Genes, Neuroscience, and Free Will

As we learn more and more about the extent to which heredity equips people with personality, attitudes, and convictions, what happens to free will and human agency? Will this new understanding undermine, if not destroy, the possibility of holding people morally and legally accountable? In short, will science defeat free will?

These are the questions that eminent scholar James Q. Wilson is asking today. In 1993, when he published his widely acclaimed book
The Moral Sense--in which he argued that an innate moral sense is powerfully shaped by our social relationships and interactions--many of today's insights into the biology of behavior were glimmers on the neuro-technological horizon.

At this event, he will discuss the implication of neuroscience's boldest claim: that it can explain everything about the human condition. Responding will be columnist David Brooks of the
New York Times and AEI's Charles Murray and Sally Satel, M.D.

About the Author

 

Charles
Murray
  • Charles Murray is a political scientist, author, and libertarian. He first came to national attention in 1984 with the publication of Losing Ground, which has been credited as the intellectual foundation for the Welfare Reform Act of 1996. His 1994 New York Times bestseller, The Bell Curve (Free Press, 1994), coauthored with the late Richard J. Herrnstein, sparked heated controversy for its analysis of the role of IQ in shaping America’s class structure. Murray's other books include What It Means to Be a Libertarian (1997), Human Accomplishment (2003), In Our Hands (2006), and Real Education (2008). His most recent book, Coming Apart (Crown Forum, 2012), describes an unprecedented divergence in American classes over the last half century.
  • Email: cmurray@aei.org
  • Assistant Info

    Name: James Pickens
    Phone: 202-828-6038
    Email: James.Pickens@aei.org

 

Christina Hoff
Sommers

 

Sally
Satel
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