Conway conducts: The Free Will Theorem. Inner Circle Seminar 179 (1 July 2012 – provisional date)



Professor John Horton Conway FRS 

The Free Will Theorem

Implications for Psychotherapy

Professor John Horton Conway FRS
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 179
introduced by Anthony Stadlen
Sunday 1 July 2012
(provisional date)
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Professor John Horton Conway FRS (born 26 December 1937), the John Von Neumann Professor of Mathematics at Princeton University, is a great mathematician and teacher. He has contributed to number theory, knot theory, and many other branches of mathematics. He is the inventor of the Game of Life. In 2006 he and his colleague Simon B. Kochen published what they called the Free Will Theorem: If human beings have free will, in the sense of not being wholly determined by their past, then so do some elementary particles.

But do human beings have free will? Freud claimed that, in The Psychotherapy of Everyday Life and other works, he had proved ‘psychical determinism’. He claimed that the ‘feeling’ of free will was an illusion. And today psychotherapists appeal to ‘neuropsychoanalysis’ as ‘scientific’ evidence for the supposed determinism of human activity.

In today’s seminar Profesor Conway will explain the Free Will Theorem and invite discussion of the question of free will. It is difficult to think of anything more important for psychotherapists. If their activity and that of their ‘patients’ is governed by determinism and not free will, why should we pay attention to it? But can we choose whether to pay attention or not? Your contribution to the dialogue will be welcome, including your view of whether you were free to make it or not.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ (http://www.durrantshotel.co.uk)/
Cost: Psychotherapy trainees and mathematics students £50, others £135, some bursaries; coffee, tea, biscuits, mineral water and liquorice allsorts included; payable in advance; no refunds unless seminar cancelled
Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, ‘Oakleigh’, 2A Alexandra Avenue, London N22 7XE
Tel: +44 (0) 20 8888 6857 E-mail: stadlen@aol.com
For further information on seminars, visit: http://anthonystadlen.blogspot.com/

The Inner Circle Seminars were founded by Anthony Stadlen in 1996 as an ethical, existential, phenomenological search for truth in psychotherapy. They have been kindly described by Thomas Szasz as ‘Institute for Advanced Studies in the Moral Foundations of Human Decency and Helpfulness’. But they are independent of all institutes, schools and colleges.