In Elizabeth O'Neill & Edouard Machery (eds.), Current Controversies in Experimental Philosophy. Routledge (2014)
Authors |
|
Abstract |
We argue, contra Joshua Knobe in a companion chapter, that most people have an understanding of free will and responsible agency that is compatible with a naturalistic vision of the human mind. Our argument is supported by results from a new experimental philosophy study showing that most people think free will is consistent with complete and perfect prediction of decisions and actions based on prior activity in the brain (a scenario adapted from Sam Harris who predicts most people will find it inconsistent with free will). We explain why most people are "theory-lite" about the nature of mind and free will--they are not committed to substantive theories of the underlying causal structure of mind, such as Knobe's "transcendence vision". Rather, we suggest a "causal competition principle"--that an agent's actions will be deemed unfree when they are perceived to be fully caused by factors that do not include her reasons. This principle explains why people, including some scientists, perceive neuroscientific explanations as threatening free will when they are described in terms of neural processes fully causing actions to the exclusion of agents' reasons or reasoning processes.
|
Keywords | free will neuroscience mind |
Categories | (categorize this paper) |
Buy the book |
Find it on Amazon.com
|
Options |
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Download options
References found in this work BETA
Is Belief in Free Will a Cultural Universal?Hagop Sarkissian, Amita Chatterjee, Felipe de Brigard, Joshua Knobe, Shaun Nichols & Smita Sirker - 2010 - Mind and Language 25 (3):346-358.
Citations of this work BETA
It’s OK If ‘My Brain Made Me Do It’: People’s Intuitions About Free Will and Neuroscientific Prediction.Eddy Nahmias, Jason Shepard & Shane Reuter - 2014 - Cognition 133 (2):502-516.
What Do People Find Incompatible With Causal Determinism?Adam Bear & Joshua Knobe - 2016 - Cognitive Science 40 (8):2025-2049.
Criminal Responsibility and Neuroscience: No Revolution Yet.Ariane Bigenwald & Valerian Chambon - 2019 - Frontiers in Psychology 10.
Forget the Folk: Moral Responsibility Preservation Motives and Other Conditions for Compatibilism.Cory J. Clark, Bo M. Winegard & Roy F. Baumeister - 2019 - Frontiers in Psychology 10.
View all 8 citations / Add more citations
Similar books and articles
Free Will and the Scientific Vision.Joshua Knobe - 2014 - In Edouard Machery & Elizabeth O'Neill (eds.), Current Controversies in Experimental Philosophy. Routledge.
Intuitions About Free Will, Determinism, and Bypassing.Eddy Nahmias - 2011 - In Robert Kane (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Free Will: Second Edition. Oxford University Press.
Neuroscience, Choice, and the Free Will Debate.Jason Shepard & Shane Reuter - 2012 - American Journal of Bioethics - Neuroscience 3 (3):7-11.
Are We Free?: Psychology and Free Will.John Baer, James C. Kaufman & Roy F. Baumeister (eds.) - 2008 - Oxford University Press.
Free Will in Everyday Life: Autobiographical Accounts of Free and Unfree Actions.Tyler F. Stillman, Roy F. Baumeister & Alfred R. Mele - 2011 - Philosophical Psychology 24 (3):381 - 394.
From Uncaused Will to Conscious Choice: The Need to Study, Not Speculate About People’s Folk Concept of Free Will.Andrew E. Monroe & Bertram F. Malle - 2010 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 1 (2):211-224.
Explaining Away Incompatibilist Intuitions.Dylan Murray & Eddy Nahmias - 2014 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 88 (2):434-467.
Why 'Willusionism' Leads to 'Bad Results': Comments on Baumeister, Crescioni, and Alquist.Eddy Nahmias - 2011 - Neuroethics 4 (1):17-24.
Free Will, Moral Responsibility, and Mechanism: Experiments on Folk Intuitions.Eddy Nahmias, D. Justin Coates & Trevor Kvaran - 2007 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 31 (1):214–242.
The Incompatibility of Free Will and Naturalism.Jason Turner - 2009 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 87 (4):565-587.
How Can Psychology Contribute to the Free Will Debate?Shaun Nichols - 2009 - In J. Baer, J. Kaufman & R. Baumeister (eds.), Psychology and Free Will. Oxford University Press.
Experimental Evidence for Free Will Revisionism.Chris Weigel - 2013 - Philosophical Explorations 16 (1):31 - 43.
Analytics
Added to PP index
2013-05-02
Total views
968 ( #4,698 of 2,420,980 )
Recent downloads (6 months)
44 ( #18,382 of 2,420,980 )
2013-05-02
Total views
968 ( #4,698 of 2,420,980 )
Recent downloads (6 months)
44 ( #18,382 of 2,420,980 )
How can I increase my downloads?
Downloads