Natural Compatibilism, Indeterminism, and Intrusive Metaphysics

Author(s):

Thomas Nadelhoffer ◽

David Rose ◽

Wesley Buckwalter ◽

Shaun Nichols

Keyword(s):

Moral Responsibility ◽

Free Will ◽

Common Sense ◽

Experimental Philosophy ◽

Reliable Evidence ◽

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.

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

10.31234/osf.io/sep8f ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

adrien Alejandro fillon ◽

Anthony Lantian ◽

Gilad Feldman ◽

Ahogni Ngbala

Keyword(s):

Moral Responsibility ◽

Free Will ◽

Experimental Philosophy ◽

Negative Outcomes ◽

Subject Design ◽

Consistent Support ◽

Exceptionality effect is the widely cited phenomenon that people experience stronger regret for 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 an exceptional behavior compared to a routine one, when the exception was due to self-choice rather than 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.

The Oxford Handbook of Free Will

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195178548.001.0001 ◽

2005 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Keyword(s):

Moral Responsibility ◽

Free Will ◽

State Of The Art ◽

Alternative Possibilities ◽

Free Agency ◽

Consequence Argument ◽

The Past ◽

Hard Determinism ◽

Determinism And Indeterminism ◽

The Oxford Handbook of Free Will provides a guide to current scholarship on the perennial problem of free will—perhaps the most hotly and voluminously debated of all philosophical problems. While reference is made throughout to the contributions of major thinkers of the past, the emphasis is on recent research. The articles combine the work of established scholars with younger thinkers who are beginning to make significant contributions. The book is divided into eight parts: Part I (Theology and Fatalism), Part II (Physics, Determinism, and Indeterminism), Part III (The Modal or Consequence Argument for Incompatibilism). Part IV (Compatibilist Perspectives on Freedom and Responsibility), Part V (Moral Responsibility, Alternative Possibilities, and Frankfurt-Style), Part VI (Libertarian Perspectives on Free Agency and Free Will), Part VII (Nonstandard Views: Successor Views to Hard Determinism and Others), and Part VIII (Neuroscience and Free Will). Taken as a whole, the book provides a roadmap to the state of the art thinking on this enduring topic.

A Minimal Libertarianism

10.1093/oso/9780190682781.001.0001 ◽

2018 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Christopher Evan Franklin

Keyword(s):

Moral Responsibility ◽

Free Will ◽

Unsolved Problem ◽

Mental States ◽

Human Action ◽

The Self ◽

Causal Role ◽

Causal Processes ◽

In this book Franklin develops and defends a version of event-causal libertarianism about free will and moral responsibility. This view is a combination of libertarianism—the view that humans sometimes act freely and that those actions are the upshots of nondeterministic causal processes—and agency reductionism—the view that the causal role of agents in exercises of free will is exhausted by the causal role of mental states and events (e.g., desires and beliefs) involving the agents. Many philosophers contend that event-causal libertarians have no advantage over compatibilists when it comes to securing a distinctively valuable and robust kind of freedom and responsibility. But Franklin argues that this is mistaken. Assuming agency reductionism is true, event-causal libertarians need only adopt the most plausible compatibilist theory and add indeterminism at the proper juncture in the genesis of human action. The result is minimal event-causal libertarianism: a model of free will with the metaphysical simplicity of compatibilism and the intuitive power of libertarianism. And yet a worry remains. Toward the end of the book, Franklin reconsiders his assumption of agency reductionism, arguing that this picture faces a hitherto unsolved problem. This problem, however, has nothing to do with indeterminism or determinism, or even libertarianism or compatibilism, but with how to understand the nature of the self and its role in the genesis of action. If this problem proves unsolvable, then not only is event-causal libertarianism untenable, so also is event-causal compatibilism.

The Metaphysics of Mind and the Practical Science of the Law

Law and History Review ◽

10.1017/s0738248000003588 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 26 (1) ◽

pp. 161-166 ◽

Author(s):

Sarah A. Seo ◽

John Fabian Witt

Keyword(s):

Moral Responsibility ◽

Free Will ◽

Common Sense ◽

Moral Agent ◽

Practical Science ◽

Early American ◽

American Law ◽

The Common ◽

The Law ◽

Metaphysics Of Mind

In “Mind of a Moral Agent,” Susanna Blumenthal elegantly limns the rise and partial fall of the common sense theory of moral responsibility in American law. As Blumenthal convincingly describes it, the problem for early American jurists was nothing less than to solve the paradox of determinism and free will. How can the law declare someone morally culpable unless we are free to choose our own ends?

Rationalizing: Kant on Moral Self-Deception

SATS ◽

10.1515/sats-2020-0011 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 0 (0) ◽

Author(s):

Jörg Noller

Keyword(s):

Free Will ◽

Moral Philosophy ◽

Common Sense ◽

Practical Reason ◽

Individual Freedom ◽

Moral Law ◽

Moral Self ◽

The Absolute ◽

Sensus Communis ◽

Abstract Kant’s moral philosophy is challenged by the so-called “Socratic Paradox”: If free will and pure practical reason are to be identified, as Kant argues, then there seems to be no room for immoral actions that are to be imputed to our individual freedom. The paper argues that Kant’s conception of rationalizing (“Vernünfteln”) helps us to avoid the Socratic Paradox, and to understand how immoral actions can be imputed to our individual freedom and responsibility. In rationalizing, we misuse our capacity of reason in order to construct the illusion according to which we are not bound to the absolute demand of the moral law, but rather subject to exceptions and excuses. Finally, the paper interprets the three rules of “common sense” (sensus communis) in Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment in terms of an antidote to rationalizing.

The independence of free will and determinism in judgments of moral responsibility

PsycEXTRA Dataset ◽

10.1037/e634112013-443 ◽

2011 ◽

Author(s):

Jasmine Carey ◽

Delroy Paulhus

Keyword(s):

Moral Responsibility ◽

Free Will

Introduction

10.1093/oso/9780190682781.003.0001 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Christopher Evan Franklin

Keyword(s):

Moral Responsibility ◽

Free Will ◽

Human Agency ◽

Causal Role ◽

Central Question ◽

Agent Causation ◽

The Right

This chapter lays out the book’s central question: Assuming agency reductionism—that is, the thesis that the causal role of the agent in all agential activities is reducible to the causal role of states and events involving the agent—is it possible to construct a defensible model of libertarianism? It is explained that most think the answer is negative and this is because they think libertarians must embrace some form of agent-causation in order to address the problems of luck and enhanced control. The thesis of the book is that these philosophers are mistaken: it is possible to construct a libertarian model of free will and moral responsibility within an agency reductionist framework that silences that central objections to libertarianism by simply taking the best compatibilist model of freedom and adding indeterminism in the right junctures of human agency. A brief summary of the chapters to follow is given.

Moral Responsibility for Unwitting Omissions

10.1093/oso/9780190683450.003.0006 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Dana Kay Nelkin ◽

Samuel C. Rickless

Keyword(s):

Moral Responsibility ◽

Common Sense ◽

Value Judgments ◽

Moral Significance ◽

Common Sense Morality ◽

And Control

Unwitting omissions pose a challenge for theories of moral responsibility. For common-sense morality holds many unwitting omitters morally responsible for their omissions, even though they appear to lack both awareness and control. People who leave dogs in their car on a hot day or forget to pick something up from the store as they promised seem to be blameworthy. If moral responsibility requires awareness of one’s omission and its moral significance, it appears that the protagonists of these cases are not morally responsible. This chapter considers and rejects a number of influential views on this problem, including a view that grounds responsibility for such omissions in previous exercises of conscious agency, and “Attributionist” views that ground responsibility for such omissions in the value judgments or other aspects of the agents’ selves. The chapter proposes a new tracing view that grounds responsibility for unwitting omissions in past opportunities to avoid them.

Reactive Attitudes Revisited: A Modest Revision

10.1093/oso/9780190878597.003.0006 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

John Deigh

Keyword(s):

Moral Responsibility ◽

Free Will ◽

Reactive Attitudes

The essay offers an interpretation of P. F. Strawson’s “Freedom and Resentment” on which attributions of moral responsibility presuppose a practice of holding people morally responsible for their actions, and what explains the practice is our liability to such reactive attitudes as resentment and indignation. The interpretation is offered to correct a common misinterpretation of Strawson’s essay. On this common misinterpretation, attributions of moral responsibility are implicit in the reactive attitudes of resentment and indignation, and consequently our liability to these attitudes cannot explain these attributions. The reason this is a misinterpretation of Strawson’s essay is that Strawson’s compatibilist solution to the free will problem requires that our liability to the reactive attitudes be conceptually prior to our attributions of moral responsibility.