A standing-room only crowd gathered in the Waterman Building's Memorial Lounge on April 6 to hear Professor Derk Pereboom of the Department of Philosophy deliver this spring's College of Arts and Sciences Dean's Lecture, entitled "Is Free Will an Illusion?"

The Dean's Lecture Award honors faculty in the College of Arts and Sciences who excel as outstanding teachers and scholars. Since its inception in 1991 the presentation of the Dean's Lecture celebrates the unusually high quality of the college's faculty and is a treasured event each semester.

Professor Pereboom is one of UVM's outstanding teacher/scholars. Having received his PhD from the University of California in Los Angeles, he joined the UVM Department of Philosophy in 1985 and was promoted to full professor in 1997. His specialties include metaphysics, especially free will and moral responsibility, the philosophy of the mind, and the history of modern philosophy. His major study, Living Without Free Will, was published by the Cambridge University Press in 2001.

In his lecture Professor Pereboom addressed two fundamental philosophical questions: Does free will exist? Are we morally responsible for what we do? Pereboom rejected the common sense answer of "yes" to both questions. Free will, he asserted, is an illusion since the causes of all our actions lie in factors beyond our control. This being the case, moral responsibility is ruled out since none of our actions is determined by choice. After reviewing and rejecting various attempts to reconcile determinism and moral responsibility, Pereboom concluded that the failure of reconciliation neither undermines moral goodness nor renders life meaningless.

In November 2005 Professor Glen Elder of the Geography Department delivered the fall Dean's Lecture, "45° North 71° West-or Not? Vermont's New Borderland Personality after 9/11."