Professor Tillmann Vierkant Inaugural Lecture The will (volition) is intuitively one of the most fundamental faculties of human psychology, but it is surprisingly difficult to say exactly what it is. In previous work, I had identified two faces of volition – namely, choice and control. When we talk about our will, we sometimes talk about our ability to choose different courses of action autonomously, but we also talk about the capacity to control our actions.X-phi experiments we have conducted show that these two terms indeed track two essential intuitions about what the will is. However, in this lecture, it will become clear that despite the usefulness of the distinction, it is also misleading in important ways. Crucially, depending on the right interpretation of the terms, both notions have a claim to being the rational face of the will. The lecture will unpack why this is, and why it is important for many big questions like free will, responsibility, cognitive science (especially two systems theory), metacognition, and self-control.However, even after removing the ambiguities about the rational face of the will, there is still one dimension which had not been present in my earlier work - and this turns out to be a significant lacuna. This fourth face of the will is the social dimension. The lecture will end by exploring why social scaffolding is essential for the will, especially in the context of ascribing responsibility to each other, and hint at why this fact is very useful in understanding responsibility gaps in the ethics of AI.There will be a reception after the event. Mar 26 2025 17.15 - 19.15 Professor Tillmann Vierkant Inaugural Lecture Join us for Professor Tillmann Vierkant's Inaugural Lecture, 'The Four Faces of Volition'. G.03, 50 George Square 50 George Square Edinburgh EH8 9LH Google Maps Book your ticket here...
Professor Tillmann Vierkant Inaugural Lecture The will (volition) is intuitively one of the most fundamental faculties of human psychology, but it is surprisingly difficult to say exactly what it is. In previous work, I had identified two faces of volition – namely, choice and control. When we talk about our will, we sometimes talk about our ability to choose different courses of action autonomously, but we also talk about the capacity to control our actions.X-phi experiments we have conducted show that these two terms indeed track two essential intuitions about what the will is. However, in this lecture, it will become clear that despite the usefulness of the distinction, it is also misleading in important ways. Crucially, depending on the right interpretation of the terms, both notions have a claim to being the rational face of the will. The lecture will unpack why this is, and why it is important for many big questions like free will, responsibility, cognitive science (especially two systems theory), metacognition, and self-control.However, even after removing the ambiguities about the rational face of the will, there is still one dimension which had not been present in my earlier work - and this turns out to be a significant lacuna. This fourth face of the will is the social dimension. The lecture will end by exploring why social scaffolding is essential for the will, especially in the context of ascribing responsibility to each other, and hint at why this fact is very useful in understanding responsibility gaps in the ethics of AI.There will be a reception after the event. Mar 26 2025 17.15 - 19.15 Professor Tillmann Vierkant Inaugural Lecture Join us for Professor Tillmann Vierkant's Inaugural Lecture, 'The Four Faces of Volition'. G.03, 50 George Square 50 George Square Edinburgh EH8 9LH Google Maps Book your ticket here...
Mar 26 2025 17.15 - 19.15 Professor Tillmann Vierkant Inaugural Lecture Join us for Professor Tillmann Vierkant's Inaugural Lecture, 'The Four Faces of Volition'.
