This file is to be used only for a purpose specified by Palgrave Macmillan, such as checking proo... more This file is to be used only for a purpose specified by Palgrave Macmillan, such as checking proofs, preparing an index, reviewing, endorsing or planning coursework/other institutional needs. You may store and print the file and share it with others helping you with the specified purpose, but under no circumstances may the file be distributed or otherwise made accessible to any other third parties without the express prior permission of Palgrave Macmillan.
ABSTRACT Philosophers often suggest that their theories of free will are supported by our phenome... more ABSTRACT 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) psychological research on the experiences relevant to the philosophical debates and then describe some pilot studies of our own with the aim of encouraging further research. The data seem to support compatibilist descriptions of the phenomenology more than libertarian descriptions. We conclude that the burden is on libertarians to find empirical support for their more demanding metaphysical theories with their more controversial phenomenological claims.
Free will is a set of capacities for conscious choice and control of actions and is essential for... more Free will is a set of capacities for conscious choice and control of actions and is essential for moral responsibility. While determinism is traditionally discussed as the main potential challenge to free will and responsibility, other potential challenges exist and need to be considered by philosophers and scientists. The cognitive sciences are relevant to free will both to study how people understand free will and potential challenges to it, and to study whether these challenges are supported by relevant scientific evidence.
The Oxford Handbook on the Philosophy of Psychology. Oxford University Press, Oxford
According to the traditional free will debate, research in psychology is irrelevant to the questi... more According to the traditional free will debate, research in psychology is irrelevant to the question of whether we have free will, or in any case, less relevant than research in physics about whether the universe is deterministic or not. This is a mistake. In this article I will briefly diagnose this mistake and then suggest avenues for correcting it by discussing four ways that psychological research is highly relevant to philosophical debates about free will. First, psychological research can help us systematize ordinary beliefs and intuitions about ...
Scholars have proposed that incarceration rates might be reduced by a requirement that judges jus... more Scholars have proposed that incarceration rates might be reduced by a requirement that judges justify incarceration decisions with respect to their operational costs (e.g., prison capacity). In an Internet-based vignette experiment (N =), we tested this prediction by examining whether criminal punishment judgments (prison vs. probation) among university undergraduates would be influenced by a prompt to provide a justification for one's judgment, and by a brief message describing prison capacity costs. We found that () the justification prompt alone was su cient to reduce incarceration rates, () the prison capacity message also independently reduced incarceration rates, and () incarceration rates were most strongly reduced (by about %) when decision makers were asked to justify their sentences with respect to the expected capacity costs. These e ects survived a test of robustness and occurred regardless of whether participants reported that prison costs should influence judgments of incarceration. At the individual crime level, the least serious crimes were most amenable to reconsideration for probation. These findings are important for policymakers attempting to manage high incarceration rates.
I argue that the traditional free will debate has focused too much on whether free will is compat... more I argue that the traditional free will debate has focused too much on whether free will is compatible with determinism and not enough on whether free will is compatible with specific causal explanations for our actions, including those offered by empirical psychology. If free will is understood as a set of cognitive and volitional capacities, possessed and exercised to varying degrees, then psychology can inform us about the extent to which humans (as a species and as individuals) possess those capacities and manage to exercise them across various situations. While recent work on the role of consciousness in action has been misinterpreted to suggest its role is illusory, recent work in social psychology presents a more viable challenge to our free will. The extent to which we can act on reasons we would accept or can know why we are doing what we do appears to be much less than we presume. Further work is necessary, of course, and it will need to involve both philosophical analysis ...
. This preregistered experiment examined two proximate drivers of retributive punishment attitude... more . This preregistered experiment examined two proximate drivers of retributive punishment attitudes: the motivation to make the perpetrator suffer, and understand the wrongfulness of his offense. In a sample of 514 US adults, we presented criminal case summaries that varied the level of suffering (absent vs. present) and understanding (absent vs. present) experienced by the perpetrator and measured punishment judgments and attitudes. Our results demonstrate, as predicted, that participants were more satisfied by the sentence and less punitive when they believed that the perpetrator had suffered from the punishment or that he understood the wrongfulness of his actions. This pattern held across crimes of varying seriousness (theft vs. aggravated robbery) and across two narrative perspectives (participant as victim vs. participant as third party). However, joint evidence of suffering and understanding did not strengthen this effect, contrary to predictions. We discuss the implications of these findings for leading philosophical theories of punishment.
Incompatibilists believe free will is impossible if determinism is true, and they often claim tha... more 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. We then present the results of our studies, which put significant pressure on the claim that incompatibilism is intuitive. Finally, we consider and respond to several potential objections to our approach. Incompatibilists believe that the freedom associated with moral responsibility is impossible if determinism is true, and they often claim that this is the natural view to take given that it is purportedly supported by ordinary intuitions. In this paper, we challenge the claim that incompatibi...
Supplemental Material for Social Feedback Modulates Neural Response Associated With Cognitive Bia... more Supplemental Material for Social Feedback Modulates Neural Response Associated With Cognitive Bias in Individuals Expressing Anxious Symptoms by Khalil Thompson, Kendrick King, Eddy Nahmias, Negar Fani, Trevor Kvaran, Erin B. Tone and Jessica A. Turner in Chronic Stress
Supplemental material, Tone_Supplemental_Figure for Social Anxiety and Social Behavior: A Test of... more Supplemental material, Tone_Supplemental_Figure for Social Anxiety and Social Behavior: A Test of Predictions From an Evolutionary Model by Erin B. Tone, Eddy Nahmias, Roger Bakeman, Trevor Kvaran, Sarah F. Brosnan, Negar Fani and Elizabeth A. Schroth in Clinical Psychological Science
To function during social interactions, we must be able to consider and coordinate our actions wi... more To function during social interactions, we must be able to consider and coordinate our actions with other people’s perspectives. This process unfolds from decision-making, to anticipation of that decision’s consequences, to feedback about those consequences, in what can be described as a “cascade” of three phases. The iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma (iPD) task, an economic-exchange game used to illustrate how people achieve stable cooperation over repeated interactions, provides a framework for examining this “social decision cascade”. In the present study, we examined neural activity associated with the three phases of the cascade, which can be isolated during iPD game rounds. While undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), 31 adult participants made a) decisions about whether to cooperate with a co-player for a monetary reward, b) anticipated the co-player’s decision, and then c) learned the co-player’s decision. Across all three phases, participants recruited the tempo...
This file is to be used only for a purpose specified by Palgrave Macmillan, such as checking proo... more This file is to be used only for a purpose specified by Palgrave Macmillan, such as checking proofs, preparing an index, reviewing, endorsing or planning coursework/other institutional needs. You may store and print the file and share it with others helping you with the specified purpose, but under no circumstances may the file be distributed or otherwise made accessible to any other third parties without the express prior permission of Palgrave Macmillan.
ABSTRACT Philosophers often suggest that their theories of free will are supported by our phenome... more ABSTRACT 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) psychological research on the experiences relevant to the philosophical debates and then describe some pilot studies of our own with the aim of encouraging further research. The data seem to support compatibilist descriptions of the phenomenology more than libertarian descriptions. We conclude that the burden is on libertarians to find empirical support for their more demanding metaphysical theories with their more controversial phenomenological claims.
Free will is a set of capacities for conscious choice and control of actions and is essential for... more Free will is a set of capacities for conscious choice and control of actions and is essential for moral responsibility. While determinism is traditionally discussed as the main potential challenge to free will and responsibility, other potential challenges exist and need to be considered by philosophers and scientists. The cognitive sciences are relevant to free will both to study how people understand free will and potential challenges to it, and to study whether these challenges are supported by relevant scientific evidence.
The Oxford Handbook on the Philosophy of Psychology. Oxford University Press, Oxford
According to the traditional free will debate, research in psychology is irrelevant to the questi... more According to the traditional free will debate, research in psychology is irrelevant to the question of whether we have free will, or in any case, less relevant than research in physics about whether the universe is deterministic or not. This is a mistake. In this article I will briefly diagnose this mistake and then suggest avenues for correcting it by discussing four ways that psychological research is highly relevant to philosophical debates about free will. First, psychological research can help us systematize ordinary beliefs and intuitions about ...
Scholars have proposed that incarceration rates might be reduced by a requirement that judges jus... more Scholars have proposed that incarceration rates might be reduced by a requirement that judges justify incarceration decisions with respect to their operational costs (e.g., prison capacity). In an Internet-based vignette experiment (N =), we tested this prediction by examining whether criminal punishment judgments (prison vs. probation) among university undergraduates would be influenced by a prompt to provide a justification for one's judgment, and by a brief message describing prison capacity costs. We found that () the justification prompt alone was su cient to reduce incarceration rates, () the prison capacity message also independently reduced incarceration rates, and () incarceration rates were most strongly reduced (by about %) when decision makers were asked to justify their sentences with respect to the expected capacity costs. These e ects survived a test of robustness and occurred regardless of whether participants reported that prison costs should influence judgments of incarceration. At the individual crime level, the least serious crimes were most amenable to reconsideration for probation. These findings are important for policymakers attempting to manage high incarceration rates.
I argue that the traditional free will debate has focused too much on whether free will is compat... more I argue that the traditional free will debate has focused too much on whether free will is compatible with determinism and not enough on whether free will is compatible with specific causal explanations for our actions, including those offered by empirical psychology. If free will is understood as a set of cognitive and volitional capacities, possessed and exercised to varying degrees, then psychology can inform us about the extent to which humans (as a species and as individuals) possess those capacities and manage to exercise them across various situations. While recent work on the role of consciousness in action has been misinterpreted to suggest its role is illusory, recent work in social psychology presents a more viable challenge to our free will. The extent to which we can act on reasons we would accept or can know why we are doing what we do appears to be much less than we presume. Further work is necessary, of course, and it will need to involve both philosophical analysis ...
. This preregistered experiment examined two proximate drivers of retributive punishment attitude... more . This preregistered experiment examined two proximate drivers of retributive punishment attitudes: the motivation to make the perpetrator suffer, and understand the wrongfulness of his offense. In a sample of 514 US adults, we presented criminal case summaries that varied the level of suffering (absent vs. present) and understanding (absent vs. present) experienced by the perpetrator and measured punishment judgments and attitudes. Our results demonstrate, as predicted, that participants were more satisfied by the sentence and less punitive when they believed that the perpetrator had suffered from the punishment or that he understood the wrongfulness of his actions. This pattern held across crimes of varying seriousness (theft vs. aggravated robbery) and across two narrative perspectives (participant as victim vs. participant as third party). However, joint evidence of suffering and understanding did not strengthen this effect, contrary to predictions. We discuss the implications of these findings for leading philosophical theories of punishment.
Incompatibilists believe free will is impossible if determinism is true, and they often claim tha... more 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. We then present the results of our studies, which put significant pressure on the claim that incompatibilism is intuitive. Finally, we consider and respond to several potential objections to our approach. Incompatibilists believe that the freedom associated with moral responsibility is impossible if determinism is true, and they often claim that this is the natural view to take given that it is purportedly supported by ordinary intuitions. In this paper, we challenge the claim that incompatibi...
Supplemental Material for Social Feedback Modulates Neural Response Associated With Cognitive Bia... more Supplemental Material for Social Feedback Modulates Neural Response Associated With Cognitive Bias in Individuals Expressing Anxious Symptoms by Khalil Thompson, Kendrick King, Eddy Nahmias, Negar Fani, Trevor Kvaran, Erin B. Tone and Jessica A. Turner in Chronic Stress
Supplemental material, Tone_Supplemental_Figure for Social Anxiety and Social Behavior: A Test of... more Supplemental material, Tone_Supplemental_Figure for Social Anxiety and Social Behavior: A Test of Predictions From an Evolutionary Model by Erin B. Tone, Eddy Nahmias, Roger Bakeman, Trevor Kvaran, Sarah F. Brosnan, Negar Fani and Elizabeth A. Schroth in Clinical Psychological Science
To function during social interactions, we must be able to consider and coordinate our actions wi... more To function during social interactions, we must be able to consider and coordinate our actions with other people’s perspectives. This process unfolds from decision-making, to anticipation of that decision’s consequences, to feedback about those consequences, in what can be described as a “cascade” of three phases. The iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma (iPD) task, an economic-exchange game used to illustrate how people achieve stable cooperation over repeated interactions, provides a framework for examining this “social decision cascade”. In the present study, we examined neural activity associated with the three phases of the cascade, which can be isolated during iPD game rounds. While undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), 31 adult participants made a) decisions about whether to cooperate with a co-player for a monetary reward, b) anticipated the co-player’s decision, and then c) learned the co-player’s decision. Across all three phases, participants recruited the tempo...
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