Workshop on Free Will and Decision Theory '25

We are pleased to announce the workshop Free Will and Decision Theory '25, which will take place at LMU Munich, Germany on the 4th and 5th of July 2025.

Idea & Motivation

Questions related to free will—for instance, "Does rational decision-making presuppose an ability to do otherwise?" or "Are non-trivial counterfactuals consistent with determinism?"—have obvious relevance to decision theory. Yet the literature on decision theory has largely shied away from direct engagement with free will and the literature surrounding it. With this workshop we hope to contribute to bridging that gap by bringing together decision theorists interested in these issues with scholars knowledgable about free will. We also hope that exploring these issues with the formal tools of decision theory may in turn contribute fruitfully to discussions in the traditional literature on free will.

Speakers

• Daniele Conti
• Alison Fernandes
• Malcolm Forster
• Melissa Fusco
• Franz Huber
• İbrahim Hansu
• Christian List
• Barry Loewer
• Christian Löw
• Toby C.P. Solomon
• Reuben Stern
• Timothy Luke Williamson

Talks to Include:

Time to Intervene: Putting Causal Decision Theory Out to Pasture

• Explanatory Compatibilism: Free Will and Causal Explanation
• The Branchpoint Proposal and the Role of Counterfactuals
• The Epistemology of Decision-Making Counterfactuals
• Libertarian Decision theory
• Intervening is Conditioning

And much more.

A full program will be announced closer to the date. The workshop will run from 09:00 until 18:00 on the 4th and 5th of July, in the ZEPP at LMU (Room M210, Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1, 80539 München).

Organizer

The workshop will be hosted by the chair of Prof. Christian List and the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy. All correspondence should be directed to tcpsolomon@gmail.com. Registration is encouraged (for planning purposes) but not mandatory.

Please register by email to: tcpsolomon@gmail.com.

Venue

The workshop will take place in the ZEPP seminar room, M210, Geschwister-Scholl.-Platz 1