Traditional and Experimental Approaches to Free Will and Moral Responsibility

In Wesley Buckwalter & Justin Sytsma (eds.), Blackwell Companion to Experimental Philosophy. Malden, MA: Blackwell. pp. 142-57 (2016)
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Abstract

Examines the relevance of empirical studies of responsibility judgments for traditional philosophical concerns about free will and moral responsibility. We argue that experimental philosophy is relevant to the traditional debates, but that setting up experiments and interpreting data in just the right way is no less difficult than negotiating traditional philosophical arguments. Both routes are valuable, but so far neither promises a way to secure significant agreement among the competing parties. To illustrate, we focus on three sorts of issues. For illustration, we discuss an error theory for incompatibilist intuitions proposed by Eddy Nahmias and colleagues, the role that empirical studies might have in the assessment of manipulation arguments for incompatibilism, and the suggestion that empirical studies reveal that core criteria for moral responsibility ought not to be applied invariantly across different sorts of cases.

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Author Profiles

Derk Pereboom
Cornell University
Gunnar Björnsson
Stockholm University

Citations of this work

Explaining (away) the epistemic condition on moral responsibility.Gunnar Björnsson - 2017 - In Philip Robichaud & Jan Wieland (eds.), Responsibility - The Epistemic Condition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 146–162.
What is the Difference between Weakness of Will and Compulsion?August Gorman - 2022 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 9 (1):37-52.
Explaining away epistemic skepticism about culpability.Gunnar Björnsson - 2013 - In David Shoemaker (ed.), Oxford studies in agency and responsibility. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 141–164.
Demystifying the Deep Self View.August Gorman - 2022 - Journal of Moral Philosophy 19 (4):390-414.

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References found in this work

A treatise of human nature.David Hume & A. D. Lindsay - 1739 - Oxford,: Clarendon press. Edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge.
Free Will, Agency, and Meaning in Life.Derk Pereboom - 2014 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments.R. Jay Wallace - 1994 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Freedom of the will and the concept of a person.Harry G. Frankfurt - 1971 - Journal of Philosophy 68 (1):5-20.
An Essay on Free Will.Peter van Inwagen - 1983 - New York: Oxford University Press.

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