Derk Pereboom

About

Derk Pereboom is the Susan Linn Sage Professor of Philosophy and Ethics at Cornell University. His research primarily focuses on free will and the nature of mind. In his books Living without Free Will (Cambridge 2001), Free Will, Agency, and Meaning in Life (Oxford 2014), and Wrongdoing and the Moral Emotions, Pereboom defends and develops Spinoza's view that humans lack the sort of free will at issue in the traditional debate. He argues that this lack of free will does not threaten the most important features of morality and meaning in life and has the potential to enhance social harmony. In his book Consciousness and the Prospects of Physicalism (Oxford 2011), he explores two options for naturalist accounts of consciousness, each inspired by ideas proposed by Kant. Pereboom is deeply committed to graduate and undergraduate education and has received several teaching awards. Since 2018, he has served as the Senior Associate Dean for the Arts and Humanities in the College of Arts and Sciences at Cornell.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Social psychology
• Environmental ethics
• Philosophy
• Epistemology
• Psychology
• Law

Selected publications

• Moral Responsibility Reconsidered

  2022 · 52 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  This Element examines the concept of moral responsibility as it is used in contemporary philosophical debates and explores the justifiability of the moral practices associated with it, including moral praise/blame, retributive punishment, and the reactive attitudes of resentment and indignation. After identifying and discussing several different varieties of responsibility-including causal responsibility, take-charge responsibility, role responsibility, liability responsibility, and the kinds of…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Undivided Forward-Looking Moral Responsibility

  The Monist · 2021-07-10 · 31 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This article sets out a forward-looking account of moral responsibility on which the ground-level practice is directly sensitive to aims such as moral formation and reconciliation, and is not subject to a barrier between tiers. On the contrasting two-tier accounts defended by Daniel Dennett and Manuel Vargas, the ground-level practice features backward-looking, desert-invoking justifications that are in turn justified by forward-looking considerations at the higher tier. The concern rai…

  PublisherDOI

• Free Will

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2022-02-07 · 13 citations

  book1st authorCorresponding

  This Element provides a thorough overview of the free will debate as it currently stands. After distinguishing the main senses of the term 'free will' invoked in that debate, it proceeds to set out the prominent versions of the main positions, libertarianism, compatibilism, and free will skepticism, and then to discuss the main objections to these views. Particular attention is devoted to the controversy concerning whether the ability to do otherwise is required for moral responsibility and whet…

  PublisherDOI

• Manipulation Arguments Against Compatibilism

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2022-02-14 · 7 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This chapter surveys the debate focused on manipulation arguments against the compatibility of moral responsibility in the basic desert sense and the naturalistic determination of an action by factors beyond the agent’s control. Manipulation arguments draw an analogy between such causal determination and intentional deterministic manipulation by other agents, claiming that because the intentional determination precludes responsibility, so does causal determination. The dialectical struc…

  PublisherDOI

• Hard Determinism and Meaning in Life

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2022-04-20 · 3 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This chapter begins by defending a sceptical view about free will, of which hard determinism is the main representative, by providing a schematic version of the author’s arguments against the leading positions that affirm free will. Compatibilism is challenged by the four-case manipulation argument, event-causal libertarianism by the disappearing agent argument, and agent-causal libertarianism by the argument from irreconcilability with the laws of nature. A significant objection to fre…

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Gregg D. Caruso

  Corning (United States)

  8 shared

• Andrew Dole

  Amherst College

  6 shared

• Andrew Chignell

  3 shared

• Maureen Sie

  Tilburg University

  3 shared

• John Martin Fischer

  University of California, Riverside

  2 shared

• Robert Kane

  2 shared

• Michael McKenna

  2 shared

• Manuel Vargas

  University of California, San Diego

  2 shared

Awards & honors

• Neil Lubow Prize

Similar researchers at Cornell University

• Shaun Nicholsh-53
• John M. Dorish-31
• Andrei Marmorh-26