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7164The free will inventory: Measuring beliefs about agency and responsibilityConsciousness and Cognition 25 27-41. 2014.In this paper, we present the results of the construction and validation of a new psychometric tool for measuring beliefs about free will and related concepts: The Free Will Inventory (FWI). In its final form, FWI is a 29-item instrument with two parts. Part 1 consists of three 5-item subscales designed to measure strength of belief in free will, determinism, and dualism. Part 2 consists of a series of fourteen statements designed to further explore the complex network of people’s associated bel…Read more
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6410Surveying Freedom: Folk Intuitions about free will and moral responsibilityPhilosophical Psychology 18 (5): 561-584. 2005.Philosophers working in the nascent field of ‘experimental philosophy’ have begun using methods borrowed from psychology to collect data about folk intuitions concerning debates ranging from action theory to ethics to epistemology. In this paper we present the results of our attempts to apply this approach to the free will debate, in which philosophers on opposing sides claim that their view best accounts for and accords with folk intuitions. After discussing the motivation for such research, we…Read more
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3414Is Incompatibilism Intuitive?Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 73 (1): 28-53. 2007.Incompatibilists believe free will is impossible if determinism is true, and they often claim that this view is supported by ordinary intuitions. We challenge the claim that incompatibilism is intuitive to most laypersons and discuss the significance of this challenge to the free will debate. After explaining why incompatibilists should want their view to accord with pretheoretical intuitions, we suggest that determining whether incompatibilism is in fact intuitive calls for empirical testing. W…Read more
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2320The past and future of experimental philosophyPhilosophical Explorations 10 (2). 2007.Experimental philosophy is the name for a recent movement whose participants use the methods of experimental psychology to probe the way people think about philosophical issues and then examine how the results of such studies bear on traditional philosophical debates. Given both the breadth of the research being carried out by experimental philosophers and the controversial nature of some of their central methodological assumptions, it is of no surprise that their work has recently come under at…Read more
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1928The phenomenology of free willJournal of Consciousness Studies 11 (7-8): 162-179. 2004.Philosophers often suggest that their theories of free will are supported by our phenomenology. Just as their theories conflict, their descriptions of the phenomenology of free will often conflict as well. We suggest that this should motivate an effort to study the phenomenology of free will in a more systematic way that goes beyond merely the introspective reports of the philosophers themselves. After presenting three disputes about the phenomenology of free will, we survey the (limited) psycho…Read more
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1242Mental control and attributions of blame for negligent wrongdoingJournal of Experimental Psychology: General. forthcoming.Judgments of blame for others are typically sensitive to what an agent knows and desires. However, when people act negligently, they do not know what they are doing and do not desire the outcomes of their negligence. How, then, do people attribute blame for negligent wrongdoing? We propose that people attribute blame for negligent wrongdoing based on perceived mental control, or the degree to which an agent guides their thoughts and attention over time. To acquire information about others’ menta…Read more
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1182Piercing the smoke screen: Dualism, free will, and ChristianityJournal of Cognition and Culture. forthcoming.Research on the folk psychology of free will suggests that people believe free will is incompatible with determinism and that human decision-making cannot be exhaustively characterized by physical processes. Some suggest that certain elements of Western cultural history, especially Christianity, have helped to entrench these beliefs in the folk conceptual economy. Thus, on the basis of this explanation, one should expect to find three things: (1) a significant correlation between belief in duali…Read more
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843Natural Compatibilism, Indeterminism, and Intrusive MetaphysicsCognitive Science 44 (8). 2020.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 althoug…Read more
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810Intuitions About Free Will and the Failure to Comprehend DeterminismErkenntnis 88 (6): 2515-2536. 2023.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 …Read more
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789Does encouraging a belief in determinism increase cheating? Reconsidering the value of believing in free willCognition 203 (C): 104342. 2020.A key source of support for the view that challenging people’s beliefs about free will may undermine moral behavior is two classic studies by Vohs and Schooler (2008). These authors reported that exposure to certain prompts suggesting that free will is an illusion increased cheating behavior. In the present paper, we report several attempts to replicate this influential and widely cited work. Over a series of five studies (sample sizes of N = 162, N = 283, N = 268, N = 804, N = 982) (four prereg…Read more
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756Folk intuitions and the conditional ability to do otherwisePhilosophical Psychology 33 (7): 968-996. 2020.In a series of pre-registered studies, we explored (a) the difference between people’s intuitions about indeterministic scenarios and their intuitions about deterministic scenarios, (b) the difference between people’s intuitions about indeterministic scenarios and their intuitions about neurodeterministic scenarios (that is, scenarios where the determinism is described at the neurological level), (c) the difference between people’s intuitions about neutral scenarios (e.g., walking a dog in the p…Read more
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677Natural compatibilism versus natural incompatibilism: Back to the drawing boardMind and Language 24 (1): 1-23. 2009.In the free will literature, some compatibilists and some incompatibilists claim that their views best capture ordinary intuitions concerning free will and moral responsibility. One goal of researchers working in the field of experimental philosophy has been to probe ordinary intuitions in a controlled and systematic way to help resolve these kinds of intuitional stalemates. We contribute to this debate by presenting new data about folk intuitions concerning freedom and responsibility that corre…Read more
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659Polling as PedagogyTeaching Philosophy 31 (1): 39-58. 2008.First, we briefly familiarize the reader with the emerging field of “experimental philosophy,” in which philosophers use empirical methods, rather than armchair speculation, to ascertain laypersons’ intuitions about philosophical issues. Second, we discuss how the surveys used by experimental philosophers can serve as valuable pedagogical tools for teaching philosophy—independently of whether one believes surveying laypersons is an illuminating approach to doing philosophy. Giving students surve…Read more
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654Do people understand determinism? The tracking problem for measuring free will beliefsOxford Studies in Experimental Philosophy. forthcoming.Experimental work on free will typically relies on deterministic stimuli to elicit judgments of free will. We call this the Vignette-Judgment model. 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 this claim. In the end, we argue that people seem to lack facility …Read more
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408Partisanship, Humility, and Epistemic PolarizationIn Alessandra Tanesini & Michael P. Lynch (eds.), Polarisation, Arrogance, and Dogmatism: Philosophical Perspectives, Routledge. pp. 175-192. 2020.Much of the literature from political psychology has focused on the negative traits that are positively associated with affective polarization—e.g., animus, arrogance, distrust, hostility, and outrage. Not as much attention has been focused on the positive traits that might be negatively associated with polarization. For instance, given that people who are intellectually humble display greater openness and less hostility towards conflicting viewpoints (Krumrei-Mancuso & Rouse, 2016; Hopkin et al…Read more
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385Not what I expected: Feeling of surprise differentially mediates effect of personal control on attributions of free will and responsibilityReview of Philosophy and Psychology 1-25. forthcoming.Some have argued that advances in the science of human decision-making, particularly research on automaticity and unconscious priming, would ultimately thwart our commonsense understanding of free will and moral responsibility. Do people interpret this research as a threat to their self-understanding as free and responsible agents? We approached this question by seeing how feelings of surprise mediate the relationship between personal sense of control and third-personal attributions of free will…Read more
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337The Actor–Observer Bias and Moral Intuitions: Adding Fuel to Sinnott-Armstrong’s FireNeuroethics 1 (2): 133-144. 2008.In a series of recent papers, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong has used findings in social psychology to put pressure on the claim that our moral beliefs can be non-inferentially justified. More specifically, he has suggested that insofar as our moral intuitions are subject to what psychologists call framing effects, this poses a real problem for moral intuitionism. In this paper, we are going to try to add more fuel to the empirical fire that Sinnott-Armstrong has placed under the feet of the intuition…Read more
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306Moral Psychology: Historical and Contemporary Readings (edited book)Wiley-Blackwell. 2010._Moral Psychology: Historical and Contemporary Readings_ is the first book to bring together the most significant contemporary and historical works on the topic from both philosophy and psychology. Provides a comprehensive introduction to moral psychology, which is the study of psychological mechanisms and processes underlying ethics and morality Unique in bringing together contemporary texts by philosophers, psychologists and other cognitive scientists with foundational works from both philosop…Read more
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264Neuroprediction, violence, and the law: setting the stageNeuroethics 5 (1): 67-99. 2010.In this paper, our goal is to survey some of the legal contexts within which violence risk assessment already plays a prominent role, explore whether developments in neuroscience could potentially be used to improve our ability to predict violence, and discuss whether neuropredictive models of violence create any unique legal or moral problems above and beyond the well worn problems already associated with prediction more generally. In Violence Risk Assessment and the Law, we briefly examine the…Read more
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260Desire, foresight, intentions, and intentional actions: Probing folk intuitionsJournal of Cognition and Culture 6 (1-2): 133-157. 2006.A number of philosophers working under the rubric of “experimental philosophy” have recently begun focusing on analyzing the concepts of ordinary language and investigating the intuitions of laypersons in an empirically informed way.1 In a series of papers these philosophers—who often work in collaboration with psychologists—have presented the results of empirical studies aimed at proving folk intuitions in areas as diverse as ethics, epistemology, free will, and the philosophy of action. In thi…Read more
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218Bad acts, blameworthy agents, and intentional actions: Some problems for juror impartialityPhilosophical Explorations 9 (2). 2006.In this paper, I first review some of the recent empirical work on the biasing effect that moral considerations have on folk ascriptions of intentional action. Then, I use Mark Alicke's affective model of blame attribution to explain this biasing effect. Finally, I discuss the relevance of this research - both philosophical and psychological - to the problem of the partiality of jury deliberation. After all, if the immorality of an action does affect folk ascriptions of intentionality, and all s…Read more
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214On Trying to Save the Simple ViewMind and Language 21 (5): 565-586. 2006.According to the analysis of intentional action that Michael Bratman has dubbed the ‘Simple View’, intending toxis necessary for intentionallyx‐ing. Despite the plausibility of this view, there is gathering empirical evidence that when people are presented with cases involving moral considerations, they are much more likely to judge that the action (or side effect) in question was brought about intentionally than they are to judge that the agent intended to do it. This suggests that at least as …Read more
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212Neurolaw and Neuroprediction: Potential Promises and PerilsPhilosophy Compass 7 (9): 631-642. 2012.Neuroscience has been proposed for use in the legal system for purposes of mind reading, assessment of responsibility, and prediction of misconduct. Each of these uses has both promises and perils, and each raises issues regarding the admissibility of neuroscientific evidence.
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209Commonsense morality and the bearable automaticity of beingConsciousness and Cognition 125 (C): 103748. 2024.Some research suggests that moral behavior can be strongly influenced by trivial features of the environment of which we are completely unaware. Philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists have argued that these findings undermine our commonsense notions of agency and responsibility, both of which emphasize the role of practical reasoning and conscious deliberation in action. We present the results of four vignette-based studies (N = 1,437) designed to investigate how people think about the…Read more
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198The Butler problem revisitedAnalysis 64 (3): 277-284. 2004.On the surface, it seems plausible that the goodness or badness of an agent’s actions should be completely irrelevant to the question of whether she performed them intentionally, but there is growing evidence that ascriptions of intentional actions are affected by moral considerations. Joshua Knobe, for instance, has recently published a series of groundbreaking papers (2003a, 2003b, 2004) in which he suggests that people’s judgments concerning the intentionality of an action may sometimes depen…Read more
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185Skill, luck, control, and intentional actionPhilosophical Psychology 18 (3). 2005.On the surface, it seems intuitively plausible that if an agent luckily manages to perform a desired action (e.g., rolling a six with a fair die or winning the lottery), the performance of which is not the result of any relevant skill on her part, we should not say that she performed the action intentionally. This intuition suggests that our concept of intentional action is sensitive to considerations of skill, luck, and causal control. Indeed, some philosophers have claimed that in order for an…Read more
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183Positive Illusions, Perceived Control and the Free Will DebateMind and Language 24 (5): 495-522. 2009.It is a common assumption among both philosophers and psychologists that having accurate beliefs about ourselves and the world around us is always the epistemic gold standard. However, there is gathering data from social psychology that suggest that illusions are quite prevalent in our everyday thinking and that some of these illusions may even be conducive to our overall well being. In this paper, we explore the relevance of these so-called 'positive illusions' to the free will debate. More spe…Read more
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165On praise, side effects, and folk ascriptions of intentionalityJournal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology 24 (2): 196-213. 2004.In everyday discourse, we often draw a distinction between actions that are performed intentionally (e.g. opening your car door) and those that are performed unintentionally (e.g. shutting a car door on your finger). This distinction has interested philosophers working in a number of different areas. Indeed, intentional actions are not only the primary focus of those concerned with understanding and explaining human behavior, but they often occupy center stage in philosophical discussions of fre…Read more
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158Folk intuitions, slippery slopes, and necessary fictions : an essay on Saul Smilansky's free will illusionismIn Peter A. French & Howard K. Wettstein (eds.), Philosophy and the Empirical, Blackwell. 2007.During the past two decades, an interest among philosophers in fictitious and illusory beliefs has sprung up in fields ranging anywhere from mathematics and modality to morality.1 In this paper, we focus primarily on the view that Saul Smilansky has dubbed “free will illusionism”—i.e., the purportedly descriptive claim that most people have illusory beliefs concerning the existence of libertarian free will, coupled with the normative claim that because dispelling these illusory beliefs would pro…Read more
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131Temperament and intuition: A commentary on Feltz and CokelyConsciousness and Cognition 18 (1): 351-355. 2009.In this paper, we examine Adam Feltz and Edward Cokely’s recent claim that “the personality trait extraversion predicts people’s intuitions about the relationship of determinism to free will and moral responsibility”. We will first present some criticisms of their work before briefly examining the results of a recent study of our own. We argue that while Feltz and Cokely have their finger on the pulse of an interesting and important issue, they have not established a robust and stable connection…Read more
FSU
Department Of Philosophy
Alumnus
Areas of Interest
Empathy and Sympathy |
The Concept of Disability |
Psychopathology |