Recent experimental research has revealed surprising patterns in people's intuitions about free will and moral responsibility. One limitation of this research, however, is that it has been conducted exclusively on people from Western cultures. The present paper extends previous research by presenting a cross-cultural study examining intuitions about free will and moral responsibility in subjects from the United States, Hong Kong, India and Colombia. The results revealed a striking degree of cross-cultural convergence. In all four cultural groups, the majority of (...) participants said that (a) our universe is indeterministic and (b) moral responsibility is not compatible with determinism. (shrink)

Moral judgments about an agent's behavior are enmeshed with inferences about the agent's mind. Folk psychology—the system that enables such inferences—therefore lies at the heart of moral judgment. We examine three related folk-psychological concepts that together shape people's judgments of blame: intentionality, choice, and free will. We discuss people's understanding and use of these concepts, address recent findings that challenge the autonomous role of these concepts in moral judgment, and conclude that choice is the fundamental concept of the three, defining (...) the core of folk psychology in moral judgment. (shrink)

Could animals behave morally if they can’t mindread? Does morality require mindreading capacities? Moral psychologists believe mindreading is contingently involved in moral judgements. Moral philosophers argue that moral behaviour necessarily requires the possession of mindreading capacities. In this paper, I argue that, while the former may be right, the latter are mistaken. Using the example of empathy, I show that animals with no mindreading capacities could behave on the basis of emotions that possess an identifiable moral content. Therefore, at least (...) one type of moral motivation does not require mindreading. This means that, a priori, non-mindreading animals can be moral. (shrink)

According to one view of alethic modality, to say that something is necessary is to say that we must take that thing to be true according to rules of thinking or linguistic rules. In other words, alethic modality is reduced to deontic modality with respect to thoughts or language. This view has been argued to have many philosophical advantages over the traditional view that takes alethic modality to describe something in the world. In this paper, I argue that the deontic (...) view also enjoys a wide range of empirical supports from linguistics and psychology. (shrink)

What is the impact of science on philosophy? In “Experiments in Ethics”, Kwame Anthony Appiah addresses this question for morality and ethics. Appiah suggests that scientific results may undermine moral intuitions by undermining our confidence in the actual sources of our intuitions, or by invalidating our factual assumptions about the causes of human behavior. Appiah worries that scientific results showing situational causes on human behavior force us to abandon the intuition, formalized in virtue ethics, that what matters is “who you (...) are on the inside”. In this review, we agree with Appiah that scientific results at once force and do not force us to abandon this intuition. We also propose that Appiah’s worry is due in part to an over-simplified conception of “internal causes”, shared widely among scientists and philosophers. By re-introducing the true richness of internal causes invoked in moral judgments, we hope to relax the tension between scientific results and moral intuitions. Ultimately, we propose that science can undermine and constrain but cannot affirm our commitment to specific moral intuitions. (shrink)

When we judge an action as morally right or wrong, we rely on our capacity to infer the actor's mental states. Here, we test the hypothesis that the right temporoparietal junction, an area involved in mental state reasoning, is necessary for making moral judgments. In two experiments, we used transcranial magnetic stimulation to disrupt neural activity in the RTPJ transiently before moral judgment and during moral judgment. In both experiments, TMS to the RTPJ led participants to rely less on the (...) actor's mental states. A particularly striking effect occurred for attempted harms : Relative to TMS to a control site, TMS to the RTPJ caused participants to judge attempted harms as less morally forbidden and more morally permissible. Thus, interfering with activity in the RTPJ disrupts the capacity to use mental states in moral judgment, especially in the case of attempted harms. (shrink)

У статті представлено нову течію у філософії, а саме експериментальну філософію, яка потужно заявила про себе в останні двадцять п’ять років і знайшла розповсюдження переважно в країнах Західної та Центральної Європи і США. Окреслено її передісторію, основні положення, ключові методи і тематику досліджень, а також окремі результати. Представлено головні напрями у межах самої експериментальної філософії, а саме рестрикціонізм, експериментальний дескриптивізм та експериментальний аналіз понять. У статті підкреслюється значний міждисциплінарний потенціал експериментальної філософії та описується ряд напрямів, у яких могла б відбутись (...) плідна співпраця філософів, психологів, біхевіоральних економістів, правників та представників інших дисциплін, що вивчають людську поведінку. З появою експериментальної компоненти та завдяки активному творенню нового емпірично обґрунтованого знання зростає потенційний вплив філософії на суспільство, на ефективність формування цінностей і модуляцію поведінки людей, особливо з урахуванням потужності сучасних мас-медіа. (shrink)

Past work has demonstrated that people’s moral judgments can influence their judgments in a number of domains that might seem to involve straightforward matters of fact, including judgments about freedom, causation, the doing/allowing distinction, and intentional action. The present studies explore whether the effect of morality in these four domains can be explained by changes in the relevance of alternative possibilities. More precisely, we propose that moral judgment influences the degree to which people regard certain alternative possibilities as relevant, which (...) in turn impacts intuitions about freedom, causation, doing/allowing, and intentional action. Employing the stimuli used in previous research, Studies 1a, 2a, 3a, and 4a show that the relevance of alternatives is influenced by moral judgments and mediates the impact of morality on non-moral judgments. Studies 1b, 2b, 3b, and 4b then provide direct empirical evidence for the link between the relevance of alternatives and judgments in these four domains by manipulating (rather than measuring) the relevance of alternative possibilities. Lastly, Study 5 demonstrates that the critical mechanism is not whether alternative possibilities are considered, but whether they are regarded as relevant. These studies support a unified framework for understanding the impact of morality across these very different kinds of judgments. (shrink)

From the first time I encountered the problem of free will in college, it struck me that a clear-eyed view of free will and moral responsibility demanded some form of nihilism. Libertarianism seemed delusional, and compatibilism seemed in bad faith. Hence I threw my lot in with philosophers like Paul d’Holbach, Galen Strawson, and Derk Pereboom who conclude that no one is truly moral responsible. But after two decades of self- identifying as a nihilist, it occurred to me that I (...) had continued to treat my friends. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

In this paper, we focus on whether and to what extent we judge that people are responsible for the consequences of their forgetfulness. We ran a series of behavioral studies to measure judgments of responsibility for the consequences of forgetfulness. Our results show that we are disposed to hold others responsible for some of their forgetfulness. The level of stress that the forgetful agent is under modulates judgments of responsibility, though the level of care that the agent exhibits toward performing (...) the forgotten action does not. We argue that this result has important implications for a long-running debate about the nature of responsible agency. (shrink)

An important disagreement in contemporary debates about free will hinges on whether an agent must have alternative possibilities to be morally responsible. Many assume that notions of alternative possibilities are ubiquitous and reflected in everyday intuitions about moral responsibility: if one lacks alternatives, then one cannot be morally responsible. We explore this issue empirically. In two studies, we find evidence that folk judgments about moral responsibility call into question two popular principles that require some form of alternative possibilities for moral (...) responsibility. Survey participants given scenarios involving agents that fail to satisfy these principles nonetheless found these agents to be morally responsible, blameworthy, deserving of blame, and at fault for morally bad actions and consequences. We defend our interpretation of this evidence against objections and explore some implications of these findings for the free will debate. (shrink)

This article distinguishes among and examines three different kinds of argument for the thesis that moral responsibility and free action are each incompatible with the truth of determinism: straight manipulation arguments; manipulation arguments to the best explanation; and original-design arguments. Structural and methodological matters are the primary focus.

The contemporary philosophical debate on free will and moral responsibility is rife with appeal to a variety of allegedly intuitive cases and principles. As a result, some have argued that many strands of this debate end in “dialectical stalemates,” boiling down to bedrock, seemingly intractable disagreements about intuition . Here I attempt to carve out a middle ground between conventional reliance on appeal to intuition and intuitional skepticism in regards to the philosophical discussion of moral responsibility in particular. The main (...) goal of this paper is to propose and defend a new methodological assumption that I argue responsibility theorists can and should accept, one that serves to preserve a general skepticism about the proper role of intuition in our responsibility theorizing while marking a particular class of our responsibility judgments as having a privileged epistemic status such that they can play a role in constraining our responsibility theorizing. (shrink)

Determinism seems to rule out a robust sense of options but also prevent our choices from being a matter of luck. In this way, free will seems to require both the truth and falsity of determinism. If the concept of free will is coherent, something must have gone wrong. I offer a diagnosis on which this puzzle is due at least in part to a tension already present in the very idea of free will. I provide various lines of support (...) for this hypothesis, including some experimental data gathered by probing the judgments of non-specialists. (shrink)

Social constructionist explanations of human thought and behavior hold that our representations produce and regulate the categories, thoughts, and behaviors of those they represent. Performative versions of constructionist accounts explain these thoughts and behaviors as part of an intentional, strategic performance that is elicited and regulated by our representations of ourselves. This paper has four aims. First, I sketch a causal model of performative social constructionist claims. Second, I articulate a puzzling feature of performative claims that makes them seem especially (...) implausible: the puzzle of intention and ignorance. Like other constructionists, performative constructionists are especially interested in explaining thoughts and behaviors that are widely but mistakenly believed to be the unintentional consequences of membership in a natural kind. But why doesn’t the intentional performance of a category undermine this ignorance? My third aim is to resolve this puzzle. I suggest that a plausible understanding can be found in the failure to locate one’s mental states in a causal explanation of one’s thoughts and actions. Finally, I argue that this model implies that the sorts of theories we offer of particular behaviors can create or destroy agency and responsibility with regard to those behaviors. (shrink)

This paper addresses the definition and the operational use of intuitions in philosophical methods in the form of a research study encompassing several regions of the globe, involving 282 philosophers from a wide array of academic backgrounds and areas of specialisation. The authors tested whether philosophers agree on the conceptual definition and the operational use of intuitions, and investigated whether specific demographic variables and philosophical specialisation influence how philosophers define and use intuitions. The results obtained point to a number of (...) significant findings, including that philosophers distinguish between intuitions used to formulate (discovery) and to test (justification) philosophical theory. The survey results suggest that strategies implemented to characterise philosophical intuition are not well motivated since, even though philosophers do not agree on a single account of intuition, they fail to capture a preferred usage of intuitions as aspects of discovery. The quantitative summary of survey findings informs the debate on this topic, and advances more defined routes for subsequent approaches to the study of intuitions. (shrink)

Some philosophers contend that concomitant ignorance preserves moral responsibility for wrongdoing. An agent is concomitantly ignorant with respect to wrongdoing if and only if her ignorance is non-culpable, but she would freely have performed the same action if she were not ignorant. I, however, argue that concomitant ignorance excuses. I show that leading accounts of moral responsibility imply that concomitant ignorance excuses, and I debunk the view that concomitant ignorance preserves moral responsibility.

According to intellectualism, what a person knows is solely a function of the evidential features of the person's situation. Anti-intellectualism is the view that what a person knows is more than simply a function of the evidential features of the person's situation. Jason Stanley (2005) argues that, in addition to “traditional factors,” our ordinary practice of knowledge ascription is sensitive to the practical facts of a subject's situation. In this paper, we investigate this question empirically. Our results indicate that Stanley's (...) assumptions about knowledge ascriptions do not reflect our ordinary practices in some paradigmatic cases. If our data generalize, then arguments for anti-intellectualism that rely on ordinary knowledge ascriptions fail: the case for anti-intellectualism cannot depend on our ordinary practices of knowledge ascription. (shrink)

Following important work by Pizarro, Uhlmann and Salovey (2003) on moral judgments of uncontrolled/impulsive versus controlled/ deliberate action, we focus on the related issue of the moral evaluation of emotion-motivated versus principle-driven behavior. We examine: (a) the potential lesser blameworthiness of antisocial acts perceived as driven by emotion as opposed to principle; (b) how factors governing the moral evaluation of antisocial acts might extend to the evaluation of prosocial acts; and (c) how overriding a moral emotion in favor of a (...) moral principle affects moral attributions. (shrink)

Recent evidence suggests that if a deterministic description of the events leading up to a morally questionable action is couched in mechanistic, reductionistic, concrete and/or emotionally salient terms, people are more inclined toward compatibilism than when those descriptions use non-mechanistic, non-reductionistic, abstract and/or emotionally neutral terms. To explain these results, it has been suggested that descriptions of the first kind are processed by a concrete cognitive system, while those of the second kind are processed by an abstract cognitive system. The (...) current paper reports the results of three studies exploring whether or not considerations about possible future consequences of holding an agent responsible at a present time affect people’s judgments of responsibility. The results obtained suggest first that the concrete system does not produce compatibilist judgments of responsibility unconditionally, even when facing appropriately mechanistic, reductionistic, emotionally loaded and concretely worded deterministic scenarios. Second, these results suggest that considerations about possible future consequences for innocent third parties that may follow as a result of holding an agent responsible affect people’s judgment as to whether or not the agent is responsible for what she did. Finally, it is proposed that these results compliment extant evidence on the so-called “Side-effect effect”, as they suggest that emotional reactions toward possible future side effects influence people’s judgment of responsibility. The impact of these results for philosophy and moral psychology is discussed. (shrink)

Despite growing interest in emotions, organizational scholars have largely ignored the moral emotion of schadenfreude, which refers to pleasure felt in response to another’s misfortune. As a socially undesirable emotion, it might be assumed that individuals would be hesitant to share their schadenfreude. In two experimental studies involving emotional responses to unethical behaviors, we find evidence to the contrary. Study 1 revealed that subjects experiencing schadenfreude were willing to share their feelings, especially if the misfortune was perceived to be deserved. (...) Study 2 extends this work by incorporating schadenfreude targets of different status. Consistent with the “tall poppy syndrome,” subjects were more willing to share schadenfreude concerning high status targets than low status targets when the perceived severity of the target’s misconduct was low. This status effect disappeared at higher levels of perceived deservingness, however. Reported willingness to share schadenfreude was strongest at these levels but did not differ significantly between high and low status targets. These findings build on the social functional account of emotions, suggesting that sharing schadenfreude may signal normative cues to others regarding workplace behaviors that are deemed to be unethical. (shrink)

Many researchers in moral psychology approach the topic of moral judgment in terms of value—assessing outcomes of behaviors as either harmful or helpful which makes the behaviors wrong or right, respectively. However, recent advances in motivation science suggest that other motives may be at work as well—namely truth (wanting to establish what is real) and control (wanting to manage what happens). In this review, we argue that the epistemic experiences of observers of (im)moral behaviors, and the perceived epistemic experiences of (...) those observed, serve as a groundwork for understanding how truth and control motives are implicated in the moral judgment process. We also discuss relations between this framework and recent work from across the field of moral psychology, as well as implications for future research. (shrink)

A standard principle in ethics is that moral obligation entails ability, or that “ought implies can”. A strong case has been made that this principle is not well motivated in moral psychology. This paper presents an analogous case against the theoretical motivation for the principle. The principle is in tension with several foundational areas of ethical theorizing, including research on apologies, excuses, promises, moral dilemmas, moral language, disability, and moral agency. Across each of these areas, accepting the principle that obligation (...) entails ability creates a theoretical problem that is more easily solved by rejecting it rather than accepting it. I conclude that the motivation for the principle is weak and that “ought implies can” should be rejected in ethics on theoretical grounds. (shrink)

According to one picture of the mind, decisions and actions are largely the result of automatic cognitive processing beyond our ability to control. This picture is in tension with a foundational principle in ethics that moral responsibility for behavior requires the ability to control it. The discovery of implicit attitudes contributes to this tension. According to the ability argument against moral responsibility, if we cannot control implicit attitudes, and implicit attitudes cause behavior, then we cannot be morally responsible for that (...) behavior. The purpose of this paper is to refute the ability argument. Drawing on both scientific evidence in cognitive science and philosophical arguments in ethics and action theory, I argue that it is invalid and unsound because current evidence is insufficient to establish the premises that implicit attitudes are uncontrollable, that they significantly cause behavior, that responsibility always requires ability, and that even if uncontrollable attitudes did fully cause behavior, this entails that the behavior they cause is uncontrollable. The rejection of the ability argument questions the priority of the unconscious over the conscious mind in cognitive science, deprioritizes ability in theories of moral responsibility in ethics, and provides a strong reason to uphold moral responsibility for implicitly biased behavior. (shrink)

Philosophical accounts of altruism that purport to explain helping behavior are vulnerable to empirical falsification. John Campbell argues that the Good Samaritan study adds to a growing body of evidence that helping behavior is not best explained by appeal to altruism, thus jeopardizing those accounts. I propose that philosophical accounts of altruism can be empirically challenged only if it is shown that altruistic motivations are undermined by normative conflict in the agent, and that the relevant studies do not provide this (...) sort of evidence. Non-normative, purely causal, psychological factors would be empirically relevant only if the notion of altruism is broadened to include the requirement that one recognize certain situations as calling for altruism. But even in that case, the relevant studies are not designed in such a way that could threaten philosophical theories of altruism. (shrink)

A deterministic perspective, believing choices are a function of hereditary and environmental factors, could theoretically impact perceived moral responsibility and lead to decreased blame in judging others. However, little consistent support has been found relating individual differences in deterministic attitudes to blame/tolerance for others. Perhaps, though, providing information regarding past background hardships affecting an individual's current lifestyle could potentially mediate harsh moralistic judgments of that individual. In the two studies reported here, we further explored the relation of free will/determinism scales (...) to attitudes toward others as well as the effect of manipulating background information on the assignment of blame. As in previous research, little support was found for the relation of deterministic attitudes to tolerance toward others. However, judgments following manipulated information about hypothetical target persons supported the conclusion that target individuals are blamed less and given more sympathy if more information related to previous hardships is provided. In addition, in the second study perceived similarity to a target individual was associated with decreased blame/greater sympathy for a target with alcohol abuse problems. (shrink)

How does character information inform judgments of blame? Some argue that character information is indirectly relevant to blame because it enriches judgments about the mental states of a wrongdoer. Others argue that character information is directly relevant to blame, even when character traits are causally irrelevant to the wrongdoing. We propose an empirical synthesis of these views: a Two Channel Model of blame. The model predicts that character information directly affects blame when this information is relevant to the wrongdoing that (...) elicits blame. Further, the effect of character information on blame depends on judgments about the true self that are independent of judgments of intentionality. Across three pre-registered studies (N = 662), we found support for all three predictions of the Two Channel Model. We propose that this reflects two distinct functions of blame: a social regulatory function that encourages norm compliance and a pedagogical function that encourages personal improvement. (shrink)

Understanding the folk notion of free will and moral responsibility is important for a host of applied and theoretical issues in psychology, philosophy, and ethics. The bulk of experimental research has focused on folk intuitions concerning determinism's relation to free will and moral responsibility. However, determinism is a difficult term for many folk to understand. Accordingly researchers often use comprehension questions to identify and exclude large proportions of participants who seem to struggle with relevant concepts. Here, we document some of (...) the cognitive mechanisms involved in folk judgments related to comprehension of determinism, and its relations to free will and moral responsibility. Results provide prescriptions for experimental designs that can increase comprehension, potentially decreasing sampling biases. Theoretical and methodological implications are discussed. (shrink)

Adults' judgments regarding punishment can have important social ramifications. However, the origins of these judgments remain unclear. Using the legal system as an example domain in which people receive punishment, the current work employed two complementary approaches to examine how punishment-related concepts emerge. Study 1 tested both 6- to 8-year-olds and adults to ascertain which components of “end-state” pun- ishment concepts emerge early in development and remain stable over time, and which components of pun- ishment concepts change with age. Children, (...) like adults, agreed with and spontaneously generated behavioral explanations for incarceration. However, children were more likely than adults to attribute incarceration to internal characteristics. Neither children nor adults reported that incarceration stems from societal-level factors such as poverty. Study 2 built on the results of Study 1 by probing the extent to which early punishment-related concepts in the legal domain emerge from a specific form of social experience—namely, parental incarceration. Children of incarcerated parents, like children whose parents were not incarcerated, were more likely to re- ference internal and behavioral factors than societal factors when discussing why people come into contact with the justice system. Taken together, these studies clarify how punishment-related concepts arise and therefore contribute to theories of moral psychology, social cognitive development, and criminal justice. (shrink)

It is often thought that judgments about what we ought to do are limited by judgments about what we can do, or that “ought implies can.” We conducted eight experiments to test the link between a range of moral requirements and abilities in ordinary moral evaluations. Moral obligations were repeatedly attributed in tandem with inability, regardless of the type (Experiments 1–3), temporal duration (Experiment 5), or scope (Experiment 6) of inability. This pattern was consistently observed using a variety of moral (...) vocabulary to probe moral judgments and was insensitive to different levels of seriousness for the consequences of inaction (Experiment 4). Judgments about moral obligation were no different for individuals who can or cannot perform physical actions, and these judgments differed from evaluations of a non-moral obligation (Experiment 7). Together these results demonstrate that commonsense morality rejects the “ought implies can” principle for moral requirements, and that judgments about moral obligation are made independently of considerations about ability. By contrast, judgments of blame were highly sensitive to considerations about ability (Experiment 8), which suggests that commonsense morality might accept a “blame implies can” principle. (shrink)