UTSC Celebration of Research Excellence Lecture—Jessica Wilson

The UTSC Office of the Vice-Principal Research & Innovation’s Celebration of Research Excellence Lecture Series returns Wednesday, December 7, 2022. 

This series features award-winning UTSC faculty presenting cutting-edge research, sharing innovations and discoveries that are advancing new knowledge and improving lives in Canada and around the world.  Reflecting the diversity of faculty accomplishments in the humanities, social sciences, and physical and life sciences, and from both emerging and established scholars, this series will showcase UTSC’s innovative research environment. This year will feature Jessica Wilson, a professor of Philosophy at UTSC and in the Graduate Department at St. George. 

Talk Title

The Strong Emergence of Free Will

Talk Abstract

Metaphysically emergent phenomena synchronically depend on, yet are also to some extent autonomous from, complex lower-level physical goings-on. In her recent book, Metaphysical Emergence (OUP, 2021), Wilson argues that there are two forms of such emergence: weak (whereby an emergent has a proper subset of powers of its physical dependence base) and strong (whereby an emergent has fundamentally novel powers as compared to its physical dependence base). Here Wilson will present these two forms of emergence and argue that free will is strongly emergent.