The First Blessing of Our Nature: A Defence of Human Freedom

The Enlightenment belief in progress and our optimism about the future of humanity is predicated on the assumption that human beings are individually and collectively capable of free acts. The sense that we are free also lies at the heart of the humanist vision. In recent decades, increasing numbers of thinkers have claimed that science now shows that our sense of freedom is an illusion and that our apparently free acts are physically, or neurobiologically, determined. The lecture will defend our intuition that we our free.