Abstract

Chaired by Prof Jane Heal (Philosophy, University of Cambridge)

Are human choices really free? Or are the rules that govern human decisions analogous to those that define what side a coin will land? Is conscious will necessary for moral responsibility? Prof Neil Levy and Dr Aaron Schurger open this term’s Moral Psychology Seminar Series with exciting philosophical and neurological insights into the fundamental questions of consciousness, free will, and their moral significance.

About the presenters:

Prof Neil Levy is an Honorary Fellow at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health as well as director of research at the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics. He has published over one hundred papers on several topics in philosophy and ethics and is the author of Free Will and Moral Responsibility, Neuroethics: Challenges for the 21st Century among many others.

Dr. Aaron Schurger completed his Ph.D. under Prof. Jonathan Cohen at Princeton and is currently a Senior Research Scientist at the Brain-Mind Institute in Lausanne, where he unravels the mystery of spontaneous self-initiated movement. His findings have been featured in prominent journals including Science, PNAS , and BMC Neuroscience.

This event is part of a series of biweekly interdisciplinary debates in moral psychology (http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/programmes/moral-psychology).

Our future events include an interdisciplinary meet and greet and debates on key contemporary issues in the field, including empathy and moral nativism.