5. Does Freedom Actually Exist and What is it Actually Like?

About this Lecture

Lecture

In this module, we consider the question whether freedom actually exists, thinking in particular about David Hume's contention that causation is not something that we can actually observe in the universe.

Course

In this course, Professor Thomas Pink (King's College, London) explores the philosophical problem of free will. The course begins by thinking about what free will actually is, before going on to ask why free will is actually a problem for philosophers. In the third module, we consider why the problem even matters—what does it matter, that is, whether we have free will or not?—before moving on in the fourth module to think about how we might ring-fence the problem of ethics from the problem of free will. In the final module, we try to answer one final question: does free will actually exist?

Lecturer

Professor Thomas Pink read history and philosophy at Cambridge, where he also received his PhD. After working for four years in London and New York for a City merchant bank, he returned to philosophy in 1990 as a Research Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge. He then lectured at Sheffield University prior to moving to King's in 1996.