Moral Responsibility and Determinism: The Cognitive Science of Folk Intuitions

The Free-Will Intuitions Scale and the question of natural compatibilism

“…Some experimental philosophers have recently conjectured that folk intuitions are naturally incompatibilist (e.g., Nichols, 2004;Nichols & Knobe, 2007). Others deny this, presenting empirical results designed to show instead that people are natural compatibilists (e.g., Nahmias, Morris, Nadelhoffer, & Turner, 2005;Nahmias & Murray, 2011;compare Feltz, Cokely, & Nadelhoffer, 2009).…”

“…In a number of papers, Nahmias and his collaborators attempt to explain away incompatibilist intuitions by hypothesizing that the folk misinterpret determinism in one of two ways, either as mechanism or as fatalism. On the other side, Nichols and Knobe (2007) offer an error theory for compatibilist intuitions, arguing that these judgments occur only when affective responses cloud the judgment of participants. 1 We think this empirical stalemate is due in part to a limitation in how experimental philosophers have been thinking about intuitions.…”

“…As Nahmias and Murray (2011) note, if respondents do misinterpret determinism, then their responses won't be about the compatibility of determinism and free will, so they will be irrelevant to the question whether people are natural compatibilists. Nahmias and Murray defend natural compatibilism, and they exploit this potential for misinterpretation as a way of explaining away the incompatibilist intuitions identified by philosophers such as Nichols and Knobe (2007). Nahmias and Murray argue that a significant number of what seem to be incompatibilist intuitions actually are not.…”

“…Participants are first situated within a philosophical debate, usually by reading vignettes, and are asked to take sides in that debate, usually by making forced-choice responses: for instance, agents in a deterministic universe either are or are not morally responsible (Nichols & Knobe, 2007). Yet in many cases, it seems likely that participants will find both options intuitively compelling, though perhaps for different reasons, and to differing degrees.…”

Armchair‐Friendly Experimental Philosophy

“…However, they chose to do so by meeting the critics on their own ground -by conducting further empirical research. Nichols and Knobe (2007) ran another study that suggested that the incompatibilism of the folk was an illusion created by a performance error produced by using concrete scenarios rather than abstract scenarios. When given survey prompts that eliminated the misunderstanding, the majority of participants corroborated the intuitiveness of incompatibilism predicted from the armchair.…”