Prof. Benjamin Vilhauer Atrium 269 Ext 2415 Philosophy Home

I received my Ph.D. in 2002 from the University of Chicago, and my A.B. in 1996 from Harvard. I teach courses in introductory philosophy, ethics, modern philosophy, political philosophy, and comparative philosophy.

My primary research focus is free will theory, in both modern and contemporary philosophy.  I think we can know that incompatibilism is true a priori , but that there are a posteriori questions about the structure of causal laws which must be answered before we can know whether libertarianism or hard determinism is true.  (Hard determinists can accommodate indeterminacy at the microphysical level, so long as it does not "propagate upward" to the macrophysical level in ways that are systematically significant for human action.) So I think it makes sense for incompatibilists to take both libertarianism and hard determinism seriously. 

Currently, my main research efforts are in two series of papers.  One advances an exegetically-oriented approach to Kant's complicated-but-elegant deterministic libertarianism.  One of my claims here is that it is metaphysically possible for us to be responsible for deterministic causal laws which are instantiated by just those events for which we ordinarily take ourselves to have moral responsibility. The other series describes a very broadly Humean, virtue-ethics-based approach to contemporary hard determinism.   I intend this project as a contribution in ethics as well as in free will theory. One of the results of this project is an account of remorse according to which virtuous remorse is not based on self-retribution, but instead on one agent's sympathizing with the suffering of another agent who he has wronged. I hope to eventually publish both series as books. Recently I have also begun doing some research in comparative philosophy.

Sample Publications

• "The Scope of Responsibility in Kant’s Theory of Free Will", forthcoming in the British Journal for the History of Philosophy.
• "Hard Determinism, Remorse, and Virtue Ethics", Southern Journal of Philosophy 42, 2004.
• "Can We Interpret Kant as a Compatibilist about Determinism and Moral Responsibility?", British Journal for the History of Philosophy, Vol. 12, No. 4, November 2004.
• "Kant and Santaraksita on the Infinite Divisibility and Insubstantiality of Matter", forthcoming in Studies on Santaraksita, ed. Paul Bernier, Marie-Louise Friquegnon and Philippe Turenne, New York: Global Scholarly Publications.

Sample Presentations

• "Moral Responsibility and Personhood as a Desert Base", 2006 Eastern APA.
• "Consciousness, Desire, and Enlightenment", 2006 Eastern APA.
• "Hume, Hard Determinism, and 'Ought Implies Can'", 2006 Central States Philosophical Association.
• "Kant and Santaraksita on the Infinite Divisibility and Insubstantiality of Matter", 2006 Central APA.

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