Consciousness, free will, and moral responsibility: Taking the folk seriously
Philosophical Psychology 28 (7):929-946 (2015)
Abstract
In this paper, I offer evidence that folk views of free will and moral responsibility accord a central place to consciousness. In sections 2 and 3, I contrast action production via conscious states and processes with action in concordance with an agent's long-standing and endorsed motivations, values, and character traits. Results indicate that conscious action production is considered much more important for free will than is concordance with motivations, values, and character traits. In section 4, I contrast the absence of consciousness with the presence of consciousness in behaviorally identical agents. Most participants attribute free will to conscious agents, but not to nonconscious agents. Focusing in particular on two leading views of free will and moral responsibility, namely, Deep Self and Reasons-Responsive Views, I argue that these results present philosophers of mind and action with the following explanatory burden: develop a substantive theory of the connection between consciousness on the on..Author's Profile
DOI
10.1080/09515089.2014.962018
My notes
Similar books and articles
Free Will and Consciousness: Experimental Studies.Joshua Shepherd - 2012 - Consciousness and Cognition 21 (2):915-927.
Is Free Will Necessary for Moral Responsibility?: A Case for Rethinking Their Relationship and the Design of Experimental Studies in Moral Psychology.Carrie Figdor & Mark Phelan - 2015 - Mind and Language 30 (5):603-627.
Surveying Freedom: Folk Intuitions about free will and moral responsibility.Eddy Nahmias, Stephen Morris, Thomas Nadelhoffer & Jason Turner - 2005 - Philosophical Psychology 18 (5):561-584.
Free will.Timothy O'Connor & Christopher Evan Franklin - 2018 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Philosophy and the Folk: On Some Implications of Experimental Work For Philosophical Debates on Free Will.Manuel Vargas - 2006 - Journal of Cognition and Culture 6 (1-2):239-254.
Experimental Philosophy on Free Will: An Error Theory for Incompatibilist Intuitions.Eddy Nahmias & Dylan Murray - 2010 - In Jesus Aguilar, Andrei Buckareff & Keith Frankish (eds.), New Waves in Philosophy of Action. Palgrave-Macmillan. pp. 189--215.
Moral responsibility and free will: A meta-analysis.Adam Feltz & Florian Cova - 2014 - Consciousness and Cognition 30:234-246.
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.
Commentary on “The Free-Will Intuitions Scale and the Question of Natural Compatibilism”.Stephen G. Morris - 2015 - Philosophical Psychology 28 (6):802-807.
Impulse and self-reflection: Frankfurtian responsibility versus free will. [REVIEW]P. S. Greenspan - 1999 - The Journal of Ethics 3 (4):325-341.
Everyone thinks that an ability to do otherwise is necessary for free will and moral responsibility.Christopher Evan Franklin - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (8):2091-2107.
Moral responsibility, freedom, and compulsion.Robert N. Audi - 1974 - American Philosophical Quarterly 11 (1):1-14.
Analytics
Added to PP
2014-05-17
Downloads
3,268 (#1,247)
6 months
68 (#16,698)
2014-05-17
Downloads
3,268 (#1,247)
6 months
68 (#16,698)
Historical graph of downloads
Author's Profile
Citations of this work
Skepticism About Moral Responsibility.Gregg D. Caruso - 2018 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2018):1-81.
Natural Compatibilism, Indeterminism, and Intrusive Metaphysics.Thomas Nadelhoffer, David Rose, Wesley Buckwalter & Shaun Nichols - 2020 - Cognitive Science 44 (8).
Determinism and attributions of consciousness.Gunnar Björnsson & Joshua Shepherd - 2020 - Philosophical Psychology 33 (4):549-568.
References found in this work
Responsibility and Control: A Theory of Moral Responsibility.John Martin Fischer & Mark Ravizza - 1998 - Cambridge University Press.
On a confusion about a function of consciousness.Ned Block - 1995 - Brain and Behavioral Sciences 18 (2):227-–247.