Responsibility Without Freedom? Folk Judgements About Deliberate Actions

Abstract

A long-standing position in philosophy, law, and theology is that a person can be held morally responsible for an action only if they had the freedom to choose and to act otherwise. Thus, many philosophers consider freedom to be a necessary condition for moral responsibility. However, empirical findings suggest that this assumption might not be in line with common sense thinking. For example, in a recent study we used surveys to show that – counter to positions held by many philosophers – lay people consider actions to be free when they are spontaneous rather than being based on reasons. In contrast, responsibility is often considered to require that someone has thought about the alternative options. In this study we used an online survey to directly test the degree to which lay judgements of freedom and responsibility match. Specifically, we tested whether manipulations of deliberation affect freedom and responsibility judgements in the same way. Furthermore, we also tested the dependency of these judgements on a person’s belief that their decision had consequences for their personal life. We found that deliberation had an opposite effect on freedom and responsibility judgements. People were considered more free when they acted spontaneously, whereas they were considered more responsible when they deliberated about their actions. These results seem to suggest that deliberating about reasons is crucially important for the lay concept of responsibility, while for the lay notion of freedom it is perceived to be detrimental. One way of interpreting our findings for the interdisciplinary debate on free will and responsibility could be to suggest that lay beliefs match the philosophical position of semi-compatibilism. Semi-compatibilists insist that the metaphysical debate on the nature of free will can be separated from the debate on conditions of responsible agency. According to our findings the beliefs of lay people are in line with views held by semi-compatibilists, even though we did not test whether they endorse that position explicitly.

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

“…By adopting this framework, we may assimilate an exceptional behavior to an active behavior (because of its "breaking off from the flow of things," and its requiring mental effort and spontaneity; in contrast, a routine behavior may be assimilated to a passive effort because it is "going with the flow," and does not require a mental effort or spontaneity. In the same vein, an agent acting spontaneously is considered freer than an agent acting deliberately (Vierkant et al, 2019). Despite the fact that Vierkant et al (2019) manipulated the agent's choice (spontaneous vs. deliberate) in a within-subjects design in their study, the results may suggest that when deliberation (or mental effort) and spontaneity are experimentally contrasted, it is spontaneity that seems to be the driving force underlying the increase of perceived free will of the agent.…”

“…In the same vein, an agent acting spontaneously is considered freer than an agent acting deliberately (Vierkant et al, 2019). Despite the fact that Vierkant et al (2019) manipulated the agent's choice (spontaneous vs. deliberate) in a within-subjects design in their study, the results may suggest that when deliberation (or mental effort) and spontaneity are experimentally contrasted, it is spontaneity that seems to be the driving force underlying the increase of perceived free will of the agent.…”

“…Free will and moral responsibility are traditionally viewed as being intrinsically related (Caruso, 2018), although there are long-lasting and ongoing debates about specific cases in which they can be separated (Vierkant et al, 2019). Beyond moral responsibility, the measurement of regret not only allows us to attempt to replicate the effect of exceptionality on attributions of regret (Kahneman & Miller, 1986) but also ensure us about the validity of our recruited sample and methods by playing the role of a gold standard.…”

Cultural pressure and biased responding in free will attitudes

“…Such findings might reduce FWBs, and already led some to conclude that free will is an 'illusion' [13]. This claim potentially has broad effects, as free will is the foundation for our sense of responsibility and many criminal justice systems [14][15][16]. If FWBs changed in the general public, this might lead to unintuitive changes to e.g.…”

Is Common Sense neither Compatibilist nor Incompatibilist?

“…Vihvelin argues that these questions do not necessarily overlap. And there is research to back this up (Figdor & Phelan, 2015;Vierkant, Deutschländer, Sinnott-Armstrong, & Haynes, 2019). Unfortunately, though the number of studies that carefully distinguish between these questions is growing, we do not yet have the luxury of ignoring the studies that look only at moral responsibility.…”