Moral Responsibility and Determinism:The Cognitive Science of Folk Intuitions

Abstract

Abstract The dispute between compatibilists and incompatibilists must be one of the most persistent and heated deadlocks in Western philosophy. Incompatibilists maintain that people are not fully morally responsible if determinism is true, that is, if every event is an inevitable consequence of the prior conditions and the natural laws. By contrast, compatibilists maintain that even if determinism is true, our moral responsibility is not undermined in the slightest, for determinism and moral responsibility are perfectly consistent.