CFP: Agency and Free Will in an Indeterministic Universe: New Perspectives from Philosophy, Biology and Neuroscience

Topical Collection in Synthese. An International Journal for Epistemology, Methodology and Philosophy of Science

Guest Editor: Anne Sophie Meincke, University of Vienna

Topical Collection Description:

The philosophical debate about free will has long been concerned with whether free will is compatible with the deterministic laws of classical physics. The truth of universal determinism is commonly taken for granted also by those who judge free will to be incompatible with determinism and conclude from this that free will is illusory. Indeed, scepticism about free will is on the rise, fuelled additionally by claims from biology and neuroscience that our genes determine who we are and how we behave, or that we are passive bystanders to the decisions made by our brains. Given this intellectual landscape, it is not surprising that libertarian conceptions of free will have remained a minority position to date. Turning its back on determinism and famously having been accused by Peter F. Strawson of subscribing to an ‘obscure and panicky metaphysics’, libertarianism about free will is still widely dismissed as inconsistent with a scientific worldview.

This topical collection aims to take a fresh look at libertarianism and, more broadly, to explore the prospects for robust notions of agency and free will under indeterminism that do not run counter to science but may even be scientifically grounded. Could there be something like scientific libertarianism? What would it entail? Addressing these questions is timely, given the mounting evidence that our world is indeed indeterministic. As far as physics is concerned, the indeterminacy of quantum behaviour poses a well-known threat to the idea of universal determinism. But also recent developments in biology, such as epigenetics, the noticeable shift from gene-centred to organism-centred theories of evolution and the rediscovery of organisms as agents, challenge biological versions of determinism, especially genetic determinism. At the same time, neuroscientists, such as Björn Brembs, Kevin Mitchell and Peter U. Tse, are disputing the popular narrative that neuroscience has disproved free will, instead providing evidence for indeterministic neural mechanisms that support libertarian free will.

This call for papers invites philosophers (working, e.g., in metaphysics, the philosophy of mind and action and the philosophy of biology) as well as philosophically-interested biologists and neuroscientists to present their visions of what it means to be an agent with free will in an indeterministic world. A scientifically grounded account of an ontologically robust, libertarian notion of free will can only be achieved through a collaborative effort across disciplines. Therefore, this topical collection brings together cutting-edge work from all three perspectives in the hope of fostering a productive interdisciplinary dialogue that breaks new ground in the understanding of free will. 

The topical collection is associated with the interdisciplinary conference “Free Will: New Perspectives from Philosophy, Biology and Neuroscience” (https://philevents.org/event/show/135653), taking place at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria, on 11th and 12th June 2025. 

Appropriate Topics for Submission include, among others:

* What is a biological agent, ontologically speaking?

* What are the neur(on)al mechanisms of decision-making in (‘higher’) biological agents?

* What does it mean for a biological agent to perform (spontaneous) actions?

* What is the best model of action causation in the light of scientific evidence? Should we endorse agent causal or event causal models or a combination of both? What position on mental causation does this imply?

* What are the implications for free will of biological theories of agency and of the relationship between agent and environment, as they are currently being discussed in the philosophy of biology?

* How can we characterise indeterminism in constructive terms? What, if anything, is specific about indeterminism in biological and neur(on)al contexts?

* Can libertarian free will be understood in terms of biological abilities or powers/ dispositions?

* How can a scientific perspective inform new strategies for defending a libertarian understanding of free will against criticism, especially against the charge that by endorsing indeterminism, libertarianism turns freely willed actions into unintelligible, random events?

* How are we to (re-) interpret the Principle of Alternative Possibilities within the framework of a scientifically grounded libertarian theory of free will?

* What can we learn about agency and free will from research on animal cognition and basal cognition? Do non-human animals and perhaps even members of other taxa have free will and, if so, in what sense?

* What, if any, are the differences between human and non-human agency and free will?

For further information, please contact the guest editor: [email protected]

Submissions via: https://www.editorialmanager.com/synt/default.aspx

When submitting, please select “TC: Agency and Free Will in an Indeterministic World: New Perspectives from Philosophy, Biology and Neuroscience” as type of manuscript in the drop-down menu. Articles belonging to a Topical Collection are not assigned to one particular issue, but are published continuously. However, all of the papers in a Topical Collection are collected together and prominently displayed in that form on Synthese’s website. Papers in a topical collection undergo the same review process as any other submission to Synthese.

Guidelines for submitting the manuscript can be found here: https://www.springer.com/journal/11229/submission-guidelines

I am looking forward to your submissions.

Dr Anne Sophie Meincke

Department of Philosophy

University of Vienna

Liebiggasse 5

1010 Vienna, Austria