Free Will: Moral and Legal Responsibility

Saturday 15 November 2008
Conference: 8.30am-5.30pm
Cocktail reception: 5.30-6.30pm

Minter Ellison Conference Room,
Level 13, Sydney Law School
173-175 Phillip St, Sydney

Cost
Full fee: $154 incl. GST; Student/concession: $71.50 incl GST

Information for lawyers and barristers
Attendance at this seminar is equal to 6.5 MCLE/CPD units.

Click here to download a copy of the brochure and registration form (PDF).

About the conference

The question of whether people have free will is of interest to legal philosophers and criminal lawyers due to its possible link with moral responsibility and deserved punishment. If free will is required to be morally responsible and to deserve punishment by a criminal court then a further question is - what kind of freedom of the will is necessary?

This conference will focus on issues such as what it is to be free, to be morally responsible and to be deserving of punishment. It will consider the relationship between these issues and concerns about legal responsibility and the punishment of criminal conduct. The day will be of interest to philosophers and lawyers.

Programme

8.30am Registration

9.00am Welcome
Kevin Walton, Director, Julius Stone Institute of Jurisprudence

9.05am Justifying Punishment in a Deterministic World
Christopher Birch, Adjunct Professor, Sydney Law School

10.00am The Incompatibility of Retributive Desert and Determinism
Allan McCay, University of Sydney Foundation Program and Sydney Law School PhD candidate

10.55am Morning tea

11.25am Reason, Freedom and Punishment: A (Broadly) Hegelian Account
Philip A. Quadrio, University of New South Wales

12.20pm Extending Smilansky on Prepunishment
Neil Levy, Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics

1.15pm Lunch

2.15pm The Role of Gestalts in Conscious Decision-Making
David Hodgson, Judge of Appeal, Supreme Court of New South Wales

3.10pm Autonomy, Moral Responsibility and Self-Control
Catriona Mackenzie, Macquarie University

4.05pm Afternoon tea

4.35pm Rational Capacities, Resolve, and Weakness of Will
Daniel Cohen, Charles Sturt University

5.30 – 6.30pm Cocktail Reception