2. What's the Problem with Free Will?

About this Lecture

Lecture

In this module, we think about why free will is a problem. Why is this power to determine our actions a problem for philosophers? Why isn't it something completely straightforward that we can take for granted?

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.