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Showing posts with label Determinism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Determinism. Show all posts

Monday, March 28, 2022

Do people understand determinism? The tracking problem for measuring free will beliefs

Murray, S., Dykhuis, E., & Nadelhoffer, T.
(2022, February 8). 
https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/kyza7

Abstract

Experimental work on free will typically relies on using deterministic stimuli to elicit judgments of free will. We call this the Vignette-Judgment model. In this paper, we outline a problem with research based on this model. It seems that people either fail to respond to the deterministic aspects of vignettes when making judgments or that their understanding of determinism differs from researcher expectations. We provide some empirical evidence for a key assumption of the problem. In the end, we argue that people seem to lack facility with the concept of determinism, which calls into question the validity of experimental work operating under the Vignette-Judgment model. We also argue that alternative experimental paradigms are unlikely to elicit judgments that are philosophically relevant to questions about the metaphysics of free will.

Error and judgment

Our results show that people make several errors about deterministic stimuli used to elicit judgments about free will and responsibility. Many participants seem to conflate determinism with different  constructs  (bypassing  or  fatalism) or mistakenly interpret the implications of deterministic constraints on agents (intrusion).

Measures of item invariance suggest that participants were not responding differently to error measures across different vignettes. Hence, responses to error measures cannot be explained exclusively in terms of differences in vignettes, but rather seem to reflect participants’ mistaken judgments about determinism. Further, these mistakes are associated with significant differences in judgments about free will. Some of the patterns are predictable: participants who conflate determinism with bypassing attribute less free will to individuals in deterministic scenarios, while participants who import intrusion into deterministic scenarios attribute greater free will. This makes sense. As participants perceive mental states to be less causally efficacious or individuals as less ultimately in control of their decisions, free will is diminished. However, as people perceive more indeterminism, free will is amplified.

Additionally, we found that errors of intrusion are stronger than errors of bypassing or fatalism. Because bypassing errors are associated with diminished judgments of free will and intrusion errors are associated with amplified judgments, then, if all three errors were equal in strength, we would expect a linear relationship between different errors: individuals who make bypassing errors would have the lowest average judgments, individuals who make intrusion errors would have the highest average judgments, and people who make both errors would be in the middle (as both errors would cancel each other out). We did not observe this relationship. Instead, participants who make intrusion errors are statistically indistinguishable from each other, no matter what other kinds of errors they make.

Thus, errors of intrusion seem to trump others in the process of forming judgments of free will.  Thus, the errors people make are not incidentally related to their judgments. Instead, there are significant associations between people’s inferential errors about determinism and how they attribute free will and responsibility. This evidence supports our claim that people make several errors about the nature and implications of determinism.

Sunday, May 9, 2021

For Whom Does Determinism Undermine Moral Responsibility? Surveying the Conditions for Free Will Across Cultures

I. Hannikainen, et. al.
Front. Psychol., 05 November 2019
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02428

Abstract

Philosophers have long debated whether, if determinism is true, we should hold people morally responsible for their actions since in a deterministic universe, people are arguably not the ultimate source of their actions nor could they have done otherwise if initial conditions and the laws of nature are held fixed. To reveal how non-philosophers ordinarily reason about the conditions for free will, we conducted a cross-cultural and cross-linguistic survey (N = 5,268) spanning twenty countries and sixteen languages. Overall, participants tended to ascribe moral responsibility whether the perpetrator lacked sourcehood or alternate possibilities. However, for American, European, and Middle Eastern participants, being the ultimate source of one’s actions promoted perceptions of free will and control as well as ascriptions of blame and punishment. By contrast, being the source of one’s actions was not particularly salient to Asian participants. Finally, across cultures, participants exhibiting greater cognitive reflection were more likely to view free will as incompatible with causal determinism. We discuss these findings in light of documented cultural differences in the tendency toward dispositional versus situational attributions.

Discussion

At the aggregate level, we found that participants blamed and punished agents whether they only lacked alternate possibilities (Miller and Feltz, 2011) or whether they also lacked sourcehood (Nahmias et al., 2005; Nichols and Knobe, 2007). Thus, echoing early findings, laypeople did not take alternate possibilities or sourcehood as necessary conditions for free will and moral responsibility.

Yet, our study also revealed a dramatic cultural difference: Throughout the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East, participants viewed the perpetrator with sourcehood (in the CI scenario) as freer and more morally responsible than the perpetrator without sourcehood (in the AS scenario). Meanwhile, South and East Asian participants evaluated both perpetrators in a strikingly similar way. We interpreted these results in light of cultural variation in dispositional versus situational attributions (Miller, 1984; Morris and Peng, 1994; Choi et al., 1999; Chiu et al., 2000). From a dispositionist perspective, participants may be especially attuned to the absence of sourcehood: When an agent is the source of their action, people may naturally conjure dispositionist explanations that refer to her goals, desires (e.g., because “she wanted a new life”) or character (e.g., because “she is ruthless”). In contrast, when actions result from a causal chain originating at the beginning of the universe, explanations of this sort – implying sourcehood – seem particularly unsatisfactory and incomplete. In contrast, from a situationist perspective, whether the agent could be seen as the source of her action may be largely irrelevant: Instead, a situationist may think of others’ behavior as the product of extrinsic pressures – from momentary upheaval, to the way they were raised, social norms or fate – and thus perceive both agents, in the CI and AS cases, as similar in matters of free will and moral responsibility.

Sunday, November 15, 2020

Determined to Be Humble? Exploring the Relationship Between Belief in Free Will and Humility

Earp, B. D., et al.

Abstract

In recent years, diminished belief in free will or increased belief in determinism have been associated with a range of antisocial or otherwise negative outcomes: unjustified aggression, cheating, prejudice, less helping behavior, and so on. Only a few studies have entertained the possibility of prosocial or otherwise positive outcomes, such as greater willingness to forgive and less motivation to punish retributively. Here, five studies (open data, materials, and pre-print at https://osf.io/hmy39/) explore the relationship between belief in determinism and another positive outcome or attribute, namely, humility. The reported findings suggest that relative disbelief in free will is reliably associated in our samples with at least one type of humility—what we call ‘Einsteinian’ humility—but is not associated with, or even negatively associated with, other types of humility described in the literature.

From the Conclusion

At the same time, in our final study, we found a positive relationship between belief in free will and several other measures of humility: ethical/epistemic humility, Landrum humility, and modesty, with the last of these remaining significant even with a conservative alpha criterion. Although this is contrary to what we expected, it is consistent with the dominant narrative in the literature according to which belief in free will is associated with pro-social traits and behaviors. We believe we are the first to show a relationship of any kind between belief in free will and this particular trait—modesty—and we hope to explore this relationship in more detail in future work.

Monday, August 24, 2020

Natural Compatibilism, Indeterminism, and Intrusive Metaphysics

Nadelhoffer, T., Rose, D., Buckwalter, W.,
& Nichols, S. (2019, August 25).
https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/rzbqh

Abstract

The claim that common sense regards free will and moral responsibility as compatible with determinism has played a central role in both analytic and experimental philosophy. In this paper, we show that evidence in favor of this “natural compatibilism” is undermined by the role that indeterministic metaphysical views play in how people construe deterministic scenarios. To demonstrate this, we re-examine two classic studies that have been used to support natural compatibilism. We find that although people give apparently compatibilist responses, this is largely explained by the fact that people import an indeterministic metaphysics into deterministic scenarios when making judgments about freedom and responsibility. We conclude that judgments based on these scenarios are not reliable evidence for natural compatibilism.

Here is an excerpt from the Discussion:

The most obvious rejoinder for natural compatibilists is to deny that our intrusion items are properly construed as measures of creeping indeterminism. On this view, our items beg the question against compatibilism and our findings can be given a compatibilist-friendly interpretation.Here, the natural compatibilist is likely to appeal to the difference between the unconditional and the conditional ability to do otherwise. In an indeterministic universe, agents can have the unconditional ability to do otherwise—that is, they could have done otherwise even if everything leading up to their decision remained exactly the same. In a deterministic universe, on the other hand, agents merely have the conditional ability to do otherwise—that is, agents could have acted differently only insofar as something (either the past or the laws) had been different than it actually was. Compatibilists suggest that this conditional ability to do otherwise (along with other cognitive and volitional capacities) can ground free will and moral responsibility even in a deterministic universe. Incompatibilists disagree, insisting instead that free will requires indeterminism and the unconditional ability to do otherwise.

Tuesday, November 19, 2019

Moral Responsibility

Talbert, Matthew
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 
(Winter 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)

Making judgments about whether a person is morally responsible for her behavior, and holding others and ourselves responsible for actions and the consequences of actions, is a fundamental and familiar part of our moral practices and our interpersonal relationships.

The judgment that a person is morally responsible for her behavior involves—at least to a first approximation—attributing certain powers and capacities to that person, and viewing her behavior as arising (in the right way) from the fact that the person has, and has exercised, these powers and capacities. Whatever the correct account of the powers and capacities at issue (and canvassing different accounts is the task of this entry), their possession qualifies an agent as morally responsible in a general sense: that is, as one who may be morally responsible for particular exercises of agency. Normal adult human beings may possess the powers and capacities in question, and non-human animals, very young children, and those suffering from severe developmental disabilities or dementia (to give a few examples) are generally taken to lack them.

To hold someone responsible involves—again, to a first approximation—responding to that person in ways that are made appropriate by the judgment that she is morally responsible. These responses often constitute instances of moral praise or moral blame (though there may be reason to allow for morally responsible behavior that is neither praiseworthy nor blameworthy: see McKenna 2012: 16–17 and M. Zimmerman 1988: 61–62). Blame is a response that may follow on the judgment that a person is morally responsible for behavior that is wrong or bad, and praise is a response that may follow on the judgment that a person is morally responsible for behavior that is right or good.

The information is here.

Sunday, November 10, 2019

For whom does determinism undermine moral responsibility? Surveying the conditions for free will across cultures

Ivar Hannikainen and others
PsyArXiv Preprints
Originally published October 15, 2019

Abstract

Philosophers have long debated whether, if determinism is true, we should hold people morally responsible for their actions since in a deterministic universe, people are arguably not the ultimate source of their actions nor could they have done otherwise if initial conditions and the laws of nature are held fixed. To reveal how non-philosophers ordinarily reason about the conditions for free will, we conducted a cross-cultural and cross-linguistic survey (N = 5,268) spanning twenty countries and sixteen languages. Overall, participants tended to ascribe moral responsibility whether the perpetrator lacked sourcehood or alternate possibilities. However, for American, European, and Middle Eastern participants, being the ultimate source of one’s actions promoted perceptions of free will and control as well as ascriptions of blame and punishment. By contrast, being the source of one’s actions was not particularly salient to Asian participants. Finally, across cultures, participants exhibiting greater cognitive reflection were more likely to view free will as incompatible with causal determinism. We discuss these findings in light of documented cultural differences in the tendency toward dispositional versus situational attributions.

The research is here.

Tuesday, August 20, 2019

Can Neuroscience Understand Free Will?

Brian Gallagher
nautil.us
Originally posted on July 19, 2019

Here is an excerpt:

Clinical neuroscientists and neurologists have identified the brain networks responsible for this sense of free will. There seems to be two: the network governing the desire to act, and the network governing the feeling of responsibility for acting. Brain-damaged patients show that these can come apart—you can have one without the other.

Lacking essentially all motivation to move or speak has a name: akinetic mutism. The researchers, lead by neurologists Michael Fox, of Harvard Medical School, and Ryan Darby, of Vanderbilt University, analyzed 28 cases of this condition, not all of them involving damage in the same departments. “We found that brain lesions that disrupt volition occur in many different locations, but fall within a single brain network, defined by connectivity to the anterior cingulate,” which has links to both the “emotional” limbic system and the “cognitive” prefrontal cortex, the researchers wrote. Feeling like you’re moving under the direction of outside forces has a name, too: alien limb syndrome. The researchers analyzed 50 cases of this condition, which again involved brain damage in different spots. “Lesions that disrupt agency also occur in many different locations, but fall within a separate network, defined by connectivity to the precuneus,” which is involved, among other things, in the experience of agency.

The results may not map onto “free will” as we understand it ethically—the ability to choose between right and wrong. “It remains unknown whether the network of brain regions we identify as related to free will for movements is the same as those important for moral decision-making, as prior studies have suggested important differences,” the researchers wrote. For instance, in a 2017 study, he and Darby analyzed many cases of brain lesions in various regions predisposing people to criminal behavior, and found that “these lesions all fall within a unique functionally connected brain network involved in moral decision making.”

The info is here.

Saturday, February 16, 2019

There’s No Such Thing as Free Will

Stephen Cave
The Atlantic
Originally published June 2016

Here is an excerpt:

What is new, though, is the spread of free-will skepticism beyond the laboratories and into the mainstream. The number of court cases, for example, that use evidence from neuroscience has more than doubled in the past decade—mostly in the context of defendants arguing that their brain made them do it. And many people are absorbing this message in other contexts, too, at least judging by the number of books and articles purporting to explain “your brain on” everything from music to magic. Determinism, to one degree or another, is gaining popular currency. The skeptics are in ascendance.

This development raises uncomfortable—and increasingly nontheoretical—questions: If moral responsibility depends on faith in our own agency, then as belief in determinism spreads, will we become morally irresponsible? And if we increasingly see belief in free will as a delusion, what will happen to all those institutions that are based on it?

(cut)

Determinism not only undermines blame, Smilansky argues; it also undermines praise. Imagine I do risk my life by jumping into enemy territory to perform a daring mission. Afterward, people will say that I had no choice, that my feats were merely, in Smilansky’s phrase, “an unfolding of the given,” and therefore hardly praiseworthy. And just as undermining blame would remove an obstacle to acting wickedly, so undermining praise would remove an incentive to do good. Our heroes would seem less inspiring, he argues, our achievements less noteworthy, and soon we would sink into decadence and despondency.

The info is here.

Friday, January 25, 2019

Decision-Making and Self-Governing Systems

Adina L. Roskies
Neuroethics
October 2018, Volume 11, Issue 3, pp 245–257

Abstract

Neuroscience has illuminated the neural basis of decision-making, providing evidence that supports specific models of decision-processes. These models typically are quite mechanical, the realization of abstract mathematical “diffusion to bound” models. While effective decision-making seems to be essential for sophisticated behavior, central to an account of freedom, and a necessary characteristic of self-governing systems, it is not clear how the simple models neuroscience inspires can underlie the notion of self-governance. Drawing from both philosophy and neuroscience I explore ways in which the proposed decision-making architectures can play a role in systems that can reasonably be thought of as “self-governing”.

Here is an excerpt:

The importance of prospection for self-governance cannot be underestimated. One example in which it promises to play an important role is in the exercise of and failures of self-control. Philosophers have long been puzzled by the apparent possibility of akrasia or weakness of will: choosing to act in ways that one judges not to be in one’s best interest. Weakness of will is thought to be an example of irrational choice. If one’s theory of choice is that one always decides to pursue the option that has the highest value, and that it is rational to choose what one most values, it is hard to explain irrational choices. Apparent cases of weakness of will would really be cases of mistaken valuation: overvaluing an option that is in fact not the most valuable option. And indeed, if one cannot rationally criticize the strength of desires (see Hume’s famous observation that “it is not against reason that I should prefer the destruction of half the world to the pricking of my little finger”), we cannot explain irrational choice.

The article is here.

Thursday, May 24, 2018

Determined to be humble? Exploring the relationship between belief in free will and humility

Earp, B. D., Everett, J. A., Nadelhoffer, T., Caruso, G. D., Shariff, A., & Sinnott-Armstrong, W. (2018, April 24).
 
Abstract

In recent years, diminished belief in free will or increased belief in determinism have been associated with a range of antisocial or otherwise negative outcomes: unjustified aggression, cheating, prejudice, less helping behavior, and so on. Only a few studies have entertained the possibility of prosocial or otherwise positive outcomes, such as greater willingness to forgive and less motivation to punish retributively. Here, five studies explore the relationship between belief in determinism and another positive outcome or attribute, namely, humility. The reported findings suggest that relative disbelief in free will is reliably associated with at least one type of humility—what we call ‘Einsteinian’ humility—but is not associated with, or even negatively associated with, other types of humility described in the literature.

The preprint is here.

Saturday, January 6, 2018

The Myth of Responsibility

Raoul Martinez
RSA.org
Originally posted December 7, 2017

Are we wholly responsible for our actions? We don’t choose our brains, our genetic inheritance, our circumstances, our milieu – so how much control do we really have over our lives? Philosopher Raoul Martinez argues that no one is truly blameworthy.  Our most visionary scientists, psychologists and philosophers have agreed that we have far less free will than we think, and yet most of society’s systems are structured around the opposite principle – that we are all on a level playing field, and we all get what we deserve.

4 minutes video is worth watching.....

Friday, September 1, 2017

Political differences in free will belief are driven by differences in moralization

Clark, C. J., Everett, J. A. C., Luguri, J. B., Earp, B. D., Ditto, P., & Shariff, A.
PsyArXiv. (2017, August 1).

Abstract

Five studies tested whether political conservatives’ stronger free will beliefs are driven by their broader view of morality, and thus a broader motivation to assign responsibility. On an individual difference level, Study 1 found that political conservatives’ higher moral wrongness judgments accounted for their higher belief in free will.In Study 2, conservatives ascribed more free will for negative events than liberals,while no differences emerged for positive events. For actions ideologically equivalent in perceived moral wrongness, free will judgments also did not differ (Study 3), and actions that liberals perceived as more wrong, liberals judged as more free(Study 4). Finally, higher wrongness judgments mediated the effect of conservatism on free will beliefs(Study 5). Higher free will beliefs among conservatives may be explained by conservatives’ tendency to moralize, which strengthens motivation to justify blame with stronger belief in free will and personal accountability.

The preprint research article is here.

Tuesday, August 29, 2017

The Influence of (Dis)belief in Free Will on Immoral Behavior

Caspar, E. A., Vuillaume, L., Magalhães De Saldanha da Gama, P. A. and Cleeremans, A.
Frontiers in Psychology, 17 January 2017

Abstract

One of the hallmarks of human existence is that we all hold beliefs that determine how we act. Amongst such beliefs, the idea that we are endowed with free will appears to be linked to prosocial behaviors, probably by enhancing the feeling of responsibility of individuals over their own actions. However, such effects appear to be more complex that one might have initially thought. Here, we aimed at exploring how induced disbeliefs in free will impact the sense of agency over the consequences of one’s own actions in a paradigm that engages morality. To do so, we asked participants to choose to inflict or to refrain from inflicting an electric shock to another participant in exchange of a small financial benefit. Our results show that participants who were primed with a text defending neural determinism – the idea that humans are a mere bunch of neurons guided by their biology – administered fewer shocks and were less vindictive toward the other participant. Importantly, this finding only held for female participants. These results show the complex interaction between gender, (dis)beliefs in free will and moral behavior.

From the Conclusion:

To conclude, we observed that disbelief in free will had a positive impact on the morality of decisions toward others. The present work extends previous research by showing that additional factors, such as gender, could influence the impact of (dis)belief in free will on prosocial and antisocial behaviors. Our results also showed that previous results relative to the (moral) context underlying the paradigm in use are not always replicated.

The research is here.

Tuesday, April 18, 2017

Why Psychiatry Should Discard The Idea of Free Will


Steve Stankevicius
The Skeptical Shrink
Originally posted March 30, 2017

Here is an excerpt:

Neuroscience has continued to pile on the evidence that our thoughts are entirely dependent on the physical processes of the brain, whilst evidence for ‘something else’ is entirely absent. Despite this, mind-body dualism has endured as the predominant view to this day and the belief in free will is playing a crucial role. Free will would only make sense if we invoke at least some magical aspect of the mind. It would only make sense if we relinquish the mind from the bonds of the physical laws of the universe. It would only make sense if we imagine the mind as somewhat irrespective of the brain.

It is not surprising then that psychiatry, a medicine of the mind, is not seen as ‘real medicine’. Only 4% of medical graduates in the US apply for psychiatry, and in the UK psychiatry has the least applicants per vacancy of any specialty, about one applicant per vacancy (compared with over nine per vacancy in surgery). Psychiatry is seen as practise of the dark arts, accompanied by mind reading, talking to the dead, and fortune telling. It seems psychiatry deals with metaphysics, yet science is not in the game of metaphysics.

If psychiatry is medicine of the mind, but our common beliefs about the mind are wrong, where does that leave the medicine? In my view, free will is forcing a gap in our picture between physical processes and the mind. This gap forms a trash can where we throw all cases of mental illness we don’t yet understand. Does it seem like a trash can? No, because we feel comfortable in thinking “the mind is mysterious, there’s free will involved”. But if we resign ourselves to accept a mind with free will - a mind that is free - we resign ourselves to a psychiatric specialty that does not attempt to fully understand the underpinnings of mental illness.

The blog post is here.

Monday, November 7, 2016

There’s No Such Thing as Free Will

By Steve Cave
The Atlantic
June 2016 Issue

Here is an excerpt:

This research and its implications are not new. What is new, though, is the spread of free-will skepticism beyond the laboratories and into the mainstream. The number of court cases, for example, that use evidence from neuroscience has more than doubled in the past decade—mostly in the context of defendants arguing that their brain made them do it. And many people are absorbing this message in other contexts, too, at least judging by the number of books and articles purporting to explain “your brain on” everything from music to magic. Determinism, to one degree or another, is gaining popular currency. The skeptics are in ascendance.

This development raises uncomfortable—and increasingly nontheoretical—questions: If moral responsibility depends on faith in our own agency, then as belief in determinism spreads, will we become morally irresponsible? And if we increasingly see belief in free will as a delusion, what will happen to all those institutions that are based on it?

The article is here.

Tuesday, June 14, 2016

There’s No Such Thing as Free Will

By Stephen Cave
The Atlantic
Originally posted June 2016

Here are two excerpts:

The 20th-century nature-nurture debate prepared us to think of ourselves as shaped by influences beyond our control. But it left some room, at least in the popular imagination, for the possibility that we could overcome our circumstances or our genes to become the author of our own destiny. The challenge posed by neuroscience is more radical: It describes the brain as a physical system like any other, and suggests that we no more will it to operate in a particular way than we will our heart to beat. The contemporary scientific image of human behavior is one of neurons firing, causing other neurons to fire, causing our thoughts and deeds, in an unbroken chain that stretches back to our birth and beyond. In principle, we are therefore completely predictable. If we could understand any individual’s brain architecture and chemistry well enough, we could, in theory, predict that individual’s response to any given stimulus with 100 percent accuracy.

(cut)

The big problem, in Harris’s view, is that people often confuse determinism with fatalism. Determinism is the belief that our decisions are part of an unbreakable chain of cause and effect. Fatalism, on the other hand, is the belief that our decisions don’t really matter, because whatever is destined to happen will happen—like Oedipus’s marriage to his mother, despite his efforts to avoid that fate.

The article is here.

Wednesday, May 18, 2016

Biological determinism and its enemies

Radosław Zyzik
Philosophy in Neuroscience, eds. Jerzy Stelmach, Bartosz Brożek, Łukasz Kurek, Copernicus Center Press 2012.

Here is an excerpt:

Little research (if any) has addressed the problem of determinism from more than one perspective at the same time. On the one hand, one can read about the neuroscience of free will and the renaissance
of determinism due to the work of neuroscientists. On the other, a new face of genetic determinism is discussed as a result of the progress made in genetics. Moreover, today we can also learn about the impact of biological factors on the development of model organisms in neurogenetics. With this in mind, we have tried to investigate how determinism is understood in neuroscience, behavioural genetics and in a new discipline which combines knowledge from many disciplines – neurogenetics.

We believe that only such a broad perspective will eventually allow an understanding of determinism in biology with all of its shortcomings. Therefore, the aim of our study is to evaluate the philosophical interpretations of neuroscientific, genetic and neurogenetic experiments that can be seen to be in line with the thesis of biological determinism. The paper re-examines the tacit philosophical assumptions, applied methodology and interpretation of the results of the experiments.

The book chapter is here.

Thursday, November 12, 2015

Neuroscientific Prediction and Free Will: What do ordinary people think?

By Gregg D. Caruso
Psychology Today Blog
Originally published October 26, 2015

Some theorists have argued that our knowledge of the brain will one day advance to the point where the perfect neuroscientific prediction of all human choices is theoretically possible. Whether or not such prediction ever becomes a reality, this possibility raises an interesting philosophical question: Would such perfect neuroscientific prediction be compatible with the existence of free will? Philosophers have long debated such questions. The historical debate between compatibilists and incompatibilists, for example, has centered on whether determinism and free will can be reconciled. Determinism is the thesis that every event or action, including human action, is the inevitable result of preceding events and actions and the laws of nature. The question of perfect neuro-prediction is just a more recent expression of this much older debate. While philosophers have their arguments for the compatibility or incompatibility of free will and determinism (or perfect neuroscientific prediction), they also often claim that their intuitions are in general agreement with commonsense judgments. To know whether this is true, however, we first need to know what ordinary folk think about these matters. Fortunately, recent research in psychology and experimental philosophy has begun to shed some light on this.

The entire article is here.

Monday, November 9, 2015

The Illusion of Free Will

Originally published on Jul 7, 2015

Daniel Do asked us to reconsider whether we are the authors of our own thoughts.

Daniel is a student deeply engaged in brain science and philosophy of mind. He is an aspiring neuroscientist, writer, educator, and science communicator. In his free time, he enjoys biking, meditating, composing music, reading books, debating with his friends and family, and being alone with his thoughts.


Monday, November 2, 2015

Does Disbelief in Free Will Increase Anti-Social Behavior?

By Gregg Caruso
Psychology Today Blog
Originally published October 16, 2015

Here is an excerpt:

Rather than defend free will skepticism, however, I would like to examine an important practical question: What if we came to disbelieve in free will and basic desert moral responsibility? What would this mean for our interpersonal relationships, society, morality, meaning, and the law? What would it do to our standing as human beings? Would it cause nihilism and despair as some maintain? Or perhaps increase anti-social behavior as some recent studies have suggested (more of this in a moment)? Or would it rather have a humanizing effect on our practices and policies, freeing us from the negative effects of free will belief? These questions are of profound pragmatic importance and should be of interest independent of the metaphysical debate over free will. As public proclamations of skepticism continue to rise, and as the media continues to run headlines proclaiming that free will is an illusion, we need to ask what effects this will have on the general public and what the responsibility is of professionals.

In recent years a small industry has actually grown up around precisely these questions. In the skeptical community, for example, a number of different positions have been developed and advanced—including Saul Smilansky’s illusionism, Thomas Nadelhoffer’s disillusionism, Shaun Nichols’ anti-revolution, and the optimistic skepticism of Derk Pereboom, Bruce Waller, and myself.

The entire article is here.