Laws of nature, human freedom and human laws

Professor Lucy Allais’ inaugural lecture will tackle one of the oldest problems in philosophy: the nature of human free will.

The way we think about causation is often taken to threaten the idea that free choice is really possible: it seems to suggest that everything that happens is a determined function of the way things were in the past.

On the other hand, the idea that we have the capacity to freely choose how we act and that our choices are not settled by the past and the laws of nature, is fundamental to the way we think about ourselves as human beings and as moral beings, as well as to the way we hold each other responsible and the way we appreciate each other.

In this lecture, Allais’ aim is to sketch a way these two different kinds of explanation can be reconciled. She will sketch a relation between this and the ideas of laws and of freedom in politics and psychology.

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