Timothy Revell: So, what did you think? It’s a pretty compelling case that Sapolsky built I think that free will doesn’t exist and as he puts it in the book “We are not captains of our ships. Our ships never had captains.” And if we could really accept that the implications that would have for our society would be profound. If you have any thoughts on this do please get in touch at podcasts at new scientist.com. We would love to hear from you and if you enjoy our podcast do please leave a review on whatever platform you’re listening to us on. It does really help us out .That’s it for this episode of culture lab. We’ll be back in a couple of weeks time with some more. That’s bye for now.

neuroscience

Sign up to our weekly newsletter

Receive a weekly dose of discovery in your inbox! We'll also keep you up to date with New Scientist events and special offers.

Sorry, there was a problem.

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required .

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

Image Unavailable

The Philosophy of Free Will: Essential Readings from the Contemporary Debates

To view this video download Flash Player

Follow the author

The Philosophy of Free Will: Essential Readings from the Contemporary Debates First Edition

ISBN-10 0199733392
ISBN-13 978-0199733392
Edition First Edition
Publisher Oxford University Press
Publication date March 14, 2013
Language English
Dimensions 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.6 inches
Print length 542 pages
See all details

Editorial Reviews

Book description, about the author, product details.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oxford University Press; First Edition (March 14, 2013)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 542 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0199733392
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0199733392
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.62 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.6 inches
#590 in Metaphysics (Books)
#1,482 in Free Will & Determinism Philosophy
#5,459 in Consciousness & Thought Philosophy

About the author

Paul russell.

Paul Russell is Professor of Philosophy at Lund University (Sweden) where he also serves as Director of the Lund|Gothenburg Responsibility Project (LGRP).

Customer reviews

5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 5 star 100% 0% 0% 0% 0% 100%
5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 4 star 100% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0%
5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 3 star 100% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0%
5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 2 star 100% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0%
5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 1 star 100% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0%

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.

Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later..

About Amazon
Investor Relations
Amazon Devices
Amazon Science
Sell products on Amazon
Sell on Amazon Business
Sell apps on Amazon
Become an Affiliate
Advertise Your Products
Self-Publish with Us
Host an Amazon Hub
› See More Make Money with Us
Amazon Business Card
Shop with Points
Reload Your Balance
Amazon Currency Converter
Amazon and COVID-19
Your Account
Your Orders
Shipping Rates & Policies
Returns & Replacements
Manage Your Content and Devices

Conditions of Use
Privacy Notice
Consumer Health Data Privacy Disclosure
Your Ads Privacy Choices

35 Free Will Examples

Chris Drew (PhD)

Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of the Helpful Professor. He holds a PhD in education and has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. [Image Descriptor: Photo of Chris]

Learn about our Editorial Process

free will examples and definition, explained below

The concept of free will refers to the ability of humans to consciously make their own choices and determine their own futures.

This is a central concept in philosophy, psychology, and theology. The central question being:

Do Humans Have Free Will?

There are myriad perspectives from various paradigms, including:

The Determinists : Determinists believe that the future is predetermined and we don’t have free will. There are determinists from a range of perspectives, from Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) who believed everything is a product of God’s/The Universe’s will [5] , through to modern-day neuroscientists like Sam Harris, who point out there is a hidden cause that we cannot control underlying all the decisions we make [3] .
The Existentialists : Existentialists emphasize that choice is inherent in everything we do. Even when it seems as if there isn’t a choice, our mindset toward a conundrum is itself a choice. While this sounds liberating, famously, Sartre pointed out that we are “condemned to be free” – free will is an unbearable burden [8,9] .
Compatibilism: The compatibilists believe that determinism and free will can exist simultaneously by redefining free will. They hold that an action is free if it is the result of the individual’s desires, motivations, and rational deliberations, even if these are predetermined by nature or prior events [6] .

The interesting conclusion we reach if we believe in determinism is this: how are people morally responsible for behaviors they were predestined to participate in?

Whether we believe that free will itself truly exists or not is a matter for each of us to contemplate. Working from the presupposition that it does exist, below might be some examples that demonstrate ‘free will in action’.

Free Will Examples

1. Choosing a Career Path A person deciding to become a doctor instead of a lawyer is exercising free will by making a choice about their future based on their interests and desires.

2. Voting By selecting a particular candidate or party in an election, individuals are exercising their free will to shape the political landscape according to their values and beliefs.

3. Altruistic Acts Volunteering at a local shelter represents free will, as it is a selfless act chosen without external compulsion.

4. Dietary Choices Opting to follow a vegetarian diet instead of consuming meat is a manifestation of free will, reflecting personal values and preferences.

5. Religious Beliefs Choosing to practice a particular religion, or none at all, demonstrates free will through the exploration and acceptance of personal faith and spirituality.

6. Educational Pursuits Enrolling in a photography class instead of a painting class shows free will by prioritizing one interest or passion over another.

7. Social Interactions Deciding to strike up a conversation with a stranger is an exercise of free will, as it involves overcoming natural hesitations and making a conscious choice to interact.

8. Relationship Choices Ending a toxic relationship, despite the emotional difficulty, showcases free will through the prioritization of one’s well-being over immediate comfort.

9. Hobby Selection Picking up the guitar as a new hobby instead of the piano is a reflection of free will, as it is based on personal preference and desire for a specific form of self-expression.

10. Choosing a Travel Destination Opting for a beach holiday over a mountain retreat exemplifies individual choice, reflecting personal preferences in leisure activities.

11. Adopting a Pet Deciding to adopt a cat rather than a dog demonstrates personal autonomy, as it is based on individual lifestyle and pet preference.

12. Selecting a Book Picking a mystery novel over a science fiction book at the library showcases decision-making autonomy, reflecting one’s taste in literature.

13. Participating in Sports Joining a soccer team instead of a basketball team is an expression of volition, indicating a preference for one type of physical activity over another.

14. Fashion Choices Wearing bold colors instead of neutrals is a manifestation of individual preference, showcasing one’s unique style and personality.

15. Learning a Language Deciding to study French instead of Spanish illustrates self-determination, as it is influenced by personal interest and goals.

16. Artistic Expression Choosing to paint in an abstract style rather than a realistic one demonstrates creative autonomy, reflecting one’s artistic vision and inclination.

17. Health Decisions Opting for a morning run over sleeping in is an act of self-governance, prioritizing health and well-being.

18. Friendship Formation Reaching out to make friends with diverse backgrounds instead of sticking to a homogeneous group is a display of social autonomy, reflecting openness and inclusivity.

19. Entertainment Selection Choosing to watch a documentary over a comedy film is an exercise of personal preference, indicating a desire for learning and reflection.

20. Career Change Deciding to switch careers from finance to teaching is an example of individual choice, reflecting a shift in personal values and job satisfaction.

21. Charitable Giving Allocating a portion of one’s income to different charities showcases decision-making autonomy, as it is based on personal values and beliefs about worthy causes.

22. Daily Routine Choosing to meditate every morning instead of scrolling through social media is a form of self-determination, prioritizing mental well-being.

23. Musical Preference Opting to listen to jazz music over rock demonstrates individual choice, reflecting one’s unique taste in music.

24. Home Decoration Decorating one’s home with minimalist furniture instead of ornate pieces is an exercise of decision-making autonomy, showcasing aesthetic preference.

25. Conflict Resolution Addressing a disagreement with open communication instead of avoidance is a manifestation of self-determination, valuing resolution and understanding.

26. Time Management Allocating time to learn a new skill instead of watching TV illustrates individual choice, reflecting a commitment to personal growth.

27. Food Preparation Choosing to cook meals at home rather than ordering takeout is an example of decision-making autonomy, prioritizing health and budget.

28. Exercise Routine Opting for yoga over weightlifting is a display of self-determination, indicating a preference for flexibility and mindfulness over muscle building.

29. Social Media Usage Deciding to limit social media use to maintain mental health showcases individual choice, reflecting awareness and prioritization of well-being.

30. Learning Method Choosing to learn through online courses rather than attending traditional classes is an example of individual choice, reflecting a preference for flexibility and self-paced education.

31. Gardening Approach Deciding to plant a vegetable garden instead of a flower garden showcases decision-making autonomy, based on a desire for sustainability and homegrown produce.

32. Conflict Approach Opting for a peaceful and diplomatic approach to resolve conflicts instead of aggression demonstrates self-determination, valuing harmony and mutual understanding.

33. Sleep Schedule Adjusting one’s bedtime to ensure adequate rest, despite the temptation of late-night entertainment, is an exercise of individual choice, prioritizing health and well-being.

34. Transportation Mode : Choosing to cycle to work instead of driving is a manifestation of decision-making autonomy, reflecting environmental consciousness and a preference for physical activity.

35. Financial Decisions Saving money for the future instead of spending it immediately is a demonstration of free will, reflecting long-term planning and self-control.

Arguments for and Against

Arguments for free will.

Many people argue for free will because they feel the subjective experience of making choices – it feels common sense because we feel ourselves grappling with choices before executing our decisions.

People universally experience the feeling of making decisions, from mundane choices like what to eat, to more significant ones like career and relationship choices. This subjective experience of freedom in decision-making is a powerful indicator that free will is an inherent aspect of the human condition [4,5,7] .

Similarly, the diversity of human behavior and the uniqueness of individual personalities suggest the existence of free will [4,7] .

If human behavior were solely determined by external factors, there would potentially be less variability in people’s actions and reactions. The vast array of human achievements, innovations, and variations in lifestyle across different cultures and individuals points to the presence of free will.

Arguments Against Free Will

The deterministic nature of the universe, as posited by some scientific theories, is a strong argument against the existence of free will.

According to determinism, all events are predetermined and thus inevitable, due to the natural laws governing the universe. If all actions and events are predetermined, this leaves no room for free will, as individuals would not have the ability to act otherwise [5,6] .

Another argument against free will comes from neuroscience. Research in this field has shown that neural activity in the brain precedes the conscious decision to perform a voluntary action [3] .

This suggests that decisions are made subconsciously and that consciousness only becomes aware of the decision after it has been made, challenging the notion that individuals consciously exercise free will in their decision-making.

Similarly, the influence of genetics and environment on human behavior challenges the concept of free will. People are born with a certain genetic makeup and are raised in specific environments, both of which significantly shape their behaviors, preferences, and personalities [3.5] .

The extent to which these factors determine human behavior raises questions about the degree of freedom individuals truly have in making choices.

Doctoral Program

Stanford's Ph.D. program is among the world's best. Our graduate students receive their training in a lively community of philosophers engaged in a wide range of philosophical projects. Our Ph.D. program trains students in traditional core areas of philosophy and provides them with opportunities to explore many subfields such as the philosophy of literature, and nineteenth-century German philosophy.

Among other areas, we are exceptionally strong in Kant studies, the philosophy of action, ancient philosophy, logic, and the philosophy of science. We attract some of the best students from around the world and we turn them into accomplished philosophers ready to compete for the best jobs in a very tight job market.

The most up-to-date requirements are listed in t he Bulletin .

CHECK PHD REQUIREMENTS

From the 2020-2021 edition of Explore Degrees:

Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy

Prospective graduate students should see the Office of Graduate Admissions web site for information and application materials.

The University's basic requirements for the Ph.D. degree including candidacy, residence, dissertation, and examination are discussed in the " Graduate Degrees " section of this bulletin. Graduate students are expected to meet standards of professional behavior, including: being present on campus to meet the academic and research expectations of the degree program; communicating in a timely, respectful and professional manner; complying with institutional policies and procedures; and participating appropriately in the program’s community. Graduate students are expected to familiarize themselves with applicable university policy and degree program requirements.’ ( https://gap.stanford.edu/handbooks/gap-handbook/chapter-5/subchapter-6/… )

University candidacy requirements, published in the " Candidacy " section of this bulletin, apply to all Ph.D. students. Admission to a doctoral degree program is preliminary to, and distinct from, admission to candidacy. Admission to candidacy for the doctoral degree is a judgment by the faculty in the department or school of the student's potential to successfully complete the requirements of the degree program. Students are expected to complete department qualifying procedures and apply for candidacy at the beginning of the seventh academic quarter, normally the Autumn Quarter of the student's third year.

Admission to candidacy for the doctoral degree is granted by the major department following a student's successful completion of qualifying procedures as determined by the department. Departmental policy determines procedures for subsequent attempts to become advanced to candidacy in the event that the student does not successfully complete the procedures. Failure to advance to candidacy results in the dismissal of the student from the doctoral program; see the " Guidelines for Dismissal of Graduate Students for Academic Reasons " section of this bulletin.

The requirements detailed here are department requirements. These requirements are meant to balance structure and flexibility in allowing students, in consultation with their advisors , to take a path through the program that gives them a rigorous and broad philosophical education, with room to focus on areas of particular interest, and with an eye to completing the degree with an excellent dissertation and a solid preparation for a career in academic philosophy.

Normally, all courses used to satisfy the distribution requirements for the Philosophy Ph.D. are Stanford courses taken as part of a student's graduate program. In special circumstances, a student may petition to use a very small number of graduate-level courses taken at other institutions to satisfy a distribution requirement. To be approved for this purpose, the student’s work in such a graduate-level course would need to involve an appropriate subject matter and would need to be judged by the department to be at the level of an 'A' in a corresponding graduate-level course at Stanford.

Courses used to satisfy any course requirement in Philosophy (except Teaching Methods and the summer Dissertation Development Seminar) must be passed with a letter grade of 'B-' or better (no satisfactory/no credit), except in the case of a course/seminar used to satisfy the third-year course/seminar requirement and taken for only 2 units. Such a reduced-unit third-year course/seminar must be taken credit/no credit.

In the spring quarter of each year, the department reviews the progress of each first-year student to determine whether the student is making satisfactory progress. In the fall and the spring quarter of each year, the department reviews the progress of each student who is past the first year to determine whether the student is making satisfactory progress, and on that basis to make decisions about probationary status and termination from the program where appropriate.

Any student in one of the Ph.D. programs may apply for the M.A. when all University and department requirements have been met.

Proficiency Requirements

First-year Ph.D. Proseminar : a one quarter, topically focused seminar offered in Autumn Quarter, and required of all first-year students.
two courses in value theory including ethics, aesthetics, political philosophy, social philosophy, philosophy of law. At least one of the courses satisfying this distribution requirement must be in ethics or political philosophy.
Two courses in language, mind, and action. One course satisfying this requirement must be drawn from the language related courses, and one from mind and action related courses.
two courses in metaphysics and epistemology (including metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of science). At least one of the courses satisfying this requirement must be drawn from either metaphysics or epistemology.
Instructors indicate which courses may satisfy particular requirements. If a course potentially satisfies more than one requirement the student may use it for only one of those area requirements; no units may be double-counted. Students must develop broad competencies in all these areas. Those without strong backgrounds in these areas would normally satisfy these distribution requirements by taking more basic courses rather than highly specialized and focused courses. Students should consult with their advisor in making these course decisions, and be prepared to explain these decisions when reviewed for candidacy; see requirement 6 below.
Logic requirement: PHIL 150 Mathematical Logic or equivalent.
History/logic requirement. One approved course each in ancient and modern philosophy, plus either another approved history of philosophy course or PHIL 151 Metalogic.
Students should normally take at least 64 graduate level units at Stanford during their first six quarters (in many cases students would take more units than that) and of those total units, at least 49 units of course work are to be in the Philosophy department. These courses must be numbered above 110, but not including Teaching Methods ( PHIL 239 Teaching Methods in Philosophy) or affiliated courses. Units of Individual Directed Reading are normally not to be counted toward this 49-unit requirement unless there is special permission from the student's advisor and the Director of Graduate Studies.
Prior to candidacy, at least 3 units of work must be taken with each of four Stanford faculty members.

Writing Requirement: Second Year Paper

The second year paper should demonstrate good scholarship and argumentative rigor, and be a polished piece of writing approximately 8000 words in length. The second year paper need not bear any specific relationship to the dissertation. It may be a version of a prospective dissertation chapter, but this is not required. The final version must be turned in on the last class of the Second Year Paper Development Seminar in Summer Quarter of the second year. Extensions of this deadline require the consent of the instructor of the Second Year Paper Development Seminar and the Director of Graduate Studies and are only granted in exceptional cases (e.g., documented illness, family crisis). The final paper is read by a committee of two faculty members and it is an important consideration in the department’s decision on the student’s candidacy.

Teaching Assistancy

A minimum of five quarters of teaching assistancy are required for the Ph.D. Normally one of these quarters is as a teaching assistant for the Philosophy Department's Writing in the Major course, PHIL 80 Mind, Matter, and Meaning. It is expected that students not teach in their first year and that they teach no more than two quarters in their second year. Students are required to take PHIL 239 Teaching Methods in Philosophy during Spring Quarter of their first year and during Autumn Quarter of their second year. Teaching is an important part of students’ preparation to be professional philosophers.

Review at the End of the Second Year for Advancement to Candidacy

The faculty's review of each student includes a review of the student's record, an assessment of the second year paper, and an assessment of the student's preparation for work in her/his intended area of specialization, as well as recommendations of additional preparation, if necessary.

To continue in the Ph.D. program, each student must apply for candidacy at the beginning of the sixth academic quarter, normally the Spring Quarter of the student's second year. Students may be approved for or denied candidacy by the end of that quarter by the department. In some cases, where there are only one or two outstanding deficiencies, the department may defer the candidacy decision and require the student to re-apply for candidacy in a subsequent quarter. In such cases, definite conditions for the candidacy re-application must be specified, and the student must work with the advisor and the DGS to meet those conditions in a timely fashion. A failure to maintain timely progress in satisfying the specified conditions constitutes grounds for withholding travel and discretionary funds and for a denial of advancement to candidacy.

Writing Seminar : In the Summer Quarter after the second year, students are required to attend the Second Year Paper Development Seminar. The seminar is intended to help students complete their second year papers.
Upon completion of the summer writing seminar, students must sign up for independent study credit, PHIL 240 Individual Work for Graduate Students, with their respective advisors each quarter. A plan at the beginning, and a report at the end, of each quarter must be signed by both student and advisor and submitted to the graduate administrator for inclusion in the student's file. This is the process every quarter until the completion of the departmental oral.
In Autumn and Winter quarters of the third year, students register in and satisfactorily complete PHIL 301 Dissertation Development Proseminar. Students meet to present their work in progress and discuss their thesis project. Participation in these seminars is required.
During the third and fourth years in the program, a student should complete at least three graduate-level courses/seminars, at least two of them in philosophy (a course outside philosophy can be approved by the advisor), and at least two of them in the third year. The three seminars can be taken credit/no-credit for reduced (2) units. Courses required for candidacy are not counted toward satisfaction of this requirement. This light load of courses allows students to deepen their philosophical training while keeping time free for thesis research.

Dissertation Work and Defense

The third and following years are devoted to dissertation work. The few requirements in this segment of the program are milestones to encourage students and advisors to ensure that the project is on track.

Dissertation Proposal— By the end of Winter Quarter of the third year, students should have selected a dissertation topic and committee. A proposal sketching the topic, status, and plan for the thesis project, as well as an annotated bibliography or literature review indicating familiarity with the relevant literature, must be received by the committee one week before the meeting on graduate student progress late in Spring Quarter. The dissertation proposal and the reading committee's report on it will constitute a substantial portion of the third-year review.
Departmental Oral— During Autumn Quarter of the fourth year, students take an oral examination based on at least 30 pages of written work, in addition to the proposal. The aim of the exam is to help the student arrive at an acceptable plan for the dissertation and to make sure that student, thesis topic, and advisors make a reasonable fit. It is an important chance for the student to clarify their goals and intentions with the entire committee present.
Fourth-Year Colloquium— No later than Spring Quarter of the fourth year, students present a research paper in a 60-minute seminar open to the entire department. This paper should be on an aspect of the student's dissertation research. This is an opportunity for the student to make their work known to the wider department, and to explain their ideas to a general philosophical audience.
University Oral Exam— Ph.D. students must submit a completed draft of the dissertation to the reading committee at least one month before the student expects to defend the thesis in the University oral exam. If the student is given consent to go forward, the University oral can take place approximately two weeks later. A portion of the exam consists of a student presentation based on the dissertation and is open to the public. A closed question period follows. If the draft is ready by Autumn Quarter of the fourth year, the student may request that the University oral count as the department oral.

Below are yearly lists of courses which the faculty have approved to fulfill distribution requirements in these areas: value theory (including ethics, aesthetics, political philosophy, social philosophy, philosophy of law); language; mind and action; metaphysics and epistemology (including metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of science); logic; ancient philosophy; modern philosophy.

The most up-to-date requirements are listed in t he Bulletin .

Ph.D. Minor in Philosophy

To obtain a Ph.D. minor in Philosophy, students must follow these procedures:

Consult with the Director of Graduate Study to establish eligibility, and select a suitable advisor .
30 units of courses in the Department of Philosophy with a letter grade of 'B-' or better in each course. No more than 3 units of directed reading may be counted in the 30-unit requirement.
Philosophy of science
Ethics, value theory, and moral and political philosophy
Metaphysics and epistemology
Language, mind and action
History of philosophy
Two additional courses numbered over 199 to be taken in one of those (b) six areas.
A faculty member from the Department of Philosophy (usually the student's advisor) serves on the student's doctoral oral examination committee and may request that up to one third of this examination be devoted to the minor subject.
Paperwork for the minor must be submitted to the department office before beginning the program.

Interdisciplinary Study

The department supports interdisciplinary study. Courses in Stanford's other departments and programs may be counted towards the degree, and course requirements in Philosophy are designed to allow students considerable freedom in taking such courses. Dissertation committees may include members from other departments. Where special needs arise, the department is committed to making it possible for students to obtain a philosophical education and to meet their interdisciplinary goals. Students are advised to consult their advisors and the department's student services office for assistance.

Graduate Program in Cognitive Science

Philosophy participates with the departments of Computer Science, Linguistics, and Psychology in an interdisciplinary program in Cognitive Science. It is intended to provide an interdisciplinary education, as well as a deeper concentration in philosophy, and is open to doctoral students. Students who complete the requirements within Philosophy and the Cognitive Science requirements receive a special designation in Cognitive Science along with the Ph.D. in Philosophy. To receive this field designation, students must complete 30 units of approved courses, 18 of which must be taken in two disciplines outside of philosophy. The list of approved courses can be obtained from the Cognitive Science program located in the Department of Psychology.

Special Track in Philosophy and Symbolic Systems

Students interested in interdisciplinary work relating philosophy to artificial intelligence, cognitive science, computer science, linguistics, or logic may pursue a degree in this program.

Prerequisites—Admitted students should have covered the equivalent of the core of the undergraduate Symbolic Systems Program requirements as described in the " Symbolic Systems " section of the Stanford Bulletin, including courses in artificial intelligence (AI), cognitive science, linguistics, logic, and philosophy. The graduate program is designed with this background in mind. Students missing part of this background may need additional course work. In addition to the required course work listed in the bulletin, the Ph.D. requirements are the same as for the regular program, with the exception that one course in value theory and one course in history may be omitted.

Joint Program in Ancient Philosophy

This program is jointly administered by the Departments of Classics and Philosophy and is overseen by a joint committee composed of members of both departments:

Christopher Bobonich , Philosophy (Ancient Greek Philosophy, Ethics)
Alan Code , Philosophy, Philosophy (Ancient Greek Philosophy, Metaphysics)
Reviel Netz , Classics (History of Greek and Pre-Modern Mathematics)
Andrea Nightingale , Classics, (Greek and Roman Philosophy and Literature)
Josh Ober , Classics and Political Science (Greek Political Thought, Democratic Theory)

It provides students with the training, specialist skills, and knowledge needed for research and teaching in ancient philosophy while producing scholars who are fully trained as either philosophers with a strong specialization in ancient languages and philology, or classicists with a concentration in philosophy.

Students are admitted to the program by either department. Graduate students admitted by the Philosophy department receive their Ph.D. from the Philosophy department; those admitted by the Classics department receive their Ph.D. from the Classics department. For Philosophy graduate students, this program provides training in classical languages, literature, culture, and history. For Classics graduate students, this program provides training in the history of philosophy and in contemporary philosophy.

Each student in the program is advised by a committee consisting of one professor in each department.

Requirements for Philosophy Graduate Students: These are the same as the proficiency requirements for the Ph.D. in Philosophy.

One year of Greek is a requirement for admission to the program. If students have had a year of Latin, they are required to take 3 courses in second- or third-year Greek or Latin, at least one of which must be in Latin. If they have not had a year of Latin, they are then required to complete a year of Latin, and take two courses in second- or third-year Greek or Latin.

Students are also required to take at least three courses in ancient philosophy at the 200 level or above, one of which must be in the Classics department and two of which must be in the Philosophy department.

Ph.D. Subplan in History and Philosophy of Science

Graduate students in the Philosophy Ph.D. program may pursue a Ph.D. subplan in History and Philosophy of Science. The subplan is declared in Axess and subplan designations appear on the official transcript, but are not printed on the diploma.

1. Attendance at the HPS colloquium series. 2. Philosophy of Science courses. Select one of the following:

PHIL 263 Significant Figures in Philosophy of Science: Einstein
PHIL 264: Central Topics in the Philosophy of Science: Theory and Evidence
PHIL 264A: Central Topics in Philosophy of Science: Causation
PHIL 265: Philosophy of Physics: Space and Time
PHIL 265C: Philosophy of Physics: Probability and Relativity
PHIL 266: Probability: Ten Great Ideas About Chance
PHIL 267A: Philosophy of Biology
PHIL 267B: Philosophy, Biology, and Behavior

3. One elective seminar in the history of science. 4. One elective seminar (in addition to the course satisfying requirement 2) in philosophy of science.

The PhD program provide 5 years of financial support . We also try to provide support for our sixth year students and beyond though we cannot guarantee such support. In addition to covering tuition, providing a stipend, and covering Stanford's health insurance, we provide additional funds for books, computer equipment, and conference travel expenses. Some of the financial support is provided through requiring you to teach; however, our teaching requirement is quite low and we believe that this is a significant advantage of our program.

Stanford Support Programs

Additional support, such as advances, medical and emergency grants for Grad Students are available through the Financial Aid Office. The University has created the following programs specifically for graduate students dealing with challenging financial situations.

Graduate Financial Aid homepage :

https://financialaid.stanford.edu/grad/funding/

Cash Advance: https://sfs.stanford.edu/gradcashadvance

Emergency grant-in-aid : https://financialaid.stanford.edu/pdf/emergencygrant-in-aid.pdf, family grants: https://financialaid.stanford.edu/pdf/gradfamilygrant2021.pdf, housing loans: https://financialaid.stanford.edu/loans/other/gradhousing.html, program characteristics.

Our program is well known for its small size, streamlined teaching requirements, and low average time to degree.

The program regulations are designed to efficiently provide students with a broad base in their first two years. In the third year students transition to working on their dissertations. During the summer prior to the third year, students are required to attend a dissertation development seminar. This seminar introduces students to what is involved in writing a dissertation. During the third year the course load drops to just under one course per quarter.

The rest of the time is spent working closely with a faculty member, or a couple of faculty members, on the student's area of research interest. The goal of the third year is that this process of intensive research and one-on-one interaction will generate a topic and proposal for the dissertation. During the fourth and fifth year the student is not required to take any courses and he or she focusses exclusively on research and writing on the dissertation.

Stanford University

Being a part of Stanford University means that students have access to one of the premier education institutions in the world. Stanford is replete with top departments in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. In addition, our professional schools, such as the Stanford Law School , are among the best. The range of research in a variety of areas, many of which touch on or relate to philosophical issues, is simply astounding. Students have the freedom to take courses across the university. Graduate students also regularly earn joint degrees with other programs.

Search Menu

Sign in through your institution

Browse content in Arts and Humanities
Browse content in Archaeology
Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Archaeology
Archaeological Methodology and Techniques
Archaeology by Region
Archaeology of Religion
Archaeology of Trade and Exchange
Biblical Archaeology
Contemporary and Public Archaeology
Environmental Archaeology
Historical Archaeology
History and Theory of Archaeology
Industrial Archaeology
Landscape Archaeology
Mortuary Archaeology
Prehistoric Archaeology
Underwater Archaeology
Zooarchaeology
Browse content in Architecture
Architectural Structure and Design
History of Architecture
Residential and Domestic Buildings
Theory of Architecture
Browse content in Art
Art Subjects and Themes
History of Art
Industrial and Commercial Art
Theory of Art
Biographical Studies
Byzantine Studies
Browse content in Classical Studies
Classical History
Classical Philosophy
Classical Mythology
Classical Numismatics
Classical Literature
Classical Reception
Classical Art and Architecture
Classical Oratory and Rhetoric
Greek and Roman Epigraphy
Greek and Roman Law
Greek and Roman Papyrology
Greek and Roman Archaeology
Late Antiquity
Religion in the Ancient World
Social History
Digital Humanities
Browse content in History
Colonialism and Imperialism
Diplomatic History
Environmental History
Genealogy, Heraldry, Names, and Honours
Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing
Historical Geography
History by Period
History of Emotions
History of Agriculture
History of Education
History of Gender and Sexuality
Industrial History
Intellectual History
International History
Labour History
Legal and Constitutional History
Local and Family History
Maritime History
Military History
National Liberation and Post-Colonialism
Oral History
Political History
Public History
Regional and National History
Revolutions and Rebellions
Slavery and Abolition of Slavery
Social and Cultural History
Theory, Methods, and Historiography
Urban History
World History
Browse content in Language Teaching and Learning
Language Learning (Specific Skills)
Language Teaching Theory and Methods
Browse content in Linguistics
Applied Linguistics
Cognitive Linguistics
Computational Linguistics
Forensic Linguistics
Grammar, Syntax and Morphology
Historical and Diachronic Linguistics
History of English
Language Acquisition
Language Evolution
Language Reference
Language Variation
Language Families
Lexicography
Linguistic Anthropology
Linguistic Theories
Linguistic Typology
Phonetics and Phonology
Psycholinguistics
Sociolinguistics
Translation and Interpretation
Writing Systems
Browse content in Literature
Bibliography
Children's Literature Studies
Literary Studies (Asian)
Literary Studies (European)
Literary Studies (Eco-criticism)
Literary Studies (Romanticism)
Literary Studies (American)
Literary Studies (Modernism)
Literary Studies - World
Literary Studies (1500 to 1800)
Literary Studies (19th Century)
Literary Studies (20th Century onwards)
Literary Studies (African American Literature)
Literary Studies (British and Irish)
Literary Studies (Early and Medieval)
Literary Studies (Fiction, Novelists, and Prose Writers)
Literary Studies (Gender Studies)
Literary Studies (Graphic Novels)
Literary Studies (History of the Book)
Literary Studies (Plays and Playwrights)
Literary Studies (Poetry and Poets)
Literary Studies (Postcolonial Literature)
Literary Studies (Queer Studies)
Literary Studies (Science Fiction)
Literary Studies (Travel Literature)
Literary Studies (War Literature)
Literary Studies (Women's Writing)
Literary Theory and Cultural Studies
Mythology and Folklore
Shakespeare Studies and Criticism
Browse content in Media Studies
Browse content in Music
Applied Music
Dance and Music
Ethics in Music
Ethnomusicology
Gender and Sexuality in Music
Medicine and Music
Music Cultures
Music and Religion
Music and Media
Music and Culture
Music Education and Pedagogy
Music Theory and Analysis
Musical Scores, Lyrics, and Libretti
Musical Structures, Styles, and Techniques
Musicology and Music History
Performance Practice and Studies
Race and Ethnicity in Music
Sound Studies
Browse content in Performing Arts
Browse content in Philosophy
Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art
Epistemology
Feminist Philosophy
History of Western Philosophy
Metaphysics
Moral Philosophy
Non-Western Philosophy
Philosophy of Science
Philosophy of Language
Philosophy of Mind
Philosophy of Perception
Philosophy of Action
Philosophy of Law
Philosophy of Religion
Philosophy of Mathematics and Logic
Practical Ethics
Social and Political Philosophy
Browse content in Religion
Biblical Studies
Christianity
East Asian Religions
History of Religion
Judaism and Jewish Studies
Qumran Studies
Religion and Education
Religion and Health
Religion and Politics
Religion and Science
Religion and Law
Religion and Art, Literature, and Music
Religious Studies
Browse content in Society and Culture
Cookery, Food, and Drink
Cultural Studies
Customs and Traditions
Ethical Issues and Debates
Hobbies, Games, Arts and Crafts
Natural world, Country Life, and Pets
Popular Beliefs and Controversial Knowledge
Sports and Outdoor Recreation
Technology and Society
Travel and Holiday
Visual Culture
Browse content in Law
Arbitration
Browse content in Company and Commercial Law
Commercial Law
Company Law
Browse content in Comparative Law
Systems of Law
Competition Law
Browse content in Constitutional and Administrative Law
Government Powers
Judicial Review
Local Government Law
Military and Defence Law
Parliamentary and Legislative Practice
Construction Law
Contract Law
Browse content in Criminal Law
Criminal Procedure
Criminal Evidence Law
Sentencing and Punishment
Employment and Labour Law
Environment and Energy Law
Browse content in Financial Law
Banking Law
Insolvency Law
History of Law
Human Rights and Immigration
Intellectual Property Law
Browse content in International Law
Private International Law and Conflict of Laws
Public International Law
IT and Communications Law
Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law
Law and Politics
Law and Society
Browse content in Legal System and Practice
Courts and Procedure
Legal Skills and Practice
Legal System - Costs and Funding
Primary Sources of Law
Regulation of Legal Profession
Medical and Healthcare Law
Browse content in Policing
Criminal Investigation and Detection
Police and Security Services
Police Procedure and Law
Police Regional Planning
Browse content in Property Law
Personal Property Law
Restitution
Study and Revision
Terrorism and National Security Law
Browse content in Trusts Law
Wills and Probate or Succession
Browse content in Medicine and Health
Browse content in Allied Health Professions
Arts Therapies
Clinical Science
Dietetics and Nutrition
Occupational Therapy
Operating Department Practice
Physiotherapy
Radiography
Speech and Language Therapy
Browse content in Anaesthetics
General Anaesthesia
Browse content in Clinical Medicine
Acute Medicine
Cardiovascular Medicine
Clinical Genetics
Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics
Dermatology
Endocrinology and Diabetes
Gastroenterology
Genito-urinary Medicine
Geriatric Medicine
Infectious Diseases
Medical Toxicology
Medical Oncology
Pain Medicine
Palliative Medicine
Rehabilitation Medicine
Respiratory Medicine and Pulmonology
Rheumatology
Sleep Medicine
Sports and Exercise Medicine
Clinical Neuroscience
Community Medical Services
Critical Care
Emergency Medicine
Forensic Medicine
Haematology
History of Medicine
Browse content in Medical Dentistry
Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery
Paediatric Dentistry
Restorative Dentistry and Orthodontics
Surgical Dentistry
Browse content in Medical Skills
Clinical Skills
Communication Skills
Nursing Skills
Surgical Skills
Medical Ethics
Medical Statistics and Methodology
Browse content in Neurology
Clinical Neurophysiology
Neuropathology
Nursing Studies
Browse content in Obstetrics and Gynaecology
Gynaecology
Occupational Medicine
Ophthalmology
Otolaryngology (ENT)
Browse content in Paediatrics
Neonatology
Browse content in Pathology
Chemical Pathology
Clinical Cytogenetics and Molecular Genetics
Histopathology
Medical Microbiology and Virology
Patient Education and Information
Browse content in Pharmacology
Psychopharmacology
Browse content in Popular Health
Caring for Others
Complementary and Alternative Medicine
Self-help and Personal Development
Browse content in Preclinical Medicine
Cell Biology
Molecular Biology and Genetics
Reproduction, Growth and Development
Primary Care
Professional Development in Medicine
Browse content in Psychiatry
Addiction Medicine
Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
Forensic Psychiatry
Learning Disabilities
Old Age Psychiatry
Psychotherapy
Browse content in Public Health and Epidemiology
Epidemiology
Public Health
Browse content in Radiology
Clinical Radiology
Interventional Radiology
Nuclear Medicine
Radiation Oncology
Reproductive Medicine
Browse content in Surgery
Cardiothoracic Surgery
Gastro-intestinal and Colorectal Surgery
General Surgery
Neurosurgery
Paediatric Surgery
Peri-operative Care
Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
Surgical Oncology
Transplant Surgery
Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery
Vascular Surgery
Browse content in Science and Mathematics
Browse content in Biological Sciences
Aquatic Biology
Biochemistry
Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
Developmental Biology
Ecology and Conservation
Evolutionary Biology
Genetics and Genomics
Microbiology
Molecular and Cell Biology
Natural History
Plant Sciences and Forestry
Research Methods in Life Sciences
Structural Biology
Systems Biology
Zoology and Animal Sciences
Browse content in Chemistry
Analytical Chemistry
Computational Chemistry
Crystallography
Environmental Chemistry
Industrial Chemistry
Inorganic Chemistry
Materials Chemistry
Medicinal Chemistry
Mineralogy and Gems
Organic Chemistry
Physical Chemistry
Polymer Chemistry
Study and Communication Skills in Chemistry
Theoretical Chemistry
Browse content in Computer Science
Artificial Intelligence
Computer Architecture and Logic Design
Game Studies
Human-Computer Interaction
Mathematical Theory of Computation
Programming Languages
Software Engineering
Systems Analysis and Design
Virtual Reality
Browse content in Computing
Business Applications
Computer Security
Computer Games
Computer Networking and Communications
Digital Lifestyle
Graphical and Digital Media Applications
Operating Systems
Browse content in Earth Sciences and Geography
Atmospheric Sciences
Environmental Geography
Geology and the Lithosphere
Maps and Map-making
Meteorology and Climatology
Oceanography and Hydrology
Palaeontology
Physical Geography and Topography
Regional Geography
Soil Science
Urban Geography
Browse content in Engineering and Technology
Agriculture and Farming
Biological Engineering
Civil Engineering, Surveying, and Building
Electronics and Communications Engineering
Energy Technology
Engineering (General)
Environmental Science, Engineering, and Technology
History of Engineering and Technology
Mechanical Engineering and Materials
Technology of Industrial Chemistry
Transport Technology and Trades
Browse content in Environmental Science
Applied Ecology (Environmental Science)
Conservation of the Environment (Environmental Science)
Environmental Sustainability
Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Environmental Science)
Management of Land and Natural Resources (Environmental Science)
Natural Disasters (Environmental Science)
Nuclear Issues (Environmental Science)
Pollution and Threats to the Environment (Environmental Science)
Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Environmental Science)
History of Science and Technology
Browse content in Materials Science
Ceramics and Glasses
Composite Materials
Metals, Alloying, and Corrosion
Nanotechnology
Browse content in Mathematics
Applied Mathematics
Biomathematics and Statistics
History of Mathematics
Mathematical Education
Mathematical Finance
Mathematical Analysis
Numerical and Computational Mathematics
Probability and Statistics
Pure Mathematics
Browse content in Neuroscience
Cognition and Behavioural Neuroscience
Development of the Nervous System
Disorders of the Nervous System
History of Neuroscience
Invertebrate Neurobiology
Molecular and Cellular Systems
Neuroendocrinology and Autonomic Nervous System
Neuroscientific Techniques
Sensory and Motor Systems
Browse content in Physics
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics
Biological and Medical Physics
Classical Mechanics
Computational Physics
Condensed Matter Physics
Electromagnetism, Optics, and Acoustics
History of Physics
Mathematical and Statistical Physics
Measurement Science
Nuclear Physics
Particles and Fields
Plasma Physics
Quantum Physics
Relativity and Gravitation
Semiconductor and Mesoscopic Physics
Browse content in Psychology
Affective Sciences
Clinical Psychology
Cognitive Psychology
Cognitive Neuroscience
Criminal and Forensic Psychology
Developmental Psychology
Educational Psychology
Evolutionary Psychology
Health Psychology
History and Systems in Psychology
Music Psychology
Neuropsychology
Organizational Psychology
Psychological Assessment and Testing
Psychology of Human-Technology Interaction
Psychology Professional Development and Training
Research Methods in Psychology
Social Psychology
Browse content in Social Sciences
Browse content in Anthropology
Anthropology of Religion
Human Evolution
Medical Anthropology
Physical Anthropology
Regional Anthropology
Social and Cultural Anthropology
Theory and Practice of Anthropology
Browse content in Business and Management
Business Strategy
Business Ethics
Business History
Business and Government
Business and Technology
Business and the Environment
Comparative Management
Corporate Governance
Corporate Social Responsibility
Entrepreneurship
Health Management
Human Resource Management
Industrial and Employment Relations
Industry Studies
Information and Communication Technologies
International Business
Knowledge Management
Management and Management Techniques
Operations Management
Organizational Theory and Behaviour
Pensions and Pension Management
Public and Nonprofit Management
Social Issues in Business and Management
Strategic Management
Supply Chain Management
Browse content in Criminology and Criminal Justice
Criminal Justice
Criminology
Forms of Crime
International and Comparative Criminology
Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice
Development Studies
Browse content in Economics
Agricultural, Environmental, and Natural Resource Economics
Asian Economics
Behavioural Finance
Behavioural Economics and Neuroeconomics
Econometrics and Mathematical Economics
Economic Systems
Economic History
Economic Methodology
Economic Development and Growth
Financial Markets
Financial Institutions and Services
General Economics and Teaching
Health, Education, and Welfare
History of Economic Thought
International Economics
Labour and Demographic Economics
Law and Economics
Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics
Microeconomics
Public Economics
Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics
Welfare Economics
Browse content in Education
Adult Education and Continuous Learning
Care and Counselling of Students
Early Childhood and Elementary Education
Educational Equipment and Technology
Educational Strategies and Policy
Higher and Further Education
Organization and Management of Education
Philosophy and Theory of Education
Schools Studies
Secondary Education
Teaching of a Specific Subject
Teaching of Specific Groups and Special Educational Needs
Teaching Skills and Techniques
Browse content in Environment
Applied Ecology (Social Science)
Climate Change
Conservation of the Environment (Social Science)
Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Social Science)
Management of Land and Natural Resources (Social Science)
Natural Disasters (Environment)
Pollution and Threats to the Environment (Social Science)
Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Social Science)
Sustainability
Browse content in Human Geography
Cultural Geography
Economic Geography
Political Geography
Browse content in Interdisciplinary Studies
Communication Studies
Museums, Libraries, and Information Sciences
Browse content in Politics
African Politics
Asian Politics
Chinese Politics
Comparative Politics
Conflict Politics
Elections and Electoral Studies
Environmental Politics
Ethnic Politics
European Union
Foreign Policy
Gender and Politics
Human Rights and Politics
Indian Politics
International Relations
International Organization (Politics)
Irish Politics
Latin American Politics
Middle Eastern Politics
Political Methodology
Political Communication
Political Philosophy
Political Sociology
Political Behaviour
Political Economy
Political Institutions
Political Theory
Politics and Law
Politics of Development
Public Administration
Public Policy
Qualitative Political Methodology
Quantitative Political Methodology
Regional Political Studies
Russian Politics
Security Studies
State and Local Government
UK Politics
US Politics
Browse content in Regional and Area Studies
African Studies
Asian Studies
East Asian Studies
Japanese Studies
Latin American Studies
Middle Eastern Studies
Native American Studies
Scottish Studies
Browse content in Research and Information
Research Methods
Browse content in Social Work
Addictions and Substance Misuse
Adoption and Fostering
Care of the Elderly
Child and Adolescent Social Work
Couple and Family Social Work
Direct Practice and Clinical Social Work
Emergency Services
Human Behaviour and the Social Environment
International and Global Issues in Social Work
Mental and Behavioural Health
Social Justice and Human Rights
Social Policy and Advocacy
Social Work and Crime and Justice
Social Work Macro Practice
Social Work Practice Settings
Social Work Research and Evidence-based Practice
Welfare and Benefit Systems
Browse content in Sociology
Childhood Studies
Community Development
Comparative and Historical Sociology
Disability Studies
Economic Sociology
Gender and Sexuality
Gerontology and Ageing
Health, Illness, and Medicine
Marriage and the Family
Migration Studies
Occupations, Professions, and Work
Organizations
Population and Demography
Race and Ethnicity
Social Theory
Social Movements and Social Change
Social Research and Statistics
Social Stratification, Inequality, and Mobility
Sociology of Religion
Sociology of Education
Sport and Leisure
Urban and Rural Studies
Browse content in Warfare and Defence
Defence Strategy, Planning, and Research
Land Forces and Warfare
Military Administration
Military Life and Institutions
Naval Forces and Warfare
Other Warfare and Defence Issues
Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution
Weapons and Equipment

Free Will: Philosophers and Neuroscientists in Conversation

Assistant Professor of Computational Neuroscience and Psychology

Chauncey Stillman Professor of Practical Ethics

Cite Icon Cite
Permissions Icon Permissions

What is free will? Can it exist in a determined universe? How can we determine who, if anyone, possesses it? Philosophers have been debating these questions for millennia. In recent decades neuroscientists have joined the fray with questions of their own. Which neural mechanisms could enable conscious control of action? What are intentional actions? Do contemporary developments in neuroscience rule out free will or, instead, illuminate how it works? Over the past few years, neuroscientists and philosophers have increasingly come to understand that both fields can make substantive contributions to the free-will debate, so working together is the best path forward to understanding whether, when, and how our choices might be free. We therefore asked leading philosophers and neuroscientists which questions related to free will they would most like the other field to answer. Those experts then voted on the 15 most important questions for each field to answer. This book is a collection of the answers to those questions along with follow-up questions from world experts in the neuroscience and philosophy of free will. These varied perspectives will fascinate, illuminate, and stimulate students from both fields, along with anyone who wants to be brought up to date on these profound issues.

Personal account

Sign in with email/username & password
Get email alerts
Save searches
Purchase content
Activate your purchase/trial code
Add your ORCID iD

Institutional access

Sign in with username/password
Recommend to your librarian
Institutional account management
Get help with access

Access to content on Oxford Academic is often provided through institutional subscriptions and purchases. If you are a member of an institution with an active account, you may be able to access content in one of the following ways:

IP based access

Typically, access is provided across an institutional network to a range of IP addresses. This authentication occurs automatically, and it is not possible to sign out of an IP authenticated account.

Choose this option to get remote access when outside your institution. Shibboleth/Open Athens technology is used to provide single sign-on between your institutionâ€™s website and Oxford Academic.

Click Sign in through your institution.
Select your institution from the list provided, which will take you to your institution's website to sign in.
When on the institution site, please use the credentials provided by your institution. Do not use an Oxford Academic personal account.
Following successful sign in, you will be returned to Oxford Academic.

If your institution is not listed or you cannot sign in to your institutionâ€™s website, please contact your librarian or administrator.

Enter your library card number to sign in. If you cannot sign in, please contact your librarian.

Society Members

Society member access to a journal is achieved in one of the following ways:

Sign in through society site

Many societies offer single sign-on between the society website and Oxford Academic. If you see â€˜Sign in through society siteâ€™ in the sign in pane within a journal:

Click Sign in through society site.
When on the society site, please use the credentials provided by that society. Do not use an Oxford Academic personal account.

If you do not have a society account or have forgotten your username or password, please contact your society.

Sign in using a personal account

Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members. See below.

A personal account can be used to get email alerts, save searches, purchase content, and activate subscriptions.

Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members.

Viewing your signed in accounts

Click the account icon in the top right to:

View your signed in personal account and access account management features.
View the institutional accounts that are providing access.

Signed in but can't access content

Oxford Academic is home to a wide variety of products. The institutional subscription may not cover the content that you are trying to access. If you believe you should have access to that content, please contact your librarian.

For librarians and administrators, your personal account also provides access to institutional account management. Here you will find options to view and activate subscriptions, manage institutional settings and access options, access usage statistics, and more.

Our books are available by subscription or purchase to libraries and institutions.

Month:	Total Views:
October 2022	3
October 2022	3
October 2022	2
October 2022	3
October 2022	4
October 2022	3
October 2022	2
October 2022	5
October 2022	3
October 2022	3
October 2022	4
October 2022	4
October 2022	3
October 2022	3
October 2022	4
October 2022	4
October 2022	5
October 2022	2
October 2022	3
October 2022	5
October 2022	3
October 2022	11
October 2022	3
October 2022	3
October 2022	2
October 2022	3
October 2022	3
October 2022	6
October 2022	7
October 2022	3
October 2022	3
October 2022	3
October 2022	3
October 2022	3
October 2022	4
October 2022	5
October 2022	3
October 2022	5
November 2022	2
November 2022	6
November 2022	2
November 2022	2
November 2022	7
November 2022	2
November 2022	2
November 2022	3
November 2022	1
November 2022	4
November 2022	2
November 2022	2
November 2022	7
November 2022	6
November 2022	2
November 2022	2
November 2022	5
November 2022	3
November 2022	3
November 2022	2
November 2022	2
November 2022	2
November 2022	6
November 2022	4
November 2022	2
November 2022	6
November 2022	8
November 2022	1
November 2022	11
November 2022	4
November 2022	3
November 2022	2
November 2022	2
November 2022	2
November 2022	2
November 2022	3
December 2022	3
December 2022	3
December 2022	1
December 2022	1
December 2022	4
December 2022	2
December 2022	2
December 2022	2
December 2022	1
January 2023	8
January 2023	4
January 2023	4
January 2023	4
January 2023	3
January 2023	6
January 2023	6
January 2023	4
January 2023	5
January 2023	7
January 2023	4
January 2023	5
January 2023	10
January 2023	4
January 2023	1
January 2023	2
January 2023	2
January 2023	5
January 2023	4
January 2023	4
January 2023	4
January 2023	5
January 2023	4
January 2023	4
January 2023	8
January 2023	6
January 2023	2
January 2023	6
January 2023	4
January 2023	5
January 2023	4
January 2023	4
January 2023	5
January 2023	2
January 2023	8
January 2023	8
January 2023	4
January 2023	4
February 2023	7
February 2023	1
February 2023	4
February 2023	3
February 2023	2
February 2023	2
February 2023	3
February 2023	2
February 2023	2
February 2023	2
February 2023	4
February 2023	2
February 2023	3
February 2023	2
February 2023	9
February 2023	2
February 2023	2
February 2023	4
February 2023	3
February 2023	3
February 2023	2
February 2023	4
February 2023	2
February 2023	2
February 2023	4
February 2023	4
February 2023	2
February 2023	2
February 2023	1
February 2023	2
February 2023	2
February 2023	6
March 2023	9
March 2023	1
March 2023	1
March 2023	6
March 2023	1
March 2023	1
March 2023	1
March 2023	1
March 2023	1
March 2023	2
March 2023	3
March 2023	3
March 2023	1
March 2023	1
March 2023	3
March 2023	1
March 2023	8
March 2023	1
March 2023	3
March 2023	1
March 2023	1
April 2023	5
April 2023	3
April 2023	4
April 2023	5
April 2023	2
April 2023	3
April 2023	7
April 2023	2
April 2023	3
April 2023	2
April 2023	6
April 2023	5
April 2023	2
April 2023	1
April 2023	8
April 2023	2
April 2023	2
April 2023	2
April 2023	2
April 2023	2
April 2023	3
April 2023	2
April 2023	6
April 2023	7
April 2023	2
April 2023	2
April 2023	6
April 2023	2
April 2023	10
April 2023	2
April 2023	2
April 2023	10
April 2023	2
April 2023	2
April 2023	6
April 2023	5
April 2023	1
April 2023	4
May 2023	5
May 2023	3
May 2023	6
May 2023	5
May 2023	5
May 2023	4
May 2023	1
May 2023	6
May 2023	1
May 2023	8
May 2023	6
May 2023	2
May 2023	7
May 2023	3
May 2023	1
May 2023	6
May 2023	6
May 2023	3
May 2023	10
May 2023	3
June 2023	4
June 2023	1
June 2023	1
June 2023	1
June 2023	2
June 2023	1
June 2023	5
June 2023	1
June 2023	8
June 2023	3
June 2023	3
June 2023	1
June 2023	1
June 2023	7
June 2023	2
June 2023	2
July 2023	3
July 2023	2
July 2023	3
July 2023	3
July 2023	3
July 2023	1
July 2023	2
July 2023	3
July 2023	1
July 2023	1
July 2023	1
July 2023	3
July 2023	1
July 2023	5
July 2023	3
July 2023	210
August 2023	2
August 2023	1
August 2023	9
August 2023	5
August 2023	3
August 2023	2
August 2023	1
August 2023	3
August 2023	1
August 2023	2
August 2023	17
August 2023	1
August 2023	4
August 2023	2
August 2023	76
August 2023	5
September 2023	12
September 2023	9
September 2023	11
September 2023	13
September 2023	7
September 2023	12
September 2023	12
September 2023	7
September 2023	11
September 2023	7
September 2023	3
September 2023	9
September 2023	11
September 2023	7
September 2023	11
September 2023	13
September 2023	3
September 2023	12
September 2023	7
September 2023	11
September 2023	11
September 2023	11
September 2023	9
September 2023	7
September 2023	7
September 2023	7
September 2023	11
September 2023	9
September 2023	9
September 2023	22
September 2023	11
September 2023	11
September 2023	11
September 2023	13
September 2023	14
September 2023	11
September 2023	7
September 2023	7
October 2023	5
October 2023	9
October 2023	17
October 2023	5
October 2023	7
October 2023	8
October 2023	1
October 2023	4
October 2023	7
October 2023	4
October 2023	4
October 2023	5
October 2023	9
October 2023	10
October 2023	5
October 2023	1
October 2023	5
October 2023	4
October 2023	5
October 2023	7
October 2023	1
October 2023	6
October 2023	6
October 2023	5
October 2023	3
October 2023	4
October 2023	4
October 2023	9
October 2023	11
October 2023	2
October 2023	5
October 2023	4
October 2023	5
October 2023	4
October 2023	1
October 2023	6
November 2023	13
November 2023	4
November 2023	11
November 2023	8
November 2023	5
November 2023	8
November 2023	12
November 2023	8
November 2023	11
November 2023	8
November 2023	8
November 2023	3
November 2023	9
November 2023	9
November 2023	7
November 2023	2
November 2023	10
November 2023	8
November 2023	9
November 2023	8
November 2023	8
November 2023	9
November 2023	8
November 2023	18
November 2023	3
November 2023	9
November 2023	8
November 2023	15
November 2023	8
November 2023	8
November 2023	10
November 2023	12
November 2023	8
November 2023	12
November 2023	15
November 2023	4
November 2023	11
November 2023	8
December 2023	4
December 2023	3
December 2023	8
December 2023	7
December 2023	5
December 2023	5
December 2023	2
December 2023	2
December 2023	5
December 2023	2
December 2023	4
December 2023	1
December 2023	9
December 2023	12
December 2023	6
December 2023	7
December 2023	1
December 2023	1
December 2023	2
December 2023	9
December 2023	3
December 2023	2
December 2023	6
December 2023	12
December 2023	2
December 2023	1
December 2023	3
December 2023	1
December 2023	2
December 2023	18
December 2023	1
January 2024	2
January 2024	2
January 2024	6
January 2024	3
January 2024	7
January 2024	7
January 2024	1
January 2024	7
January 2024	5
January 2024	2
January 2024	2
January 2024	3
January 2024	1
January 2024	5
January 2024	5
January 2024	4
January 2024	7
January 2024	3
January 2024	3
January 2024	4
January 2024	5
January 2024	4
January 2024	5
January 2024	1
January 2024	6
January 2024	3
January 2024	3
January 2024	5
February 2024	2
February 2024	3
February 2024	1
February 2024	2
February 2024	5
February 2024	2
February 2024	1
February 2024	1
February 2024	2
February 2024	4
February 2024	7
February 2024	5
February 2024	1
February 2024	3
February 2024	1
February 2024	1
February 2024	3
February 2024	1
February 2024	1
February 2024	1
February 2024	2
February 2024	2
February 2024	2
February 2024	1
March 2024	3
March 2024	4
March 2024	5
March 2024	21
March 2024	5
March 2024	5
March 2024	3
March 2024	3
March 2024	8
March 2024	10
March 2024	1
March 2024	4
March 2024	2
March 2024	2
March 2024	3
March 2024	2
March 2024	7
March 2024	3
March 2024	3
March 2024	2
March 2024	4
March 2024	2
March 2024	2
March 2024	1
March 2024	5
March 2024	12
March 2024	13
March 2024	2
March 2024	2
March 2024	4
March 2024	2
March 2024	5
March 2024	3
March 2024	2
March 2024	3
March 2024	5
March 2024	4
March 2024	5
April 2024	8
April 2024	3
April 2024	2
April 2024	2
April 2024	2
April 2024	3
April 2024	2
April 2024	8
April 2024	4
April 2024	5
April 2024	21
April 2024	1
April 2024	1
April 2024	3
April 2024	1
April 2024	3
May 2024	6
May 2024	4
May 2024	3
May 2024	9
May 2024	6
May 2024	5
May 2024	4
May 2024	9
May 2024	4
May 2024	8
May 2024	6
May 2024	1
May 2024	8
May 2024	6
May 2024	7
May 2024	4
May 2024	5
May 2024	7
May 2024	4
May 2024	9
May 2024	2
May 2024	7
May 2024	4
May 2024	4
May 2024	6
May 2024	7
May 2024	4
May 2024	8
May 2024	6
May 2024	5
May 2024	2
May 2024	7
May 2024	8
May 2024	4
May 2024	8
June 2024	5
June 2024	2
June 2024	6
June 2024	4
June 2024	4
June 2024	2
June 2024	4
June 2024	5
June 2024	4
June 2024	4
June 2024	7
June 2024	1
June 2024	5
June 2024	1
June 2024	4
June 2024	3
June 2024	3
June 2024	2
June 2024	2
June 2024	2
June 2024	2
June 2024	2
June 2024	4
June 2024	3
June 2024	2
June 2024	2
June 2024	2
June 2024	3
June 2024	4
June 2024	4
June 2024	3
June 2024	2
June 2024	2
June 2024	2
June 2024	4
July 2024	3
July 2024	1
July 2024	5
July 2024	2
July 2024	4
July 2024	2
July 2024	1
July 2024	3
July 2024	2
July 2024	1
July 2024	1
July 2024	1
July 2024	4
July 2024	2
July 2024	1
July 2024	3
July 2024	2
July 2024	1
July 2024	1
July 2024	7
July 2024	2
July 2024	7
July 2024	1
July 2024	2
July 2024	3
August 2024	1

About Oxford Academic
Publish journals with us
University press partners
What we publish
New features
Open access
Rights and permissions
Accessibility
Advertising
Media enquiries
Oxford University Press
Oxford Languages
University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
Cookie settings
Cookie policy
Privacy policy
Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

share this!

October 19, 2023

This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility:

fact-checked

reputable news agency

Scientist, after decades of study, concludes: We don't have free will

by Corinne Purtill, Los Angeles Times

Before epilepsy was understood to be a neurological condition, people believed it was caused by the moon, or by phlegm in the brain. They condemned seizures as evidence of witchcraft or demonic possession, and killed or castrated sufferers to prevent them from passing tainted blood to a new generation.

Today we know epilepsy is a disease. By and large, it's accepted that a person who causes a fatal traffic accident while in the grip of a seizure should not be charged with murder.

That's good, says Stanford University neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky . That's progress. But there's still a long way to go.

After more than 40 years studying humans and other primates, Sapolsky has reached the conclusion that virtually all human behavior is as far beyond our conscious control as the convulsions of a seizure, the division of cells or the beating of our hearts.

This means accepting that a man who shoots into a crowd has no more control over his fate than the victims who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It means treating drunk drivers who barrel into pedestrians just like drivers who suffer a sudden heart attack and veer out of their lane.

"The world is really screwed up and made much, much more unfair by the fact that we reward people and punish people for things they have no control over," Sapolsky said. "We've got no free will . Stop attributing stuff to us that isn't there."

Sapolsky, a MacArthur "genius" grant winner, is extremely aware that this is an out-there position. Most neuroscientists believe humans have at least some degree of free will. So do most philosophers and the vast majority of the general population. Free will is essential to how we see ourselves, fueling the satisfaction of achievement or the shame of failing to do the right thing.

Saying that people have no free will is a great way to start an argument. This is partly why Sapolsky, who describes himself as "majorly averse to interpersonal conflict," put off writing his new book "Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will."

Sapolsky, 66, has a mild demeanor and a Jerry Garcia beard. For more than three decades, he escaped the politics of academia to study baboons in rural Kenya for a few months every year.

"I'm really, really, really trying not to sound like a combative jerk in the book," he said. "I deal with human complexities by going and living in a tent. So yeah, I'm not up for a lot of brawls about this."

Analyzing human behavior through the lens of any single discipline leaves room for the possibility that people choose their actions, he says. But after a long cross-disciplinary career, he feels it's intellectually dishonest to write anything other than what he sees as the unavoidable conclusion: Free will is a myth, and the sooner we accept that, the more just our society will be.

"Determined," which comes out today, builds on Sapolsky's 2017 bestseller "Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst," which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and a slew of other accolades.

The book breaks down the neurochemical influences that contribute to human behaviors, analyzing the milliseconds to centuries preceding, say, the pulling of a trigger or the suggestive touch on an arm.

"Determined" goes a step further. If it's impossible for any single neuron or any single brain to act without influence from factors beyond its control, Sapolsky argues, there can be no logical room for free will.

Many people with even a passing familiarity with human biology can comfortably agree with this—up to a point.

We know we make worse decisions when hungry, stressed or scared. We know our physical makeup is influenced by the genes inherited from distant ancestors and by our mothers' health during her pregnancy. Abundant evidence indicates that people who grew up in homes marked by chaos and deprivation will perceive the world differently and make different choices than people raised in safe, stable, resource-rich environments. A lot of important things are beyond our control.

But, like—everything? We have no meaningful command over our choice of careers, romantic partners or weekend plans? If you reach out right now and pick up a pen, was even that insignificant action somehow preordained?

Yes, Sapolsky says, both in the book and to the countless students who have asked the same question during his office hours. What the student experiences as a decision to grab the pen is preceded by a jumble of competing impulses beyond his or her conscious control . Maybe their pique is heightened because they skipped lunch; maybe they're subconsciously triggered by the professor's resemblance to an irritating relative.

Then look at the forces that brought them to the professor's office, feeling empowered to challenge a point. They're more likely to have had parents who themselves were college educated, more likely to hail from an individualistic culture rather than a collective one. All of those influences subtly nudge behavior in predictable ways.

You may have had the uncanny experience of talking about an upcoming camping trip with a friend, only to find yourself served with ads for tents on social media later. Your phone didn't record your conversation, even if that's what it feels like. It's just that the collective record of your likes, clicks, searches and shares paints such a detailed picture of your preferences and decision-making patterns that algorithms can predict—often with unsettling accuracy—what you are going to do.

Something similar happens when you reach for that pen, Sapolsky says. So many factors beyond your conscious awareness brought you to that pen that it's hard to say how much you "chose" to pick it up at all.

Sapolsky was raised in an Orthodox Jewish household in Brooklyn, the son of immigrants from the former Soviet Union.

Biology called to him early—by grade school he was writing fan letters to primatologists and lingering in front of the taxidermied gorillas at the American Museum of Natural History—but religion shaped life at home.

That all changed on a single night in his early teens, he says. While grappling with questions of faith and identity, he was struck by an epiphany that kept him awake until dawn and reshaped his future: God is not real, there is no free will, and we primates are pretty much on our own.

"That was kind of a big day," he said with a chuckle, "and it's been tumultuous since then."

Skeptics could seize on this to rebut his arguments: If we aren't free to choose our actions or beliefs, how does a boy from a deeply religious conservative home become a self-professed liberal atheist?

Change is always possible, he argues, but it comes from external stimuli. Sea slugs can learn to reflexively retreat from an electrical shock. Through the same biochemical pathways , humans are changed by exposure to external events in ways we rarely see coming.

Imagine, he offers, a group of friends that goes to see a biopic about an inspiring activist. One applies the next day to join the Peace Corps. One is struck by the beautiful cinematography and signs up for a filmmaking course. The rest are annoyed they didn't see a Marvel film.

All of the friends were primed to respond as they did when they sat down to watch. Maybe one had heightened adrenaline from a close call with another car on the drive over; maybe another was in a new relationship and awash in oxytocin, the so-called love hormone. They had different levels of dopamine and serotonin in their brains, different cultural backgrounds, different sensitivities to sensory distractions in the theater. None chose how the stimulus of the film would affect them anymore than the sea slug "decided" to wince in response to a jolt.

For fellow adherents of determinism—the belief that it's impossible for a person in any situation to have acted differently than they did—Sapolsky's scientific defense of the cause is welcome.

"Who we are and what we do is ultimately the result of factors beyond our control and because of this we are never morally responsible for our actions in the sense that would make us truly deserving of praise and blame, punishment and reward," said Gregg Caruso, a philosopher at SUNY Corning who read early drafts of the book. "I am in agreement with Sapolsky that life without belief in free will is not only possible but preferable."

Caruso is co-director of the Justice Without Retribution Network, which advocates for an approach to criminal activity that prioritizes preventing future harm rather than assigning blame. Focusing on the causes of violent or antisocial behavior instead of fulfilling a desire for punishment, he said, "will allow us to adopt more humane and effective practices and policies."

Theirs is very much a minority viewpoint.

Sapolsky is "a wonderful explainer of complex phenomena," said Peter U. Tse, a Dartmouth neuroscientist and author of the 2013 book "The Neural Basis of Free Will." "However, a person can be both brilliant and utterly wrong."

Neural activity is highly variable, Tse said, with identical inputs often resulting in non-identical responses in individuals and populations. It's more accurate to think of those inputs as imposing parameters rather than determining specific outcomes. Even if the range of potential outcomes is limited, there's simply too much variability at play to think of our behavior as predetermined.

What's more, he said, it's harmful to do so.

"Those who push the idea that we are nothing but deterministic biochemical puppets are responsible for enhancing psychological suffering and hopelessness in this world," Tse said.

Even those who believe biology limits our choices are wary of how openly we should embrace that.

Saul Smilansky, a philosopher at the University of Haifa in Israel and author of the book "Free Will and Illusion," rejects the idea that we can will ourselves to transcend all genetic and environmental constraints. But if we want to live in a just society, we have to believe that we can.

"Losing all belief in free will and moral responsibility would likely be catastrophic," he said, and encouraging people to do so is "dangerous, even irresponsible."

A widely cited 2008 study found that people who read passages dismissing the idea of free will were more likely to cheat on a subsequent test. Other studies have found that people who feel less control over their actions care less about making mistakes in their work, and that disbelief in free will leads to more aggression and less helpfulness.

Sapolsky discusses such concerns in his book, ultimately concluding that the effects seen in such experiments are too small and their lack of reproducibility too great to support the idea that civilization will crumble if we think we can't control our fates.

The more compelling critique, he says, is eloquently articulated in the short story "What's Expected of Us," by speculative fiction writer Ted Chiang. The narrator describes a new technology that convinces users their choices are predetermined, a discovery that saps them of their will to live.

"It's essential that you behave as if your decisions matter," the narrator warns, "even though you know that they don't."

The greatest risk of abandoning free will, Sapolsky concedes, isn't that we'll want to do bad things. It's that, without a sense of personal agency, we won't want to do anything.

"It may be dangerous to tell people that they don't have free will," Sapolsky said. "The vast majority of the time, I really think it's a hell of a lot more humane."

Sapolsky knows he won't persuade most of his readers. It's hard to convince people who have been harmed that perpetrators deserve less blame because of their history of poverty. It's even harder to convince the well-off that their accomplishments deserve less praise because of their history of privilege.

"If you have time to be bummed out by that, you're one of the lucky ones," he said.

His true hope, he says, is to increase compassion. Maybe if people understand how thoroughly an early history of trauma can rewire a brain, they'll stop lusting for harsh punishments. Maybe if someone realizes they have a brain condition like depression or ADHD, they'll stop hating themselves for struggling with tasks that seem easier for others.

Just as previous generations thought seizures were brought on by witchcraft, some of our current beliefs about personal responsibility may eventually be undone by scientific discovery.

We are machines, Sapolsky argues, exceptional in our ability to perceive our own experiences and feel emotions about them. It is pointless to hate a machine for its failures.

There is only one last thread he can't resolve.

"It is logically indefensible, ludicrous, meaningless to believe that something 'good' can happen to a machine," he writes. "Nonetheless, I am certain that it is good if people feel less pain and more happiness."

2023 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Explore further

Feedback to editors

Study unveils limits on the extent to which quantum errors can be 'undone' in large systems

10 hours ago

Mars and Jupiter get chummy in the night sky. The planets won't get this close again until 2033

12 hours ago

Saturday Citations: A rare misstep for Boeing; mouse jocks and calorie restriction; human brains in sync

Aug 10, 2024

Flood of 'junk': How AI is changing scientific publishing

135-million-year-old marine crocodile sheds light on Cretaceous life

Aug 9, 2024

Researchers discover new material for optically-controlled magnetic memory

A new mechanism for shaping animal tissues

NASA tests deployment of Roman Space Telescope's 'visor'

How do butterflies stick to branches during metamorphosis?

Historic fires trapped in Antarctic ice yield key information for climate models

Relevant physicsforums posts, why are abba so popular, favorite songs (cont.).

9 hours ago

Cover songs versus the original track, which ones are better?

Talent worthy of wider recognition, who is your favorite jazz musician and what is your favorite song, biographies, history, personal accounts.

More from Art, Music, History, and Linguistics

How the ego inhibits personal development and social attachment

Sep 12, 2023

We might not be able to understand free will with science. Here's why

Oct 8, 2020

Do we have free will—and do we want it? Thomas the Tank Engine offers clues

Oct 10, 2022

America's role in combating global poverty examined in new book

Oct 5, 2023

Researchers to probe brain mechanisms behind free will

Aug 24, 2023

Why childhood adversity impacts how a person's behavior is judged

Aug 22, 2023

Recommended for you

Exploring the evolution of social norms with a supercomputer

Study shows people associate kindness with religious belief

Research demonstrates genetically diverse crowds are wiser

Aug 8, 2024

TikToks—even neutral ones—harm women's body image, but diet videos had the worst effect, study finds

Aug 7, 2024

Study finds seasonal shifts in moral values

Aug 6, 2024

Bouncing helps people move in sync during dance, study shows

Let us know if there is a problem with our content.

Use this form if you have come across a typo, inaccuracy or would like to send an edit request for the content on this page. For general inquiries, please use our contact form . For general feedback, use the public comments section below (please adhere to guidelines ).

Please select the most appropriate category to facilitate processing of your request

Thank you for taking time to provide your feedback to the editors.

Your feedback is important to us. However, we do not guarantee individual replies due to the high volume of messages.

E-mail the story

Your email address is used only to let the recipient know who sent the email. Neither your address nor the recipient's address will be used for any other purpose. The information you enter will appear in your e-mail message and is not retained by Phys.org in any form.

Newsletter sign up

Get weekly and/or daily updates delivered to your inbox. You can unsubscribe at any time and we'll never share your details to third parties.

More information Privacy policy

Donate and enjoy an ad-free experience

We keep our content available to everyone. Consider supporting Science X's mission by getting a premium account.

E-mail newsletter

Fully Funded PhD Programs in Philosophy

Harvard University PhD Programs in Philosophy

Last updated May 8, 2022

As part of Profellow’s series on How to Fully Fund Your PhD , here is a list of universities that offer fully funded PhD Programs in Philosophy. A PhD in Philosophy can prepare you for a career in academia, research, consulting, and writing.

“Full funding” is a financial aid package for full-time students that includes full tuition remission and an annual stipend or salary for the 3-to-6 year duration of the student’s doctoral studies. Funding is typically offered in exchange for graduate teaching and research work that is complementary to your studies. Not all universities provide full funding to their doctoral students, which is why I recommend researching the financial aid offerings of all the potential PhD programs in your academic field, including small and lesser-known schools both in the U.S. and abroad.

You can also find several external fellowships in the ProFellow database for graduate and doctoral study, as well as dissertation research, fieldwork, language study, and summer work experiences.

Would you like to receive the full list of more than 1000+ fully funded programs in 60 disciplines? Download the FREE Directory of Fully Funded Graduate Programs and Full Funding Awards !

Boston College (Chestnut Hill, MA): The department normally can admit five new students to the doctoral program each year. Their studies are fully funded, by tuition remission and stipends (graduate assistantships and teaching fellowships), for five years.

Columbia University (New York, NY): There is a system of multi-year financial aid packages. Such funding is awarded, as far as possible, to all incoming PhD students regardless of nationality. The packages typically cover five years. All fellowship awards cover the entire cost of tuition as well as health insurance and access to the Columbia Student Health Service. In addition, they provide an annual nine-month fellowship stipend.

Duquesne University (Pittsburgh, PA): Students admitted to the Ph.D. program receive an assistantship renewable for five years. Ph.D. assistantships include stipends and full tuition waivers. The stipend is $18,000.

Florida State University (Tallahassee, FL): In recent years, all admitted students on both the MA track and the PhD track have been fully funded. Funding includes a tuition waiver and a stipend, as well as payment of the health insurance premium.

Fordham University (New York, NY): Graduate assistantships and fellowships are available that include a tuition scholarship and a stipend. Approximately seven financial aid awards per year to students entering the doctoral program in philosophy. Each award is guaranteed for six years contingent upon satisfactory academic performance and progress toward the degree.

Harvard University (Cambridge, MA): Beyond tuition remission PhD students normally receive financial support from the Graduate School. They receive a full stipend for four years and after the first two years have an option for teaching. The Philosophy Department gives each graduate student up to $5,000 for research.

University of Alberta (Edmonton, Canada): PhD applicants are not normally admitted without a funding commitment for the expected duration of the program (subject to satisfactory progress). Most graduate students are fully funded. Funding comes in several forms, most commonly as teaching or research assistantships. All graduate applicants are automatically considered for departmental assistantships.

University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada): Financial support is contingent on maintaining high academic standing and progress toward degree completion. A typical PhD student will have four years of fellowship funding and a teaching assistantship. A PhD student can expect approximately $30,000 per year.

University of Calgary (Calgary, Canada): PhD students and thesis-based MA students are typically admitted with a funding guarantee. Financial support comes in the form of teaching assistantships and research scholarships; advanced PhD students may also be hired to teach their own courses.

University of Chicago (Chicago, IL): PhD students who matriculate in the summer of 2020 and after will be guaranteed to have funding support from the University of Chicago, external sources, or a combination of the two for the duration of their program to include full tuition coverage, an annual stipend, and health insurance.

University of Colorado Boulder (Boulder, CO): Typically, Ph.D. students serve as Teaching Assistants (TAs) and Research Assistants (RAs). For the first three years, TAs earned an annual stipend of about $23,123, and in the fourth year $26,725. All students on a TA or GPTI appointment also receive full tuition waivers and partial payment of health insurance.

University of New Mexico (Albuquerque, NM): The UNM Department of Philosophy provides five years of full financial support which may be pro-rated for students who have already completed some graduate work in philosophy. The support may be in the form either of a Philosophy Teaching Assistantship or an English TA-ship. TA-ships carry a stipend of at least $15,600 (2010-2011 academic year) and a tuition waiver.

University of Toronto (Toronto, Canada): Every full-time graduate student we admit is guaranteed financial support for the prescribed duration of the program. This support fully covers tuition, fees, and health insurance, including funds for living expenses and also travel funding. Average funding is about $26,000, with the possibility of further income in the form of additional teaching assistantships and summer instructorships.

Need some tips for the application process? See my article How To Get Into a Fully Funded PhD Program: Contacting Potential PhD Advisors .

Also, sign up to discover and bookmark more than 1700 professional and academic fellowships in the ProFellow database .

Fully Funded Master's Programs in Philosophy
Fully Funded PhD Programs in Mathematics
Fully Funded PhD Programs in School Psychology
Fully Funded PhDs in Teaching English as a Second Language
Fully Funded PhD Programs in Physics

Fully Funded PhD Programs , PhD in Philosophy

How to Answer the 3 Most Common Written Application Questions

Empowering women and inspiring young learners in timor-leste: a davis ..., find and win paid, competitive fellowships.

Be alerted about new fellowship calls for applications, get insider application tips, and learn about fully funded PhD and graduate programs

Fellowship Resources

Calls for Applications
Upcoming Fellowship Deadlines
Fellowships Database
Interviews with Fellows
International Fellows Network
Graduate Funding Directory

Fellowship Tips

What is a Fellowship?
Fully Funded Course
Graduate School Funding
Fellowship Application Tips
Fulbright Application Tips
Fellowship Application Guide
Our Mission, History & Values
ProFellow Winner Testimonials
Fully Funded Course Testimonials
Fellowship Industry Report
Advertise With Us
Terms & Privacy

ProFellow is the go-to source for information on professional and academic fellowships, created by fellows for aspiring fellows.

Faculty and Staff

University of Hawai‘i ® at Mānoa 2024-2025 General Catalog

College of arts, languages & letters: philosophy.

College of Arts, Languages & Letters
The School of Cinematic Arts
American Studies
Art and Art History
Asian Studies
East Asian Languages and Literatures
Indo-Pacific Languages and Literatures
Languages and Literatures of Europe and the Americas
Linguistics
Pacific Islands Studies
Religions & Ancient Civilizations
Second Language Studies
Theatre and Dance
Resource and Research Centers
School of Pacific and Asian Studies

College of Arts, Languages & Letters Sakamaki D-301 2530 Dole Street Honolulu, HI 96822 Tel: (808) 956-8649 Fax: (808) 956-9228 Email: [email protected] Web: www.hawaii.edu/phil

* Graduate Faculty

*T. Albertini, DPhil (Chair)—Renaissance and early modern philosophy, Islamic and contemporary Arab philosophy, women in philosophy *A. Chakrabarti, DPhil—Indian philosophy, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind *C. Y. Cheng, PhD—philosophy of language and logic, American philosophy, classical Chinese philosophy, Neo-Confucian philosophy *V. Dalmiya, PhD—epistemology, feminist philosophy *J. Fine, PhD—Ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, history of aesthetics, ethics *M. Ishida, PhD—classical American philosophy, Japanese philosophy, process philosophy, history and philosophy of mathematical logic T. Jackson, PhD—specialist, director of philosophy in the schools; logic, comparative philosophy, philosophy for children *S. Odin, PhD—Japanese philosophy, comparative philosophy, American philosophy *F. T. Perkins Jr., PhD—classical Chinese philosophy, early modern European philosophy, comparative philosophy *S. Smith, PhD—Indian Buddhism, philosophy of mind, phenomenology, cognitive science *J. Tanke, PhD—continental philosophy, aesthetics, historical ontology, social and political philosophy *G. Tsai, PhD—ethics, social and political philosophy

Degrees Offered: Undergraduate Certificate in Islamic Studies, BA (including minor) in philosophy, Minor in Philosophy for Children, MA in philosophy, PhD in philosophy

The Academic Program

Philosophy (PHIL) is an open inquiry that involves the disciplined examination of our most comprehensive goals, standards, and practice. For example: how should we conduct ourselves in our relations with one another? (ethics); what standards should we use to assess our institutions? (social and political theory); how may we achieve knowledge and understanding of the world around us? (epistemology, philosophy of science); what are the most general structures of thought and reality? (philosophy of logic and language, metaphysics); and what place does art have, or what place should it have, in human life? (aesthetics). In pursuing these questions, philosophy is often led to confront issues about the ultimate nature of reality and value or to consider possible limitations on our ability to answer or even to ask such questions. Philosophy proceeds with its task in part through contributing to ongoing discussions and debates within disciplines and traditions and also by cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural comparisons.

Students majoring in philosophy learn to develop a comprehensive view of the aspirations and achievements of human culture as well as a critical assessment of its failures. In the process, students acquire skills of careful reading and interpretation of texts and rigorous argumentative writing that is able to articulate a positive vision of their chosen sub-field of study while also reckoning charitably with relevant objections. The Department of Philosophy’s faculty has expertise in an unusually diverse range of philosophic traditions. The faculty includes specialists in Buddhist, Chinese, Indian, Islamic, and Japanese thought, as well as in many of the important Western traditions. The department as a whole has long been recognized internationally for its comparative work between philosophic traditions

The Philosophy Department is also home to two specialists from the University of Hawai‘i Uehiro Academy for Philosophy and Ethics in Education, responsible for philosophy for children Hawai‘i ( p4chawaii.org ). It offers students the opportunity to learn from partnerships across colleges and disciplines within the university as well as the opportunity for an unpaid internship within the UH Uehiro Academy. It also administers the “Minor in Philosophy for Children.”

Undergraduate Study

Bachelor’s degree, requirements.

Students must complete 30 credit hours of philosophy courses, including required courses:

Logic: PHIL 110;
Two elective courses 200-level or above;
Two courses in the History of Western Philosophy, one at the 200-level and one at the 414-level: PHIL 211, 212, 213, or 414 (Alpha);
Three courses in the core philosophical fields (of ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics, political philosophy, epistemology, philosophy of science): PHIL 301, 302, 303, 304, 306, 307, 308, 321, 402, 436;
One course in Eastern Philosophy (Buddhist, Chinese, Indian, Islamic, or Japanese philosophy: PHIL 330, 350, 360, 370, 380 or 406; and
a minimum of 12 credits must be taken at UH Mānoa

For information on a Bachelor Degree Program Sheet, go to www.manoa.hawaii.edu/ovcaa/programsheets/ .

Students must complete 15 credit hours of philosophy above the 100-level, and a minimum of 9 credits must be taken at UH Mānoa. A minor will have any one of the following concentrations:

Eastern Philosophy: PHIL 330, 350, 360, 370, 380, 406
Ethics and Law: PHIL 300, 301, 302, 303, 310, 312, 317, 318, 319, 387
Science and Society: PHIL 308, 313, 314, 315, 316, 321, 322, 324, 405, 422, 438
Humanities and the Arts: PHIL 218, 242, 270, 305, 306, 311, 417, 418, 436
History of Western Philosophy: PHIL 211, 212, 213, 414 (Alpha)
Philosophy with Children: PHIL 492, 493, 218, 270 or any 300+ course
Mini-Major: 1 Eastern, 1 History of Western Philosophy, 1 Core

Students must take 3 courses (9 credits) in their chosen concentration and 2 electives at the 200-level or higher.

Minor in Philosophy for Children

The minor in Philosophy for Children combines courses in the Department of Philosophy and the College of Education. This is relevant to the background foundation for a career in education that includes philosophy and the philosopher’s pedagogy as its central pedagogical approach. Students must complete 15 credit hours of philosophy at the 200-level or above.

Two courses are required: PHIL 492 and 493
One additional PHIL Elective 200+ is required: PHIL 218, 270, or any 300+ satisfies the requirement.
Two elective courses from the College of Education: EDEF 310, EDEP 311, 429; LTEC 442, 448; or SPED 304.

Graduate Study

The department offers graduate training leading to the MA and PhD degrees. Students with BA degrees may apply to the MA program. Students are accepted directly into the PhD program only if they have already received the MA degree or the equivalent from an accredited institution and have met any other departmental requirements

Specific requirements for all graduate degrees are detailed in the department’s “Graduate Student Handbook” at uhmpsa.wordpress.com/the-graduate-student-handbook/.

Although the Western philosophical tradition remains the fundamental frame of reference for the department, the opportunity provided for specialization in the area of Asian philosophy is unique in that UH Mānoa is the only institution of higher learning in the U.S. with a regular program leading to the PhD degree with areas of specialization in Buddhist, Chinese, Indian, Islamic, Japanese, and comparative philosophy. Whatever their field of specialization, graduate students intending to complete a PhD in philosophy at UH Mānoa must acquire a thorough knowledge of the history and problems of Western philosophy. On the basis of this foundation, students may further specialize in one of three areas of study: Western philosophy, Asian philosophy, or comparative philosophy. The area of comparative philosophy is the most demanding; at the PhD level its requirements include proficiency in both the Western and Asian fields. The candidate is expected to gain a mastery of some specific topic that can be approached through the resources of two or more philosophic traditions.

All graduate students shall develop their course of study in consultation with the chair of the graduate program.

The MA and PhD in Asian philosophy are recognized Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) regional graduate programs. Residents of Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming are eligible, on admission, to enroll at Hawai‘i-resident tuition rates.

Master’s Degree

The MA program can be completed either entirely through course work or through a combination of course work and thesis preparation.

Admission Requirements

Students seeking admission must have a BA degree, including the equivalent of 30 credit hours in philosophy. Students who lack this preparation must make up deficiencies either before or during graduate study. In the latter case, students will be admitted only conditionally, pending removal of the deficiencies. Deficiencies may also be designated in cases where a student’s background does not include a sufficient number and range of courses in Western philosophy. The GRE General Test is required of all program applicants to whom it is accessible.

Degree Requirements

To be eligible for conferral of the MA degree, a student must maintain a minimum GPA of 3.3 while completing at least 30 credit hours of course work, at least 18 of which must be in courses numbered 600 and above. In addition, students submit three papers written for PHIL courses for a culminating exam, which includes an oral component. This does not apply to students taking the MA thesis option. Also required for the MA degree are four semesters (or the demonstrated equivalent) of at least one philosophically significant language other than English: typically classical Greek, Latin, French, German, Arabic, classical Chinese, Japanese, Sanskrit, or Pali.

Doctoral Degree

The doctoral program consists of two stages. The first stage is that leading to admission to candidacy; the second, to the awarding of the degree. Normally the first involves at least two years of course work beyond the MA in preparation for departmental and language examinations. The second stage involves writing a dissertation and passing an oral examination in its defense. Students must attain certification for PhD candidacy–that is, fulfill all the requirements for the PhD except for the writing and oral defense of the dissertation– within four years of admission to the PhD program.

Students seeking admission must hold an MA degree or the equivalent in philosophy and have earned a minimum GPA of 3.3 in courses taken for the MA. Students may be required to make up deficiencies upon entry into the PhD program (see requirements for MA degree above). The GRE General Test is required of all program applicants to whom it is accessible.

To be eligible for conferral of the doctor of philosophy degree, a student must maintain a minimum GPA of 3.3 while completing at least 30 credit hours of course work beyond the requirements for the MA. A minimum of 18 of these credit hours must be taken at or above the 600 level. Students are required to demonstrate competence in each of three general areas: 1) history of philosophy; 2) metaphysics, epistemology, logic, and philosophy of science; and 3) ethics, aesthetics, social and political philosophy, and philosophy of law. Course listings made available each semester will indicate the general area or areas within which each course fits. Students are required to pass two examinations in an area related to the subject matter of their prospective dissertation, to complete an original dissertation, and to pass a final oral dissertation defense. In addition, students shall demonstrate proficiency in at least one (and where deemed necessary two) philosophically significant language(s) other than English: typically classical Greek, Latin, French, German, Arabic, classical Chinese, Japanese, Sanskrit or Pali. Language proficiency examinations will be conducted through Graduate Division and the department of UH Mānoa responsible for teaching that language.

Find a Person
For EMS Faculty & Staff
Community Resources

Department of Geography

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

The Ph.D. is a different kind of degree from the master’s degree. A doctoral candidate in geography must be capable of making original contributions to knowledge and scholarship. For the students to make such contributions, they must concentrate on a narrow and clearly defined field of study. We require, however, that doctoral candidates know more of geography than their particular specialties; thus, any aspirant for a doctorate must obtain master’s training or its equivalent before being admitted to doctoral candidacy. In short, admission to doctoral candidacy is official recognition that a student’s general foundation in the breadth of geography is satisfactory. Students then devote their attention to developing depth in chosen specialties.

The general requirements for a doctoral degree in geography are more rigorous than those for a master’s degree. At the same time, the greater flexibility of the doctoral program allows advanced students to pursue programs of study tailored to their special interests and needs.

Progress through the degree is marked by:

Successful performance in a verbal qualifying exam;
Four-day written comprehensive exam, with a verbal portion after the written answers have been assessed by the committee;
Formal dissertation proposal; and
Verbal defense of a completed dissertation.

The four-year Ph.D. program is reserved for students who have a master’s degree from another graduate program. That can be another geography program at another university, a non-geography program at another university, or a non-geography program at Penn State.

Students entering the four-year Ph.D. program must take the doctoral qualifying exam in their first year. A committee from three of the four fields of geography and formally appointed by the Graduate Program Officer will administer the qualifying exam. The qualifying exam can take place any time during the year, but students in the four-year Ph.D. program typically take it during spring semester.

Students in the four-year Ph.D. program complete a comprehensive exam and defend their dissertation proposal in the second year. Depending on the needs of their research, and in agreement with their doctoral committee, students can fulfill these two requirements in either order. Once students have successfully passed their comprehensive exam and defended their proposal, they typically take two years to research, write, and defend their dissertations.

Our online Graduate Student Handbook explains the program requirements for all degrees.

J.T. & Margaret Talkington College of Visual & Performing Arts

Graduate Programs

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Major in fine arts.

Concentration in Critical Studies and Artistic Practice
Arts AdministrationMusic Education
Acting/Directing
Arts Administration
History/Theory/Criticism
Playwriting

Music Education

Major in music education .

Like J.T. & Margaret Talkington College of Visual & Performing Arts on Facebook Like J.T. & Margaret Talkington College of Visual & Performing Arts on Facebook
Follow J.T. & Margaret Talkington College of Visual & Performing Arts on X (twitter) Follow J.T. & Margaret Talkington College of Visual & Performing Arts on X (twitter)
Subscribe to J.T. & Margaret Talkington College of Visual & Performing Arts on YouTube Subscribe to J.T. & Margaret Talkington College of Visual & Performing Arts on YouTube
Follow J.T. & Margaret Talkington College of Visual & Performing Arts on Instagram Follow J.T. & Margaret Talkington College of Visual & Performing Arts on Instagram
Connect with J.T. & Margaret Talkington College of Visual & Performing Arts on LinkedIn Connect with J.T. & Margaret Talkington College of Visual & Performing Arts on LinkedIn

Research Beacons
Research and Innovation at Maynooth University
Research Institutes and Centres
Spotlight on Research
Research News & Events
Graduate Research Academy
Research Development Office
MaynoothWorks
Researcher Directory

Undergraduate Studies

Level 8 Degrees
Open Days | Events
Guidance Counsellors
Visit Maynooth University
How to Apply | CAO
A Maynooth Education
Prospectus & Booklets
Scholarships
Certificates and Short Courses

Postgraduate Studies

Taught Master's, Diplomas and Certificates
Research Programmes
Micro-credentials
Springboard Courses
Fees, Funding & Scholarships
How to Apply for a Postgraduate Programme

International

The Maynooth Student Experience
Exchange Incoming (ERASMUS and Study Abroad)
Study Abroad Incoming
Summer and Tailored Programmes
Prospective Full Degree Students
Go Abroad with Maynooth
Pre-Arrival & Orientation

Search form

Maynooth university department of philosophy.

Department Home /

Five Philosophers on Free Will: Plato, Hobbes, Hume, Leibniz, and Hegel

Archival history

THE NEUROSCIENCE OF INTENTIONS AND AGENCY

The neuroscience of intentions and agency: How does the brain enable causal, conscious control of human decisions and actions?

Funding Agencies

Subscribe to our newsletters.

Five Philosophers on Free Will: Plato, Hobbes, Hume, Leibniz, and Hegel

Related Papers

RELATED PAPERS

RELATED TOPICS

Secondary Menu

The psychology of believing in free will

Disclosure statement

Disturbing dualism

Quantum weirdness

Service Delivery Consultant

Newsletter and Deputy Social Media Producer

College Director and Principal | Curtin College

Head of School: Engineering, Computer and Mathematical Sciences

Educational Designer

Free Will, Determinism, and Moral Responsibility

--> Philosophy PhD on Ethics and Metaphysics -->

Why free will doesn't exist, according to Robert Sapolsky

Sign up to our weekly newsletter

Popular articles

Sorry, there was a problem.

Image Unavailable

Follow the author

The Philosophy of Free Will: Essential Readings from the Contemporary Debates First Edition

Editorial Reviews

About the author

Customer reviews

Top reviews from the United States

35 Free Will Examples

Free Will Examples

Arguments for and Against

Arguments Against Free Will

Further Reading

Doctoral Program

Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy

Proficiency Requirements

Ph.D. Minor in Philosophy

Interdisciplinary Study

Graduate Program in Cognitive Science

Special Track in Philosophy and Symbolic Systems

Joint Program in Ancient Philosophy

Ph.D. Subplan in History and Philosophy of Science

Stanford Support Programs

Graduate Financial Aid homepage :

Cash Advance: https://sfs.stanford.edu/gradcashadvance

Stanford University

Sign in through your institution

Free Will: Philosophers and Neuroscientists in Conversation

Personal account

Institutional access

IP based access

Society Members

Sign in through society site

Sign in using a personal account

Viewing your signed in accounts

Signed in but can't access content

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Scientist, after decades of study, concludes: We don't have free will

Study unveils limits on the extent to which quantum errors can be 'undone' in large systems

Mars and Jupiter get chummy in the night sky. The planets won't get this close again until 2033

Saturday Citations: A rare misstep for Boeing; mouse jocks and calorie restriction; human brains in sync

Flood of 'junk': How AI is changing scientific publishing

135-million-year-old marine crocodile sheds light on Cretaceous life

Researchers discover new material for optically-controlled magnetic memory

A new mechanism for shaping animal tissues

NASA tests deployment of Roman Space Telescope's 'visor'

How do butterflies stick to branches during metamorphosis?

Historic fires trapped in Antarctic ice yield key information for climate models

Cover songs versus the original track, which ones are better?

Related Stories

How the ego inhibits personal development and social attachment

We might not be able to understand free will with science. Here's why

Do we have free will—and do we want it? Thomas the Tank Engine offers clues

America's role in combating global poverty examined in new book

Researchers to probe brain mechanisms behind free will