How Can Psychology Contribute to the Free Will Debate?

Abstract

Are people free and morally responsible? Or are their actions determined, i.e. inevitable outcomes of the past conditions and the laws of nature? These seem fairly straightforward questions, but it is important to distinguish 3 different dimensions of the free will debate: a descriptive project, a substantive project, and a prescriptive project. In this chapter, I’ll consider how psychology can contribute to each project in turn. First, I should say a bit more about the projects. The goal of the descriptive project is to determine the character of folk intuitions surrounding agency and responsibility. By uncovering the folk intuitions, one hopes to be able to sketch out the folk theory that underlies these intuitions. Of particular interest for the free will debate is whether the folk notions of choice and moral responsibility are consistent with determinism. Incompatibilists maintain that our conceptions of free will and moral responsibility are at odds with determinism. Compatibilists deny this and insist that our notions of free will and moral responsibility are consistent with determinism. The goal of the substantive project is then to determine whether the folk views are correct. Given the folk concepts and the way the world is, does free will exist? Are people morally responsible? Libertarians maintain that we do have indeterminist free will (e.g. Kane 1996, O’Connor 1995, Campbell 1957). Eliminativists about free will maintain that free will doesn’t exist. The best known version of this view is ‘hard determinism’, according to which we lack free will because determinism is true. However, many free will eliminativists maintain that even if determinism is false, we still lack the kind of indeterminist choice that is required by the folk notion (e.g. Pereboom 2001, Sommers 2005, Strawson 1986). On this view, our notion of free choice is incompatible with the facts, regardless of whether determinism is true or false.