Chapter

Experimental Philosophy on Free Will: An Error Theory for Incompatibilist Intuitions

January 2011

DOI:10.1057/9780230304253_10

In book: New Waves in Philosophy of Action (pp.189-216)

Authors:

Eddy Nahmias

Georgia State University

Dylan Murray

It’s called “the problem of free will and determinism,” but much depends on what determinism is taken to mean and entail. Incompatibilists claim that it is impossible for people to have free will and moral responsibility if determinism is true, and they often suggest that this is the natural position to take, supported by our pre-theoretical intuitions. Robert Kane, for instance, states that “ordinary persons start out as natural incompatibilists” (1999, 217), and Galen Strawson claims that “it is in our nature to take determinism to pose a serious problem for our notions of responsibility and freedom” (1986, 89). Sometimes people take “determinism” to mean “the opposite of free will,” in which case incompatibilism is indeed intuitive, but at the cost of being an empty tautology. In philosophical debates, determinism has a technical meaning: a complete description of the state of the universe at one time and of the laws of nature logically entails a complete description of the state of the universe at any later time.1 However, it is not obvious why determinism, defined in this way, is supposed to be incompatible with free will; rather, a further explanation of just why determinism precludes some ability associated with free will seems required. The explanations generally offered by incompatibilists are that determinism precludes either (i) the ability to choose among alternative possibilities for action, while holding fixed the actual past and the laws of nature (AP), or (ii) the ability to be the ultimate source of one’s actions, such that one is ultimately responsible for some aspect of the conditions that led up to one’s actions (US).

The free will problem: Implications from experimental philosophy, psychology and neuroscience

Article

Jan 2022

Marija Bojanić

Throughout history, the phenomenon of free will has mainly been considered from a philosophical perspective, and in the last few decades, it has been investigated in scientific disciplines such as psychology and neuroscience as well. Additionally, some authors suggest that insight into folk intuitions on the problem of free will and determinism would contribute to a better understanding of the phenomenon itself. Lay theories about the free will problem have been empirically examined in experimental philosophy and psychology. The results show that the belief that free will exists is associated with desirable psychological outcomes and that the absence of belief in free will has negative social consequences. Furthermore, the question arises as to how the findings in neuroscience research are presented to society and thus affect free will beliefs. The problem of free will is discussed within experimental philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience.

Freedom from what? Separating lay concepts of freedom

Article

Apr 2022
CONSCIOUS COGN

Debates about freedom of will and action and their connections with moral responsibility have raged for centuries, but the opposing sides might disagree because they use different concepts of freedom. Based on previous work, we hypothesized that people who assert freedom in a determined (D) or counterfactual-intervener (CI) scenario assert this because they are thinking about freedom from constraint and not about freedom from determination (in D) or from inevitability (in CI). We also hypothesized that people who deny that freedom in D or in CI deny this because they are thinking about freedom from determination or from inevitability, respectively, and not about freedom from constraint. To test our hypotheses, we conducted two main online studies. Study I supported our hypotheses that people who deny freedom in D and CI are thinking about freedom from determinism and from inevitability, respectively, but these participants seemed to think about freedom from constraint when they were later considering modified scenarios where acts were not determined or inevitable. Study II investigated a contrary bypassing hypothesis that those who deny freedom in D denied this because they took determinism to exclude mental causation and hence to exclude freedom from constraint. We found that participants who took determinism to exclude freedom generally did not deny causation by mental states, here represented by desires and decisions. Their responses regarding causation by desires and decisions at most weakly mediated the relation between determinism and freedom or responsibility among this subgroup of our participants. These results speak against the bypassing hypothesis and in favor of our hypothesis that these participants were not thinking about freedom from constraint.

Intuitions About Free Will and the Failure to Comprehend Determinism

Article

Full-text available

Oct 2021
Erkenntnis

Theories of free will are often measured against how well they capture everyday intuitions about free will. But what are these everyday intuitions, and what theoretical commitments do they express? Empirical methods have delivered mixed messages. In response, some free will theorists have developed error theories to undermine the credentials of countervailing intuitions. These efforts are predicated on the idea that people might misunderstand determinism in any of several ways. This paper sheds light on the comprehension problem. We first discuss recent efforts to explain systematic errors in how people interpret determinism. Then, we present the alarming results of two new preregistered studies exploring three types of comprehension failure: (a) epiphenomenal bypassing, (b) fatalistic bypassing, and (c) indeterministic intrusion. Our findings suggest that misunderstanding runs deeper than others have supposed. This casts doubt on existing models of commonsense thinking about free will. Unless and until researchers properly control for the kinds of misunderstandings we identify, research on free will intuitions cannot shed light on whether ordinary thinking reflects commitments to compatibilism or incompatibilism.

Folk Intuitions and the Failure to Comprehend Determinism

Preprint

Sep 2021

Conceptualizations of Addiction and Moral Responsibility

Article

Full-text available

Jun 2019

The present study explored the connection between conceptualizations of addiction and lay people’s inferences about moral responsibility. In Study 1, we investigated how natural variations in people’s views of addiction were related to judgments of responsibility in a nationwide sample of Norwegian adults. In Study 2, respondents recruited from Mechanical Turk were asked to consider different conceptualizations of addiction and report on how these would affect their judgments of moral responsibility. In Study 3, we tested whether manipulating conceptualizations through textual information and through the framing of addiction in terms of states versus behavior could influence participants’ judgments of moral responsibility. We found that attributions of moral responsibility were lower when addiction was connected to diseases and disorders, such as dysfunctional processes in the brain, and greater when addiction was associated with agency and addictive behaviors. In conclusion, different conceptualizations of addiction imply different moral judgments, and conceptualizations are malleable.

The Expertise Defense and Experimental Philosophy of Free WillLa defensa de la pericia y la filosofía experimental del libre albedrío

Article

Full-text available

Feb 2024

Kiichi Inarimori

This paper aims to vindicate the expertise defense in light of the experimental philosophy of free will. My central argument is that the analogy strategy between philosophy and other domains is defensible, at least in the free will debate, because philosophical training contributes to the formation of philosophical intuition by enabling expert philosophers to understand philosophical issues correctly and to have philosophical intuitions about them. This paper will begin by deriving two requirements on the expertise defense from major criticisms of it. First, precisely how philosophical training contributes to the formation of philosophical intuitions requires explanation (Contribution); second, it must be explained how philosophical training immunizes philosophical intuitions from distorting factors (Immunity). I shall argue that the Contribution requirement is crucial for the expertise defense and that this requirement can be satisfied at least in the domain of free will: recent research shows that most novices are unable to understand determinism correctly, suggesting that having intuitions about determinism requires philosophical expertise. I then discuss how this proposal can be applied to other philosophical disciplines.

The Dark Triad of personality and folk intuitions about free will and moral responsibility

Article

Oct 2023
PERS INDIV DIFFER

Hakim Djeriouat

The present research aimed to investigate the association between the Dark Triad of personality and philosophical intuitions regarding freedom and moral responsibility. In this study, 871 participants evaluated free will and moral responsibility for either a positive or a negative moral action performed by an agent in completely deterministic or indeterministic conditions. Subsequently, they completed a self-report scale to assess the Dark Triad of personality traits. The results revealed that psychopathy and, to a marginal extent, narcissism— in contrast to Machiavellianism— were significantly linked to lower agreement regarding the agents' possession of freedom and moral responsibility. This association remained significant even after statistically controlling for demographic factors, moral valence, and conditions. Discrepancies between components of the Dark Triad concerning folk intuitions about free will and moral responsibility, as well as their compatibility with determinism, are discussed.

Experimental Philosophy of Free Will and Moral Responsibility: An Introduction

Chapter

Full-text available

Jan 2022

Legal Decision-Making and the Abstract/Concrete Paradox

Preprint

Full-text available

Jul 2020

Higher courts sometimes assess the constitutionality of law by working through a concrete case, other times by reasoning about the underlying question in a more abstract way. Prior research has found that the degree of concreteness or abstraction with which an issue is formulated can influence people’s prescriptive views: For instance, people often endorse punishment for concrete misdeeds that they would oppose if the circumstances were described abstractly. We sought to understand whether the so-called ‘abstract/concrete paradox’ also jeopardizes the consistency of judicial reasoning. In a series of experiments, both lay and professional judges sometimes reached opposite conclusions when reasoning about concrete cases versus the underlying issues formulated in abstract terms. This effect emerged whether participants reasoned with broad principles, such as human dignity, or narrow rules, and was largest among individuals high in trait empathy. Finally, to understand whether people reflectively endorse the discrepancy between abstract and concrete resolutions, we examined their reactions when evaluating both, either simultaneously or sequentially. These approaches revealed no single pattern across lay and expert populations, or exploratory and confirmatory studies. Taken together, our studies suggest that empathic concern plays a greater role in guiding the judicial resolution of concrete cases than in illuminating judges’ professed standards—which may result in concrete decisions in violation of their own abstract principles.

Natural Compatibilism, Indeterminism, and Intrusive Metaphysics

Article

Aug 2020

The claim that common sense regards free will and moral responsibility as compatible with determinism has played a central role in both analytic and experimental philosophy. In this paper, we show that evidence in favor of this “natural compatibilism” is undermined by the role that indeterministic metaphysical views play in how people construe deterministic scenarios. To demonstrate this, we re‐examine two classic studies that have been used to support natural compatibilism. We find that although people give apparently compatibilist responses, this is largely explained by the fact that people import an indeterministic metaphysics into deterministic scenarios when making judgments about freedom and responsibility. We conclude that judgments based on these scenarios are not reliable evidence for natural compatibilism.

Natural Compatibilism, Indeterminism, and Intrusive Metaphysics

Preprint

Jun 2020

The claim that common sense regards free will and moral responsibility as compatible with determinism has played a central role in both analytic and experimental philosophy. In this paper, we show that evidence in favor of this “natural compatibilism” is undermined by the role that indeterministic metaphysical views play in how people construe deterministic scenarios. To demonstrate this, we re-examine two classic studies that have been used to support natural compatibilism. We find that although people give apparently compatibilist responses, this is largely explained by the fact that people import an indeterministic metaphysics into deterministic scenarios when making judgments about freedom and responsibility. We conclude that judgments based on these scenarios are not reliable evidence for natural compatibilism.

Free Will and the Scientific Vision

Chapter

Full-text available

Feb 2014

Joshua Knobe

What does neuroscience research tell us about human consciousness? An overview of Benjamin Libet's legacy

Article

Full-text available

Aug 2016
J MIND BEHAV

Jimmy Y. Zhong

This paper presents an overview of the key neuroscience studies investigating the neural mechanisms of self-initiated movements that form the basis of our human consciousness. These studies, which commenced with the seminal works of Benjamin Libet and colleagues, showed that an ensemble of brain areas — localized to the frontal and medial regions of the brain — are involved in engendering the conscious decision to commit a motor act. Regardless of differences in neuroimaging techniques, these studies commonly showed that early neuronal activities in the frontal lobules and supplementary motor areas, interpreted by some to be reflective of unconscious processes, occurred before one was conscious of the intention to act as well as the act itself. I examine and discuss these empirical findings with regard to the need to analyze the contents and stages of awareness, and devise paradigm-specific models or theories that could account for inconsistent findings garnered from different experimental paradigms. This paper concludes by emphasizing a need to reconcile the principles of determinism with the notions of free will in future development of consciousness research and theories. © The Institute of Mind and Behavior, Inc., P.O. Box 522, Village Station, New York City, New York, 10014. URL: https://umaine.edu/jmb/current-issue/ [ProQuest URL: https://search.proquest.com/docview/1906365167?pq-origsite=gscholar]

Dualism, libertarianism, and scientific skepticism about free will

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2014

Thomas Nadelhoffer

Outsourcing the deep self: Deep self discordance does not explain away intuitions in manipulation arguments

Article

Full-text available

Nov 2015

Gunnar Björnsson

According to manipulation arguments for incompatibilism, manipulation might undermine an agent's responsibility even when the agent satisfies plausible compatibilist conditions on responsibility. According to Sripada (2012), however, empirical data suggest that people take manipulation to undermine responsibility largely because they think that the manipulated act is in discord with the agent's “deep self”, thus violating the plausible compatibilist condition of deep self concordance. This paper defends Sripada's methodological approach but presents data from an experiment that corrects for crucial weaknesses in his study. These data strongly suggest that, contrary to Sripada’s contention, most of the effect of manipulation on attributions of moral responsibility is unmediated by worries about inadequate information or deep self discordance. Instead, it depends largely on worries that the action is ultimately explained by factors outside the agent’s control, just as proponents of manipulation arguments have proposed. More generally, data suggest that judgments of deep self discordance are themselves explained by worries about responsibility, and that the everyday notion of what an agent wants or is “deep down” is sensitive not only to the agent’s internal psychological structure, but also its source. This casts doubt on recent claims about the explanatory role of deep self judgments.

Do People Understand Determinism? The Tracking Problem for Measuring Free Will Beliefs

Article

Full-text available

Jun 2022

Experimental work on free will typically relies on deterministic stimuli to elicit judgments of free will. We call this the Vignette-Judgment model. We outline a problem with research based on this model. It seems that people either fail to respond to the deterministic aspects of vignettes when making judgments or that their understanding of determinism differs from researcher expectations. We provide some empirical evidence for this claim. In the end, we argue that people seem to lack facility with the concept of determinism, which calls into question the validity of experimental work operating under the Vignette-Judgment model. We also argue that alternative experimental paradigms are unlikely to elicit judgments that are philosophically relevant to questions about the metaphysics of free will.

Folk Jurisprudence and Judgments about Free Will and Responsibility

Chapter

Full-text available

Jan 2022

Do people understand determinism? The tracking problem for measuring free will beliefs

Preprint

Feb 2022

Experimental work on free will typically relies on using deterministic stimuli to elicit judgments of free will. We call this the Vignette-Judgment model. In this paper, we outline a problem with research based on this model. It seems that people either fail to respond to the deterministic aspects of vignettes when making judgments or that their understanding of determinism differs from researcher expectations. We provide some empirical evidence for a key assumption of the problem. In the end, we argue that people seem to lack facility with the concept of determinism, which calls into question the validity of experimental work operating under the Vignette-Judgment model. We also argue that alternative experimental paradigms are unlikely to elicit judgments that are philosophically relevant to questions about the metaphysics of free will.

Exceptionality Effect in Agency Attributions: Exceptional Behaviors are Perceived as Higher Free will than Routine Behaviors

Article

Full-text available

Feb 2022

People experience stronger regret regarding negative outcomes resulting from more exceptional circumstances compared to routine. We hypothesized that the exceptionality-routine attribution asymmetry would extend to attributions of agency and moral responsibility. In Experiment 1 (N = 337), we found that people attributed more free will to exceptional behavior compared to routine when the exception was due to self-choice rather than external circumstances. In Experiment 2 (N= 561), we replicated and generalized this effect to other scenarios, with support for the classic exceptionality effect regarding regret, and an extension to moral responsibility. In Experiment 3 (N = 128), we replicated these effects in a within-subject design. When using a classic experimental philosophy paradigm contrasting a deterministic and an indeterministic universe, we found that the results were robust across both contexts. We conclude that there is consistent support for a link between exceptionality and free will attributions. All materials, data, and code are available here: https://osf.io/f2pck/

Folk intuitions and the conditional ability to do otherwise

Article

Full-text available

Oct 2020

In a series of preregistered studies, we explore (a) the difference between people’s intuitions about indeterministic scenarios and their intuitions about deterministic scenarios; (b) the difference between people’s intuitions about indeterministic scenarios and their intuitions about neuro-deterministic scenarios (i.e., scenarios where the determinism is described at the neurological level); (c) the difference between people’s intuitions about neutral scenarios (e.g., walking a dog in the park) and their intuitions about negatively valenced scenarios (e.g., murdering a stranger); and (d) the difference between people’s intuitions about free will and responsibility in response to first-person scenarios and third-person scenarios. We predicted that once we focused participants’ attention on the two different abilities to do otherwise, available to agents in indeterministic and deterministic scenarios, their intuitions would support natural incompatibilism – the view that laypersons tend to judge that free will and moral responsibility are incompatible with determinism. This prediction is borne out by our findings.

Exceptionality Effect in Agency: Exceptional Choices Attributed Higher Free Will Than Routine

Preprint

Full-text available

Nov 2019

Exceptionality effect is the widely cited phenomenon that people experience stronger regret regarding negative outcomes that are a result of more exceptional circumstances, compared to routine. We hypothesize that the exceptionality-routine attribution asymmetry would extend to attributions of freedom and responsibility. In Experiment 1 (N = 338), we found that people attributed more free will to exceptional behavior compared to routine, when the exception was due to self-choice rather than due to external circumstances. In Experiment 2 (N = 561), we replicated and generalized the effect of exceptionality on attributions of free will to other scenarios, with support for the classic exceptionality effect regarding regret and an extension to moral responsibility. In Experiment 3 (N = 128), we replicated these effects in a within-subject design. When using a classic experimental philosophy paradigm contrasting a deterministic and an indeterministic universe, we found that the results were robust across both contexts. We conclude that there is a consistent support for a link between exceptionality and free will attributions.

Folk Intuitions and the Conditional Ability to Do Otherwise

Preprint

Full-text available

Sep 2019

In a series of three pre-registered studies, we explored (a) the difference between people’s intuitions about indeterministic scenarios and their intuitions about deterministic scenarios, (b) the difference between people’s intuitions about indeterministic scenarios and their intuitions about neurodeterministic scenarios (that is, scenarios where the determinism is described at the neurological level), (c) the difference between people’s intuitions about neutral scenarios (e.g., walking a dog in the park) and their intuitions about negatively valenced scenarios (e.g., murdering a stranger), and (d) the difference between people’s intuitions about free will and responsibility in response to first-person scenarios and third-person scenarios. We predicted that once we focused participants’ attention on the two different abilities to do otherwise available to agents in indeterministic and deterministic scenarios, their intuitions would support natural incompatibilism—the view that laypersons judge that free will and moral responsibility are incompatible with determinism. This prediction was borne out by our findings.

Experimental Philosophy and Moral Responsibility

Chapter

Full-text available

May 2019

Gunnar Björnsson

Can experimental philosophy help us answer central questions about the nature of moral responsibility, such as the question of whether moral responsibility is compatible with determinism? Specifically, can folk judgments in line with a particular answer to that question provide support for that answer. Based on reasoning familiar from Condorcet’s Jury Theorem, such support could be had if individual judges track the truth of the matter independently and with some modest reliability: such reliability quickly aggregates as the number of judges goes up. In this chapter, however, I argue, partly based on empirical evidence, that although non-specialist judgments might on average be more likely than not to get things right, their individual likelihoods fail to aggregate because they do not track truth with sufficient independence.

Experimental philosophy and moral responsibility

Preprint

May 2019

Gunnar Björnsson

Can experimental philosophy help us answer central questions about the nature of moral responsibility, such as the question of whether moral responsibility is compatible with determinism? Specifically, can folk judgments in line with a particular answer to that question provide support for that answer. Based on reasoning familiar from Condorcet’s Jury Theorem, such support could be had if judges independently track the truth of the matter, each with some modest reliability: such reliability would quickly aggregate. It is argued, partly based on empirical evidence, that although non-specialist judgments might on average be more likely than not to get things right, their individual likelihoods fail to aggregate because they do not track truth independently.

Lessons for experimental philosophy from the rise and “fall” of neurophilosophy

Article

Sep 2018

John Bickle

Experimental philosophy is a recent development whose broader aims and goals are still being debated. Some prominent experimental philosophers have articulated an attitude toward perennial philosophy that is reminiscent of an early explicitly defended goal of neurophilosophy, a field that predated experimental philosophy by at least one decade. But relative to that early goal, neurophilosophy quickly “fell” within broader philosophy, and came to assume its current status, a technical specialty within the philosophy of science (now more commonly referred to as “the philosophy of neuroscience”). In this paper I document the revolutionary goal of early neurophilosophy, provide a novel explanation of its “fall,” and suggest that analogous goals of some experimental philosophers set that field up for a similar “fall.” I document recent published evidence that experimental philosophy is trending in this direction. © 2018

Alltagsintuitionen zur Willensfreiheit

Thesis

Jun 2018

Robert Deutschländer

Die Willensfreiheit ist ein zentraler Bestandteil des alltäglichen menschlichen Denkens und bildet eine wichtige Grundlage für Mechanismen unserer Gesellschaft. Trotz dieser zentralen Stellung herrscht unter Philosophen und Psychologen Uneinigkeit darüber, was Willensfreiheit eigentlich bedeutet. Dies wird besonders bei Experimenten zur Untersuchung der Willensfreiheit wie das Libet-Experiment deutlich. In dieser Arbeit wird in drei Surveys empirisch untersucht, ob der Freiheitsbegriff, mit dem die Libet-Experimente operieren, von den Freiheitsintuitionen der Laien gestützt wird, oder ob Laien eher den konträren Freiheitsintuitionen der Philosophen zuneigen. Die Ergebnisse der vorgestellten Untersuchungen zeigen, dass Laien eine von den philosophischen Vorstellungen abweichende Vorstellung von Freiheit haben.

A Proposal for a Scientifically-Informed and Instrumentalist Account of Free Will and Voluntary Action

Article

Full-text available

May 2017

Eric Racine

The ability to choose freely is captured under the umbrella concept of “free will,” which designates an ability that plays a crucial role in most understandings of autonomy and responsibility and, thus, bears significance for moral practice and moral theory. Some claim that neuroscience research challenges the existence of free will/voluntary action while some who adopt stronger eliminativist stances have gone as far as describing free will as an illusion. Contrary to that, those relying on realist stances have restated the foundational value and role of folk psychological concepts of voluntary action and free will in, for example, the domains of ethics and law. An emerging body of research in cognitive science and social psychology has generated results suggesting that the phenomena captured by the concepts describing free will and voluntary action are dynamic and responsive to priming and framing effects. We propose that this body of research suggests the existence of dynamic and consequential properties of free will better captured following pragmatist theory and instrumentalist epistemology. This contrasts the simpler static concept of free will and the related metaphysics that was at the basis of earlier debates and structured around the poles of realism and eliminativism. This paper contextualizes ontological and epistemological debates about free will, describes a scientifically-informed and instrumentalist account of the concept of free will and voluntary action consistent with recent research in cognitive science, and discusses its implications for research (e.g., theoretical assumptions of research paradigms, interdisciplinary research) and practice (e.g., impact on self-image and social behavior).

Free Love ? On the Relation between Belief in Free Will, Determinism, and Passionate Love

Article

Sep 2016
CONSCIOUS COGN

Is love possible if we are not free? Some philosophers consider that true love is necessarily free, while others think that the nature of love makes it incompatible with a certain type of freedom. Here, we explored the relationship between feelings of passionate love, belief in free will and determinism across three online studies. In Study 1 (N = 257), participants who believed strongly in free will (or determinism) expressed stronger passionate love. In Study 2 (N = 305), we again found a positive association between belief in free will (or determinism) and passionate love, although the passionate love-determinism relationship seems more conditional. Finally, Study 3 (N = 309) confirmed the relationship between belief in free will and passionate love but not between belief in determinism and passionate love. These findings, along with a meta-analysis, suggest that both beliefs in free will and determinism are compatible with passionate love.

How Do Manipulation Arguments Work?

Article

Full-text available

Sep 2016
J Ethics

John Martin Fischer

Alfred Mele has presented the Zygote Argument as a challenge to compatibilism. In previous work I have offered a critique of Mele’s first premise. Patrick Todd, Neal Tognazzini, and Derk Pereboom have offered an alternative interpretation of the argument, substituting (1*) for (1). Here I offer a critical evaluation of this strategy, and in the process I seek to understand the deep structure of the Zygote Argument.

Quantitative Vignette Studies: Correlations, Regressions, and Structural Equation Modeling—An Application to Experimental Philosophy of Free Will

Chapter

Aug 2024

Do people have the intuition that free will and moral responsibility are compatible with determinism? To find out, experimental philosophers have presented participants with vignettes describing agents in deterministic universes and probed their intuitions about the free will and moral responsibility of these agents. However, these debates soon got embroiled around the difficulty of assessing whether participants correctly understood the vignettes and the concepts of determinism and free will and the extent to which different comprehension errors plagued participants’ answers. In this chapter, we clarify those debates by using the results of a brand new study (N = 772) on participants’ intuitions about free will. We introduce readers to correlations, regressions, multiple regressions, mediation analyses, and multiple mediation analyses through the use of structural equation modeling to show how different techniques may give different interpretations of folk intuitions on free will. We explain how to run these different analyses in R and provide detailed R code.

Freedom and Responsibility

Chapter

Full-text available

Jun 2024

Judgments about freedom and moral responsibility have been argued to be essential to how we view ourselves and others. Being free and morally responsible (or at least a belief to that effect) has been argued to underwrite elements of human existence ranging from one’s sense of self-worth to having genuine, loving relationships. One extensively explored question in the philosophical literature about freedom and moral responsibility is: can you be free and morally responsible if all your actions are determined? There is substantial philosophical disagreement about the right answer to that question. Those who answer “yes” are called compatibilists and those who answer “no” are called incompatibilists . This chapter documents extensive evidence using representative and diverse materials and methods indicating that the global personality trait extraversion predicts those who tend to be compatibilists. These relations have also been observed to exist in diverse cultures and languages (e.g., those who speak English, Spanish, or German in North America and Europe). The evidence presented in this chapter represents the paradigmatic example in our book of personality predicting philosophically relevant judgments.

Changing land cover: Clustering of agents per moral responsibility and culpability

Article

Dec 2023

Adams Osman

The influence of philosophical training on the evaluation of philosophical cases: a controlled longitudinal study

Article

Full-text available

Sep 2023
SYNTHESE

According to the expertise defense, practitioners of the method of cases need not worry about findings that ordinary people’s philosophical intuitions depend on epistemically irrelevant factors. This is because, honed by years of training, the intuitions of professional philosophers likely surpass those of the folk. To investigate this, we conducted a controlled longitudinal study of a broad range of intuitions in undergraduate students of philosophy (n = 226), whose case judgments we sampled after each semester throughout their studies. Under the assumption, made by proponents of the expertise defense, that formal training in philosophy gives rise to the kind of expertise that accounts for changes in the students’ responses to philosophically puzzling cases, our data suggest that the acquired cognitive skills only affect single case judgments at a time. There does not seem to exist either a general expertise that informs case judgments in all areas of philosophy, or an expertise specific to particular subfields. In fact, we argue that available evidence, including the results of cross-sectional research, is best explained in terms of differences in adopted beliefs about specific cases, rather than acquired cognitive skills. We also investigated whether individuals who choose to study philosophy have atypical intuitions compared to the general population and whether students whose intuitions are at odds with textbook consensus are more likely than others to drop out of the philosophy program.

A Defense of Natural Compatibilism

Chapter

Jun 2023

Florian Cova

Christianity and the Problem of Free Will

Book

May 2023

Leigh Vicens

Central to the teachings of Christianity is a puzzle: on the one hand, sin seems something that humans do not do freely and so cannot be not responsible for, since it is unavoidable; on the other hand, sin seems something that we must be responsible for and so do freely, since we are enjoined to repent of it, and since it makes us liable to divine condemnation and forgiveness. After laying out the puzzle in more depth, this Element considers three possible responses—libertarian, soft determinist, and free-will skeptic—and weighs the costs and benefits of each.

Free Will and Retribution Today

Article

Full-text available

Sep 2014

The paper addresses two issues that have been recently debated in the literature on free will, moral responsibility, and the theory of punishment. The first issue concerns the descriptive project, the second both the substantive and the prescriptive project. On theoretical, historical and empirical grounds, we claim that there is no rationale for fearing that the spread of neurocognitive findings will undermine the ordinary practice of responsibility attributions. We hypothetically advocate two opposite views: (i) that such findings would cause the collapse of all punitive practices; (ii) that, on the contrary, such findings would open the way to more humane forms of punishment, which would be justified on purely utilitarian grounds. We argue that these views are both wrong, since whereas a sound punitive system can be justified without any reference to moral responsibility, it will certainly not improve the humaneness of punishment.

PROCEEDINGS OF THE XXV SCIENTIFIC CONFERENCE EMPIRICAL STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY INSTITUTE OF PSYCHOLOGY LABORATORY FOR EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY FACULTY OF PHILOSOPHY, UNIVERSITY OF BELGRADE 2 EMPIRICAL STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY

Conference Paper

Full-text available

Oct 2019

The Situationist Challenge to Free Will: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives

Chapter

Nov 2018

Brian Garvey

The author discusses the Situationist Thesis, according to which human actions correlate more strongly with features of the immediate situation than with stable personality traits. He argues that whether we accept the original Situationist Thesis or the alternative related theses, the implications for free will are negative. That is, the implications are that we have less free will than we might otherwise have thought: certain types of situational factor can significantly reduce free will. The author discusses two types of approach to solving the problem, one of which (“nudge” or libertarian paternalism) will not solve it, and the other (being generally aware of situational interferences in freedom) will solve it only partly and unreliably. Finally, he outlines some general desiderata for any solutions to the problem. He argues that the tradition of positive liberty deserves reviving in light of the conclusions about free will reached in the discussion of the Situationist Thesis, and moreover that those conclusions suggest a new way of thinking about the difference between positive and negative liberty. This new way could help to overcome some of the reservations that liberal philosophers typically have about the idea of positive liberty, as well as helping us to think about what is needed to overcome the impediments to free will shown by the situationist literature.

Indeterministic intuitions and the Spinozan strategy

Article

Full-text available

Feb 2018

Andrew Kissel

This article focuses on philosophical views that attempt to explain widespread belief in indeterministic choice by following a strategy that harkens back at least to Spinoza. According to this Spinozan strategy, people draw an inference from the absence of experiences of determined choice to the belief in indeterministic choice. Accounts of this kind are historically liable to overgeneralization. The pair of accounts defended in Shaun Nichols’ recent book, Bound: Essays on Free Will and Responsibility, are the most complete and empirically plausible representatives of this strategy. I argue that both accounts ultimately fail, and overgeneralization worries remain for Spinozan strategists.

The implications of rejecting free will: An empirical analysis

Article

Oct 2017

Stephen G. Morris

While skeptical arguments concerning free will have been a common element of philosophical discourse for thousands of years, one could make the case that such arguments have never been more numerous or forceful than at present. In response to these skeptical attacks, some philosophers and psychologists have expressed concern that the widespread acceptance of such skeptical attitudes could have devastating social consequences. In this paper, I set out to address whether such concerns are well-founded. I argue that there is reason to believe that should skeptical arguments result in the widespread dismissal of human free will, the results of such a dismissal are likely to be more positive than negative.

The past and future of empirical research on free-will beliefs: Findings in philosophical theory, experimental philosophy, and social psychology

Article

Aug 2015

Social psychologists have recently begun to explore the problem of free-will beliefs. Philosophers have been working on the problem of free will over the ages, and studies of social psychologists on free-will beliefs are based on past philosophical theories. Meanwhile, philosophers not only argue over the theoretical issue of free will but also engage with the research program of experimental philosophy.This program shares the methodology of social psychology, and experimental investigation of belief in free will is proceeding at a rapid pace. In consideration of the above arguments, it seems obvious that social psychologists need to collaborate with philosophers on the problem of free-will beliefs.The authors therefore review the findings of each discipline and construct a model of people's free-will beliefs. In this model, we consider free-will beliefs as composed by alternative possibility and agency, and these components function to promote attribution of moral responsibility, self-control, and social fit.

Experimental Philosophy Is Useful — But not in a Specific Way

Chapter

Jan 2014

Jacob Rosenthal

In this contribution I try to tentatively assess the relevance of experimental philosophy for systematic philosophy. Imagine that some philosophical claim is debated. Pros and cons are exchanged, thought experiments brought forth; implications are asserted, disputed, and evaluated; specifications and distinctions introduced; etc. — and now the disputants receive information on how ordinary people assess certain scenarios associated with the claim. That is, they learn about ‘folk intuitions’ on the topic. (In rare cases they may also learn about behavioral data in the narrower sense, or about associated patterns of brain activity. But I will put this aside, as it raises different issues.) How should such findings affect the discussion? This is the question I am going to pursue here. The significance of experimental-philosophical results for philo-sophical debates could well depend on the debate in question, but as it happens, this is largely not the case — or so it seems to me. To my mind, a general diagnosis can be argued for.

Free Will and the Bounds of the Self

Article

Full-text available

Sep 2012

This article appeals to experimental studies in order to elucidate the reactions of ordinary persons to the picture of the human mind that is prevalent in contemporary cognitive science. According to this prevalent cognitivescientific picture, the mind is made up of states and processes that interact according to certain rules to generate specific behaviors. The discussion argues that this picture is disturbing to ordinary persons, who reason that if the mind works that way, we would not be morally responsible for what we did because our behaviors would inevitably result from facts about the configuration of states and processes within us. It concludes that people have access to different conceptions of the self, on some of which cognitive science is a genuine threat to free will, on others not. The puzzlement people feel about free will is therefore not merely a superficial muddle that can be dissolved by conceptual clarification.

Experimental Philosophy and the Compatibility of Free Will and Determinism : A Survey

Article

Mar 2014

The debate over whether free will and determinism are compatible is controversial, and produces wide scholarly discussion. This paper argues that recent studies in experimental philosophy suggest that people are in fact "natural compatibilists". To support this claim, it surveys the experimental literature bearing directly (section 1) or indirectly (section 2) upon this issue, before pointing to three possible limitations of this claim (section 3). However, notwithstanding these limitations, the investigation concludes that the existing empirical evidence seems to support the view that most people have compatibilist intuitions.

Free Will and Experimental Philosophy: An Intervention

Article

Sep 2015

Tamler Sommers

This chapter reviews and then criticizes the dominant approach that experimental philosophers have adopted in their studies on free will and moral responsibility. Section “Experimental Philosophy and Free Will” reviews the experimental literature and the shared approach: probing for intuitions about the so-called compatibility question, whether free will is compatible with causal determinism. Section “The Intervention” argues that this experimental focus on the compatibility question is fundamentally misguided. The critique develops in the form of a dialogue: a staged “intervention” for an experimental philosopher who works on free will. The chapter concludes with some thoughts about how the literature can move in a more fruitful direction.

The Phenomenology of Agency and Deterministic Agent Causation

Chapter

Oct 2015

Derk Pereboom

On one widespread conception, in any situation in which I am deliberating about what to do, I will have a number of distinct options for action or refraining from acting, and these options are genuinely available to me in a sense that requires the absence of causal determination by factors beyond my control. This libertarian conception reflects a core sense of freedom of the will. Some have argued that this ability is reflected in the phenomenology of many of our actions, and thus that the phenomenology of agency might be taken to support the view that we have free will in a libertarian sense. Others have suggested in addition that the phenomenology of agency at least prima facie conflicts with the influential state- or event-causal theory of action, championed by Donald Davidson (J Philos 60:685–700, 1963), among others. The phenomenology appears to reveal that in paradigm cases, actions are caused not solely by events or states, but are rather actively caused by agents themselves. The conclusion one might draw is that the phenomenology supports agent-causal libertarianism. I will argue that the phenomenology does not strongly support a libertarian conception of agency, but that together with further theoretical considerations it does substantiate agent-causation by contrast with state-causation or non-causation of action in paradigm cases of action. In accord with these claims, I explore the sort of compatibilist or determinist agent-causal theory defended by Ned Markosian (Pacific Philos Q 80:257–277, 1999, Philos Stud 157:383–398, 2010) and Dana Nelkin (Making sense of freedom and responsibility. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2011).

Experimental philosophy of actual and counterfactual free will intuitions

Article

Nov 2015

Adam Feltz

Five experiments suggested that everyday free will and moral responsibility judgments about some hypothetical thought examples differed from free will and moral responsibility judgments about the actual world. Experiment 1 (N=106) showed that free will intuitions about the actual world measured by the FAD-Plus poorly predicted free will intuitions about a hypothetical person performing a determined action (r=.13). Experiments 2-5 replicated this result and found the relations between actual free will judgments and free will judgments about hypothetical determined or fated actions (rs=.22-.35) were much smaller than the differences between them (ηp(2)=.2-.55). These results put some pressure on theoretical accounts of everyday intuitions about freedom and moral responsibility. Copyright © 2015. Published by Elsevier Inc.

Why people believe in indeterminist free will

Article

Aug 2015

Oisín Deery

Recent empirical evidence indicates that (1) people tend to believe that they possess indeterminist free will, and (2) people’s experience of choosing and deciding is that they possess such freedom. Some also maintain that (3) people’s belief in indeterminist free will has its source in their experience of choosing and deciding. Yet there seem to be good reasons to resist endorsing (3). Despite this, I maintain that belief in indeterminist free will really does have its source in experience. I explain how this is so by appeal to the phenomenon of prospection, which is the mental simulation of future possibilities for the purpose of guiding action. Crucially, prospection can be experienced. And because of the way in which prospection models choice, it is easy for agents to experience and to believe that their choice is indeterministic. Yet this belief is not justified; the experience of prospection, and hence of free will as being indeterminist, is actually consistent with determinism.

Modeling as a Case for the Empirical Philosophy of Science

Chapter

Full-text available

Jun 2015

Ekaterina Svetlova

In recent years, the emergence of a new trend in contemporary philosophy has been observed in the increasing usage of empirical research methods to conduct philosophical inquiries. Although philosophers primarily use secondary data from other disciplines or apply quantitative methods (experiments, surveys, etc.), the rise of qualitative methods (e.g., in-depth interviews, participant observations and qualitative text analysis) can also be observed. In this paper, I focus on how qualitative research methods can be applied within philosophy of science, namely within the philosophical debate on modeling. Specifically, I review my empirical investigations into the issues of model de-idealization, model justification and performativity.

Defending the Free-Will Intuitions Scale: Reply to Stephen Morris

Article

Aug 2015

In our paper, “The Free-Will Intuitions Scale and the question of natural compatibilism” (this issue), we seek to advance empirical debates about free will by measuring the relevant folk intuitions using the scale methodology of psychology, as a supplement to standard experimental methods. Stephen Morris (this issue) raises a number of concerns about our paper. Here, we respond to Morris's concerns.

Responsibility

Article

Full-text available

Jun 2010

A long tradition of research, both in philosophy and in psychology, has sought to uncover the criteria that people use when assigning moral responsibility. Nonetheless, it seems that most existing accounts fall prey to one counterexample or another. This chapter suggests a diagnosis for this persistent difficulty. Specifically, it suggests that there simply isn't any single system of criteria that people apply in all cases of responsibility attribution. Instead, people use quite different criteria in different kinds of cases. In other words, researchers should abandon the assumption of "invariance" (that people use the same criteria in all cases) and instead adopt "variantism" (the view that people use different criteria in different cases).

An Experimental Philosophy Manifesto

Article

Full-text available

It used to be a commonplace that the discipline of philosophy was deeply con-cerned with questions about the human condition. Philosophers thought about human beings and how their minds worked. They took an interest in reason and passion, culture and innate ideas, the origins of people's moral and reli-gious beliefs. On this traditional conception, it wasn't particularly important to keep philosophy clearly distinct from psychology, history, or political science. Philosophers were concerned, in a very general way, with questions about how everything fi t together. The new movement of experimental philosophy seeks a return to this tradi-tional vision. Like philosophers of centuries past, we are concerned with ques-tions about how human beings actually happen to be. We recognize that such an inquiry will involve us in the study of phenomena that are messy, contin-gent, and highly variable across times and places, but we do not see how that fact is supposed to make the inquiry any less genuinely philosophical. On the contrary, we think that many of the deepest questions of philosophy can only be properly addressed by immersing oneself in the messy, contingent, highly variable truths about how human beings really are. But there is also an important respect in which experimental philosophers depart from this earlier tradition. Unlike the philosophers of centuries past, we think that a critical method for fi guring out how human beings think is to go out and actually run systematic empirical studies. Hence, experimental philosophers proceed by conducting experimental investigations of the psy-chological processes underlying people's intuitions about central philosophical issues. Again and again, these investigations have challenged familiar assump-tions, showing that people do not actually think about these issues in anything like the way philosophers had assumed. Reactions to this movement have been largely polarized. Many fi nd it an exciting new way to approach the basic philosophical concerns that attracted them to philosophy in the fi rst place. But many others regard the movement as insidious—a specter haunting contemporary philosophy. We suspect that the subsequent cries for exorcism are often based on an incomplete understanding of the diverse ambitions of Experimental philosophers are certainly not the fi rst to think that important philosophical lessons can be learned by looking carefully at ordinary people's intuitions about cases. This methodological approach has a long history within the research program sometimes known as 'conceptual analysis.' It may be helpful, then, to begin by discussing the ways in which experimental philoso-phy departs from this earlier program. Of course, the most salient difference is just the fact that experimental phi-losophers conduct experiments and conceptual analysts do not. Thus, the con-ceptual analyst might write, "In this case, one would surely say . . .," while the experimental philosopher would write, "In this case, 79% of subjects said. . . ." But this is only the most superfi cial difference. Over time, experimental philos-ophers have developed a way of thinking about these issues that departs in truly substantial respects from the approaches familiar from conceptual analysis. There is no single method of conceptual analysis, but typically a conceptual analysis attempts to identify precisely the meaning of a concept by breaking the concept into its essential components, components which themselves typically involve further concepts. In an attempt to determine the meaning of a philo-sophically important concept, one often considers whether the concept applies in various possible cases. The aim of this project is to achieve ever greater levels of precision. Typically, one starts out with a nebulous sense of how to pick out the property in ques-tion. Perhaps something like this: Knowledge seems to involve some kind of counterfactual relation between people's beliefs and actual facts.

Surveying Freedom: Folk Intuitions About Free Will and Moral Responsibility

Article

Full-text available

Nov 2008

Philosophers working in the nascent field of 'experimental philosophy' have begun using methods borrowed from psychology to collect data about folk intuitions concerning debates ranging from action theory to ethics to epistemology. In this paper we present the results of our attempts to apply this approach to the free will debate, in which philosophers on opposing sides claim that their view best accounts for and accords with folk intuitions. After discussing the motivation for such research, we describe our methodology of surveying people's prephilosophical judgments about the freedom and responsibility of agents in deterministic scenarios. In two studies, we found that a majority of participants judged that such agents act of their own free will and are morally responsible for their actions. We then discuss the philosophical implications of our results as well as various difficulties inherent in such research.

The Past and Future of Experimental Philosophy

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2009

Experimental philosophy is the name for a recent movement whose participants use the methods of experimental psychology to probe the way people think about philosophical issues and then examine how the results of such studies bear on traditional philosophical debates. Given both the breadth of the research being carried out by experimental philosophers and the controversial nature of some of their central methodological assumptions, it is of no surprise that their work has recently come under attack. In this paper we respond to some criticisms of experimental philosophy that have recently been put forward by Antti Kauppinen. Unlike the critics of experimental philosophy, we do not think the fledgling movement either will or should fall before it has even had a chance to rise up to explain what it is, what it seeks to do (and not to do), and exactly how it plans to do it. Filling in some of the salient details is the main goal of the present paper.

Data Analysis in Social Psychology

Article

Full-text available

Jan 1998

Moral Responsibility and Determinism: The Cognitive Science of Folk Intuitions

Article

Full-text available

Oct 2007
Noûs

The dispute between compatibilists and incompatibilists must be one of the most persistent and heated deadlocks in Western philosophy. Incompatibilists maintain that people are not fully morally responsible if determinism is true, i.e., if every event is an inevitable consequence of the prior conditions and the natural laws. By contrast

Is Incompatiblism Intuitive

Article

Full-text available

Jul 2006

Incompatibilists believe free will is impossible if determinism is true, and they often claim that this view is supported by ordinary intuitions. We challenge the claim that incompatibilism is intuitive to most laypersons and discuss the significance of this challenge to the free will debate. After explaining why incompatibilists should want their view to accord with pretheoretical intuitions, we suggest that determining whether incompatibilism is in fact intuitive calls for empirical testing. We then present the results of our studies, which put significant pressure on the claim that incompatibilism is intuitive. Finally, we consider and respond to several potential objections to our approach.

The Moderator-Mediator Variable Distinction in Social Psychological Research

Article

Full-text available

Dec 1986

In this article, we attempt to distinguish between the properties of moderator and mediator variables at a number of levels. First, we seek to make theorists and researchers aware of the importance of not using the terms moderator and mediator interchangeably by carefully elaborating, both conceptually and strategically, the many ways in which moderators and mediators differ. We then go beyond this largely pedagogical function and delineate the conceptual and strategic implications of making use of such distinctions with regard to a wide range of phenomena, including control and stress, attitudes, and personality traits. We also provide a specific compendium of analytic procedures appropriate for making the most effective use of the moderator and mediator distinction, both separately and in terms of a broader causal system that includes both moderators and mediators.

MacKinnon DP, Lockwood CM, Hoffman JM, West SG, Sheets V. A comparison of methods to test mediation and other intervening variable effects

Article

Full-text available

Mar 2002

A Monte Carlo study compared 14 methods to test the statistical significance of the intervening variable effect. An intervening variable (mediator) transmits the effect of an independent variable to a dependent variable. The commonly used R. M. Baron and D. A. Kenny (1986) approach has low statistical power. Two methods based on the distribution of the product and 2 difference-in-coefficients methods have the most accurate Type I error rates and greatest statistical power except in 1 important case in which Type I error rates are too high. The best balance of Type I error and statistical power across all cases is the test of the joint significance of the two effects comprising the intervening variable effect.

An Experimental Philosophy Manifesto

Chapter

Jul 2008

Experimental philosophy is a new movement that seeks to return the discipline of philosophy to a focus on questions about how people actually think and feel. Departing from a long-standing tradition, experimental philosophers go out and conduct systematic experiments to reach a better understanding of people’s ordinary intuitions about philosophically significant questions. Although the movement is only a few years old, it has already sparked an explosion of new research, challenging a number of cherished assumptions in both philosophy and cognitive science. The present volume provides an introduction to the major themes of work in experimental philosophy, bringing together some of the most influential articles in the field along with a collection of new papers that explore the theoretical significance of this new research.

Responsibility and Control: A Theory of Moral Responsibility

Book

Feb 1998

This book provides a comprehensive, systematic theory of moral responsibility. The authors explore the conditions under which individuals are morally responsible for actions, omissions, consequences, and emotions. The leading idea in the book is that moral responsibility is based on 'guidance control'. This control has two components: the mechanism that issues in the relevant behavior must be the agent's own mechanism, and it must be appropriately responsive to reasons. The book develops an account of both components. The authors go on to offer a sustained defense of the thesis that moral responsibility is compatible with causal determinism.

Freedom within Reason

Article

Oct 1992

Responsibility, Luck, and Chance: Reflections on Free Will and Indeterminism

Article

May 1999
J Philos

Robert Kane

On The Plurality of Worlds

Article

Apr 1988

An Essay on Free Will

Article

Apr 1984

The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory

Article

Jan 1996

David J. Chalmers

Freedom with a Human Face

Article

Sep 2005

Tim O'Connor

As good a definition as any of a philosophical conundrum is a problem all of whose possible solutions are unsatisfactory. The problem of understanding the springs of action for morally responsible agents is commonly recognized to be such a problem. The origin, nature, and explanation of freely-willed actions puzzle us today as they did the ancients Greeks, and for much the same reasons. However, one can carry this 'perennial-puzzle' sentiment too far. The unsatisfactory nature of philosophical theories is a more or less matter, and some of them have admitted of improvement over time. This, at any rate, is what we self-selecting metaphysicians tend to suppose, and I will pursue that high calling by suggesting a few improvements to a theory of metaphysical freedom, or freedom of the will. Philosophers who rightly defend a robust account of freedom have tended to err in the direction of over-idealization. Concerned to protect the notion that we are self-determining beings from various naysayers (theological as well as philosophical), they have often suggested a picture on which our freedom of will is well-nigh absolute. We are led to entertain a capacity of will or choice that is not conditioned or structured as other terrestrial capacities are, whose only limits are the bounds of its imagination and perhaps desires. Here, for example, is the late Roderick Chisholm: If we are responsible, and if what I have been trying to say is true, then we have a prerogative which some would attribute only to God: each of us, when we act, is a prime mover unmoved. In doing what we do, we cause certain events to happen, and nothing -or no one -causes us to cause those events to happen.

Responsibility and Control: A Theory of Moral Responsibility

Article

Sep 2000

Living Without Free Will

Article

Feb 2001

Derk Pereboom

Most people assume that, even though some degenerative or criminal behavior may be caused by influences beyond our control, ordinary human actions are not similarly generated, but rather are freely chosen, and we can be praiseworthy or blameworthy for them. A less popular and more radical claim is that factors beyond our control produce all of the actions we perform. It is this hard determinist stance that Derk Pereboom articulates in Living Without Free Will. Pereboom argues that our best scientific theories have the consequence that factors beyond our control produce all of the actions we perform, and that because of this, we are not morally responsible for any of them. He seeks to defend the view that morality, meaning and value remain intact even if we are not morally responsible, and furthermore, that adopting this perspective would provide significant benefit for our lives.

The Rise and Fall of Experimental Philosophy

Article

Jun 2007
Phil Explor

Antti Kauppinen

In disputes about conceptual analysis, each side typically appeals to pre-theoretical ‘intuitions’ about particular cases. Recently, many naturalistically oriented philosophers have suggested that these appeals should be understood as empirical hypotheses about what people would say when presented with descriptions of situations, and have consequently conducted surveys on non-specialists. I argue that this philosophical research programme, a key branch of what is known as ‘experimental philosophy’, rests on mistaken assumptions about the relation between people's concepts and their linguistic behaviour. The conceptual claims that philosophers make imply predictions about the folk's responses only under certain demanding, counterfactual conditions. Because of the nature of these conditions, the claims cannot be tested with methods of positivist social science. We are, however, entitled to appeal to intuitions about folk concepts in virtue of possessing implicit normative knowledge acquired through reflective participation in everyday linguistic practices.

Free Will and the Burden of Proof

Article

Sep 2003
Roy Inst Philos Suppl

William G. Lycan

Here are some things that are widely believed about free will and determinism. (1) Free will is prima facie incompatible with determinism. (2) The incompatibility is logical or at least conceptual or a priori . (3) A compatibilist needs to explain how free will can co-exist with determinism, paradigmatically by offering an analysis of ‘free’ action that is demonstrably compatible with determinism. (Here is the late Roderick Chisholm, in defence of irreducible or libertarian agent-causation: ‘Now if you can analyse such statements as “Jones killed his uncle” into eventcausation statements, then you may have earned the right to make jokes about the agent as cause. But if you haven't done this, and if all the same you do believe such things as that I raised my arm and that Jolns [sic] killed his uncle, and if moreover you still think it's a joke to talk about the agent as cause, then, I'm afraid, the joke is entirely on you.’) (4) Free will is not impugned by quantum in determinism, at least not in the same decisive way that it is impugned by determinism. To reconcile free will with quantum indeterminism takes work, but the work comes under the heading of metaphysical business-as-usual; to reconcile free will with determinism requires a conceptual breakthrough. And listen to Laura Waddell Ekstrom on the burden of proof.

Folk Fears about Freedom and Responsibility: Determinism vs. Reductionism

Article

Mar 2006

Eddy Nahmias

How to Challenge Intuitions Empirically Without Risking Skepticism

Article

Sep 2007
Midwest Stud Philos

Jonathan M. Weinberg

Free Will, Moral Responsibility, and Mechanism: Experiments on Folk Intuitions

Article

Sep 2007
Midwest Stud Philos

Are the Folk Agent‐Causationists?

Article

Nov 2006
MIND LANG

Experimental examination of how the folk conceptualize certain philosophically loaded notions can provide information useful for philosophical theorizing. In this paper, we explore issues raised in Shaun Nichols’ (2004) studies involving people’s conception of free will, focusing on his claim that this conception fits best with the philosophical theory of agent-causation. We argue that his data do not support this conclusion, highlighting along the way certain considerations that ought to be taken into account when probing the folk conception of free will.

The Revisionist's Guide to Moral Responsibility

Article

Sep 2005

Manuel Vargas

Revisionism in the theory of moral responsibility is the idea that some aspect of responsibility practices, attitudes, or concept is in need of revision. While the increased frequency of revisionist language in the literature on free will and moral responsibility is striking, what discussion there has been of revisionism about responsibility and free will tends to be critical. In this paper, I argue that at least one species of revisionism, moderate revisionism, is considerably more sophisticated and defensible than critics have realized. I go on to argue for the advantages of moderate revisionist theories over standard compatibilist and incompatibilist theories.

Freedom Within Reason

Article

Jan 1993

Susan R. Wolf

Perhaps no problem in philosophy is easier to motivate than the problem of free will, for it is not just philosophers occupied with academic puzzles but thoughtful people of all sorts who can be struck and upset by the thought that the direction of their lives might be determined by things wholly beyond their control. In earlier times, this thought was perhaps chiefly connected with the contemplation of the idea of divine predestination. Today, the worry that there is no such thing as free will might as easily arise from other sources. Free will seems to be threatened not only by what may be called divine determinism, but also by psychological determinism-that is, by the view of human psychology that holds that one's interests and beliefs and values, and consequently one's decisions for action, are wholly a product of one's heredity and environment. Moreover, the very reality of our status as valuing, deliberating agents whose thoughts, desires, and wills are effective in guiding our behavior can be called into question by the scientific perspective that views human beings as wholly physical creatures whose behavior, like the behavior of all other natural objects, can be completely explained in terms of the interaction of atomic or subatomic particles. I have said that we are “upset” by the thought that we may not have free will. But, to quote Mad Magazine, “Why worry?” What difference does it make if we lack free will? Because people differ in the aspects of the freewill problem that concern them and because philosophical discussions of this issue vary accordingly, it is best to be explicit about the specific worries one cares to address. © James Stacey Taylor 2005 and Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Freedom and Mind Control

D Blumenfeld

Hard and Soft Determinism Determinism and Freedom in the Age of Modern Science

P Edwards

An Essay on Free Will

Jan 1983

P Van Inwagen
P Inwagen

Experimental Philosophy on Free Will: An Error Theory for Incompatibilist Intuitions

Abstract

No full-text available

Recommended publications

Rationalizing Self-Interpretation