Gregg D. Caruso is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Humanities Department at Corning Community College, SUNY. He received his B.A. in Philosophy from William Paterson University and his M.Phil and Ph.D. in Philosophy from the City University of New York, Graduate Center. He is the author of Free Will and Consciousness: A Determinist Account of the Illusion of Free Will (2012) and the editor of Exploring the Illusion of Free Will and Moral Responsibility (2013) and Science and Religion: 5 Questions (2014). In 2012 he was awarded the Regional Board of Trustees Excellence in Teaching Award. He is also Vice President of the Southwestern Philosophical Society (SWPS) and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Science, Religion and Culture.

Dr. Caruso's research interests include philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and metaphysics, with a particular interest in consciousness and free will. His most recent work focuses on the problem of free will and the phenomenology of freedom. In particular, he argues that our subjective feeling of freedom, as reflected in the first-person phenomenology of agentive experience, is an illusion created by certain aspects of our consciousness. His broader work engages issues at the intersection of the behavioral, cognitive, and neurosciences. He is especially interested in theoretical accounts of consciousness and what recent developments in the behavioral, cognitive, and neurosciences can tell us about human agency and free will. He is also interested in exploring the implications of free will skepticism for ourselves, society, morality, meaning, and the law. In particular, he is an optimistic skeptic and disillusionist maintaining that, not only can we preserve meaning, morals, and purpose without belief in free will and desert-based moral responsibility, but that we would be better off without such beliefs. 

His other interests include science and religion, ethics, social and political philosophy, and issues related to moral responsibility.

Additional activities: contributor to the blog Flickers of Freedom, Assessing Editor for The Journal of Mind and Behavior.

Books:
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