Experimental philosophy and the problem of free will

Abstract

Experimental philosophy applies social scientific methods to investigate the psychological foundations of the free will problem. Research indicates that while individuals across diverse cultures tend to reject determinism in the context of human agency, they hold conflicting intuitions regarding its relationship with moral responsibility. A significant divergence exists between abstract and concrete reasoning: individuals typically maintain that determinism undermines responsibility when considering the issue in the abstract, yet they attribute moral responsibility when presented with specific, high-affect cases of wrongdoing. These conflicting attitudes suggest that distinct psychological mechanisms—ranging from unemotional abstract processing to affect-driven responses—underlie divergent philosophical intuitions. By identifying the origins of these judgments, experimental philosophy seeks to diagnose the persistence of the free will debate and evaluate whether specific intuitions result from cognitive biases or situational errors. This approach provides a psychological framework for understanding how common-sense beliefs generate traditional philosophical problems and offers potential avenues for their resolution. – AI-generated abstract.