Call for Papers: “Agency and Free Will in an Indeterministic World: 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:
anne.sophie.meincke@univie.ac.at
The deadline for submissions is 15th October 2025.
Online CfP: https://link.springer.com/collections/cjjciagiei
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
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