Educated folk intuitions about free will and determinism: a case study in experimental public philosophy

Abstract

ABSTRACT Experimental philosophers have been investigating folk intuitions about free will and moral responsibility, wondering whether our intuitive understanding of free will and moral responsibility make them compatible or incompatible with determinism. However, methodological worries have been raised concerning such studies: some have claimed that participants in such studies are simply unable to understand the materials they are presented with. To bypass such methodological worries, we investigated “educated” folk intuitions, that is: intuitions of people who are not philosophers but have enough personal interest in philosophy to have a good grasp of philosophical concepts, and to which the vignettes and their context have been explained before they answer. To this end, we took the opportunity of a video and online survey (N = 4385) released by a popular French philosophy youtuber. The results suggest that, even in this context, the results of previous surveys replicate, suggesting that participants’ inclination toward compatibilism is not the mere product of a comprehension error.