Nor does he claim that there is anything that distinguishes his client from any of the rest of us. His argument is that his client is not responsible because he did not make himself. But none of us has made ourselves at least not from scratch —we are all the products of heredity and environment.
The truth or falsity of determinism has no bearing on this point. See G. See also Smilansky If we pressed our defense attorney or brought in a philosopher to help him out , we might get the following reply: The kind of garden-variety self-making possible at a deterministic world is not good enough for the kind of moral responsibility required for deserved blame and punishment.
Granted, we can never have complete control over the actions we perform because of our choices Nagel , and this limits the control we have over our self-making. But we are morally responsible for our actions only if we have at least some control over our self-making, and we have control over our self-making only if we have control over the choices that are the causes of the actions whereby we make our selves. And we have control over these choices only if we cause our choices and no one and nothing causes us to make them.
See Kane , , , a. For variations on this kind of argument, see Kane , , , a and Pereboom , , Premise 2 follows from the definition of determinism at least given two widely accepted assumptions: that there is causation in a deterministic universe and that causation is a transitive relation.
For some doubts about the latter assumption, see Hall Premise 3 is clearly true. So if we want to reject the conclusion, we must reject Premise 1. Compatibilists have argued against 1 in two different ways. On the negative side, compatibilists have challenged 1 by arguing that it is of no help to the incompatibilist: if we accept 1 , we are committed to the conclusion that free will and moral responsibility are impossible , regardless of whether determinism is true or false.
If determinism is true, then my choices are ultimately caused by events and conditions outside my control, so I am not their first cause and therefore, if we accept 1 , I am neither free nor responsible. But since this event is not causally determined, whether or not it happens is a matter of chance or luck.
Whether or not it happens has nothing to do with me ; it is not under my control any more than the spinning of a roulette wheel inside my brain is under my control. Therefore, if determinism is false, I am not the first cause or ultimate source of my choices and, if we accept 1 , I am neither free nor responsible Ayer ; Wolf The traditional incompatibilist answer is that this claim must be taken literally, at face value.
We—agents, persons, enduring things—are causes with a very special property: we initiate causal chains, but nothing and no one causes us to do this. Like God, we are uncaused causers, or first movers. And since Joe is not an event, he is not the kind of thing which can be caused. Or so it is argued, by agent-causalists. Many philosophers think that agent-causation is either incoherent or impossible, due to considerations about causation.
What sense does it make to say that a person, as opposed to a change in a person, or the state of a person at a time, is a cause? Bok See also Clarke for a detailed and sympathetic examination of the metaphysics of agent-causation, which ends with the conclusion that there are, on balance, reasons to think that agent-causation is impossible.
Others van Inwagen ; Mele have argued that even if agent-causation is possible, it would not solve the problem of transforming an undetermined event into one which is in our control in the way that our free choices must be. And others have argued that if agent-causation is possible, it is possible at deterministic as well as non-deterministic worlds Markosian ; Franklin If our choices are events which have probabilistic causes e.
We make choices for reasons, and our reasons cause our choices, albeit indeterministically. If our choices are caused by our reasons, then our choices are not the first causes of our actions.
And our reasons are presumably caused, either deterministically or probabilistically, so they are not the first causes of our actions either. But then our actions are ultimately caused by earlier events over which we have no control and we are not the ultimate sources of our actions. We think that we make choices, and we think that our choices typically make a difference to our future. We think that there is a point to deliberation: how we deliberate—what reasons we consider—makes a difference to what we choose and thus to what we do.
We also think that when we deliberate there really is more than one choice we are able to make, more than one action we are able to perform, and more than one future which is, at least partly, in our power to bring about. Our beliefs about our powers with respect to the future contrast sharply with our beliefs about our lack of power with respect to the past. Our beliefs about our options, opportunities, alternatives, possibilities, abilities, powers, and so on, are all future-directed.
When called upon to defend what we did, or when we blame or reproach ourselves, or simply wonder whether we did the right thing or the sensible thing, the rational thing, and so on , we evaluate our action by comparing it to what we believe were our other possible actions, at that time.
We blame, criticize, reproach, regret, and so on, only insofar as we believe we had alternatives. Is determinism compatible with the truth of these beliefs?
In particular, is it compatible with the belief that we are often able to choose and do more than one action?
If we follow this train of thought, we will conclude that we are able to do otherwise only if our doing otherwise is a possible continuation of the past consistent with the laws. But if determinism is true, there is only one possible continuation of the past consistent with the laws.
And thus we get the incompatibilist conclusion. If determinism is true, our actual future is our only possible future. What we actually do is the only thing we are able to do. But this argument is too quick. Causal chains run from past to future, and not in the other direction.
Our deliberation causes our choices, which cause our actions. But not the other way around. Our choices cause future events; they never cause past events. Why causation works this way is a deep and difficult question, but the leading view, among philosophers of science, is that the temporal asymmetry of causation is a fundamental but contingent fact about our universe. The past could have been different. But, given the way things actually are given the contingent fact that accounts for the forward direction of causation , there is nothing that we are able to do that would cause the past to be different.
Our future is open because it depends, causally and counterfactually, on our choices, which in turn depend, causally and counterfactually, on our deliberation and on the reasons we take ourselves to have. At least in the normal case, where there is neither external constraint nor internal compulsion or other pathology. If our reasons were different in some appropriate way , we would choose otherwise, and if we chose otherwise, we would do otherwise. All this is compatible with determinism.
So the truth of determinism is compatible with the truth of our commonsense belief that we really do have a choice about the future, that we really can choose and do other than what we actually do. The Consequence Argument Ginet , , ; van Inwagen , , ; Wiggins ; Lamb is widely regarded as the best argument for this conclusion.
In An Essay on Free Will , van Inwagen presents three formal arguments which, he says, are intended as three versions of the same basic argument, which he characterized as follows:. If determinism is true, then our acts are the consequence of laws of nature and events in the remote past. Therefore, the consequences of these things including our present acts are not up to us.
We will begin by looking at the third version of the argument the Rule Beta argument. The argument is a conditional proof: Assume determinism and show that it follows that no one has, or ever had, a choice about any true proposition, including propositions about the apparently free actions of human beings.
Premises 1 and 2 follow from determinism. Rule Alpha seems uncontroversial but see Spencer Premises 4 and 6 also look uncontroversial. But it still seems undeniably true that we have no choice about whether the laws and the distant past are the way they are; there is nothing that we are able to do that would make it the case that either the laws or the distant past are different from the way they actually are.
Rule Beta is the key to the argument. But it might nevertheless be similar enough for Beta to be a valid rule of inference. Or so argued van Inwagen, and gave examples:. An early response to the Consequence argument was to argue that Beta is invalid because a compatibilist account of the ability to do otherwise is correct Gallois ; Foley ; Slote ; Flint Incompatibilists were unmoved by this response, saying, in effect, that the validity of Beta is more plausible than the truth of any compatibilist account of ability to do otherwise.
For defense of a compatibilist account of ability to do otherwise, see Moore ; Hobart ; Kapitan , , ; Lehrer , ; Bok ; Smith , ; Campbell ; Perry ; Vihvelin , ; Fara More recently, van Inwagen has conceded that Beta is invalid van Inwagen McKay and Johnson showed that Beta entails Agglomeration:. Agglomeration is uncontroversially invalid.
So it still looks as though the compatibilist is in trouble. We need to dig deeper to criticize the argument. David Lewis tells us to think of the argument as a reductio Lewis A compatibilist is someone who claims that the truth of determinism is compatible with the existence of the kinds of abilities that we assume we have in typical choice situations.
The Consequence argument, as Lewis articulates it, says that if we assume that a deterministic agent has ordinary abilities, we are forced to credit her with incredible abilities as well. Pretend that determinism is true, and that I did not raise my hand at that department meeting, to vote on that proposal but had the ability to do so.
If I had exercised my ability—if I had raised my hand—then either the remote past or the laws of physics would have been different would have to have been different. But to suppose that I have either of these abilities is absurd. So we must reject the claim that I had the ability to raise my hand. This counterfactual version of the Consequence argument nicely highlights a point that the rule Beta version glosses over.
The argument relies on a claim about counterfactuals. The argument says that if determinism is true, then at least one of these counterfactuals is true:. Different Past: If I had raised my hand, the remote past would have been different.
Different Laws: If I had raised my hand, the laws would have been different. Both these counterfactuals strike many people as incredible. But there is a reason for that—we are not used to thinking in terms of determinism and we are not accustomed to counterfactual speculation about what would have been the case, beforehand , if anything at a deterministic world had happened in any way other than the way it actually happened.
On the other hand, we are good at evaluating counterfactuals, or at least some counterfactuals, and we are especially good at evaluating those counterfactuals that we entertain in contexts of choice, when we ask questions about the causal upshots of our contemplated actions. What would happen if… I struck this match, put my finger in the fire, threw this rock at that window, raised my hand? And when we contemplate our options, we take for granted the existence of many facts—including facts about the laws and the past.
In other words, when we evaluate counterfactuals in real life, we do so by considering imaginary situations which are very like the situation we are actually in, and we do not suppose that there are any gratuitous departures from actuality.
And to suppose a difference in the past or the laws seems like a gratuitous difference. So it is no surprise that when our attention is directed to Different Past and Different Laws , these counterfactuals strike us as incredible, or at least odd.
So the first point is that we all need a theory of counterfactuals, and if determinism is true, the true counterfactuals will include either Different Past or Different Laws. For similar criticisms of the Consequence argument, see Fischer , ; Horgan ; Watson ; Vihvelin Lewis , is correct, or even more or less correct, then the relevant counterfactuals about the past and laws, at a deterministic world, are:. Almost the Same Past: If I had raised my hand, the past would have been exactly the same until a time shortly before the time of my decision to raise my hand.
Slightly Different Laws: If I had raised my hand, the laws would have been ever so slightly different in a way that permitted a divergence from the lawful course of actual history shortly before the time of my decision to raise my hand. Same Laws : If I had raised my hand, the laws would still have been exactly the same.
Different Past : If I had raised my hand, past history would have been different all the way back to the Big Bang. We all need a theory of counterfactuals, and our theory should provide the correct verdicts for the uncontroversially true counterfactuals at deterministic as well as indeterministic worlds. Our choice is limited to a theory that accepts Different Laws or Different Past.
The problem with the argument, says Lewis, is that it equivocates between these two ability claims. To count as a reductio against the compatibilist, the argument must establish that the compatibilist is committed to A2.
As with all of our prior models, both our mediator and outcome models incorporated age and gender as covariates:. We calculated the proportion of the total effect that is mediated i. Averaging the indirect effect estimate, ab , across Monte Carlo simulations yields the average causally mediated effect, ACME. In each of these world regions, people viewed the perpetrator in the CI scenario as having exercised greater control than the perpetrator in the AS scenario.
This difference in perceived control accounted for part of the effect of scenario on moral responsibility evaluations — as predicted by theories of attributional reasoning. A wide literature reveals that Asian individuals gravitate toward situational and not dispositional attributions — which could explain why they evaluate these two crimes in a very similar way — i. No corresponding association was shown for the CI case — if anything, reflective participants ascribed slightly more moral responsibility to the perpetrator, when merely lacking alternate possibilities see Table 1 and Figure 2.
Figure 2. Mean ascriptions by scenario and CRT score. Point size is proportional to the number of observations. A dotted horizontal line represents the scale midpoint, and linear trends by world region are displayed using solid and dashed lines. Taken together, these results may indicate that cognitive reflection supports the conclusion that ultimate sourcehood is a condition for free will and moral responsibility see, e.
Perhaps, reflective individuals are more likely to engage in dispositionist reasoning, and ascribe control when the agent in question is seen as the ultimate source of her behavior. Does the greater difference in control ascriptions among reflective participants explain why they tended to selectively exculpate the agent in the AS scenario on measures of moral responsibility?
If cognitive reflection underlies dispositionist reasoning, we should observe that the indirect effect via control is larger among reflective than unreflective participants. In other words, reflective individuals selectively ascribed less moral responsibility to the agent in the AS scenario than did intuitive individuals, and this effect was mediated by differences in the degree to which they viewed the agent as exercising control.
Figure 3. Moderated mediation diagram. In several Asian countries, participants did not perceive a difference in control across scenarios — which we interpreted in light of their documented emphasis on situationist explanations. Might reflection therefore play a qualitatively distinct role in attitudes toward the free will problem in these cultural contexts?
In sum, reflective participants ascribed less freedom and control — and derivatively, assigned reduced moral responsibility — to the perpetrator in the AS condition but not in the CI condition. This effect of cognitive reflection accounted for previously reported associations with extraversion, and emerged even throughout Asian cultures that tended not to sharply distinguish the AS and CI scenarios. Importantly, failure to comprehend the scenarios is unlikely to explain these results, since we excluded participants who failed our comprehension checks in each condition.
At the aggregate level, we found that participants blamed and punished agents whether they only lacked alternate possibilities Miller and Feltz, or whether they also lacked sourcehood Nahmias et al. Thus, echoing early findings, laypeople did not take alternate possibilities or sourcehood as necessary conditions for free will and moral responsibility. Yet, our study also revealed a dramatic cultural difference: Throughout the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East, participants viewed the perpetrator with sourcehood in the CI scenario as freer and more morally responsible than the perpetrator without sourcehood in the AS scenario.
Meanwhile, South and East Asian participants evaluated both perpetrators in a strikingly similar way. We interpreted these results in light of cultural variation in dispositional versus situational attributions Miller, ; Morris and Peng, ; Choi et al. From a dispositionist perspective, participants may be especially attuned to the absence of sourcehood: When an agent is the source of their action, people may naturally conjure dispositionist explanations that refer to her goals, desires e.
In contrast, when actions result from a causal chain originating at the beginning of the universe, explanations of this sort — implying sourcehood — seem particularly unsatisfactory and incomplete. Throughout American, European, and Middle Eastern cultures, dispositionist explanations seemed to prevail: Participants tended to hold the perpetrator with sourcehood morally responsible, but ascribed less moral responsibility to the perpetrator without sourcehood — and this effect was even larger among participants who exhibited greater cognitive reflection.
Meanwhile, consistent with past evidence Miller, ; Morris and Peng, ; Choi et al. Still, as with other world regions, reflective participants throughout Asia were more likely to selectively exculpate the agent lacking sourcehood. It could be that Asians tended intuitively toward situationist explanations, but were more likely to conjure alternative dispositionist explanations upon further reflection.
Our study also shed new light on the understanding of individual differences in compatibilist beliefs. Several studies previously reported that extraverts and introverts differ in their assessments of whether free will and determinism are compatible Feltz and Cokely, ; Schulz et al. Building on evidence that extraverts and introverts differ in their cognitive style, we found that a tendency toward cognitive reflection largely subsumed the previously reported effect of personality.
While reflective individuals may evaluate the implications of determinism for free will, concluding that sourcehood but not alternate possibilities is a condition for free will, less reflective participants may readily attribute moral responsibility, and even ascribe free will, motivated by their initial punitive drive Clark et al.
First, throughout our comparative analyses we emphasized sourcehood as the primary factor driving the difference between scenarios. Yet, the AS and CI scenarios differed in several other ways e. Second, participants faced acute comprehension difficulties in the AS scenario — introducing potential assignment bias into the comparative analyses.
This high rate of comprehension failure has been documented in previous studies, and attributed to overpowering indeterministic assumptions Rose et al. It may also have been aggravated by the complexity with which determinism was introduced in our vignette. The results of our Supplementary Analysis 1 help to alleviate both concerns.
Still, in future research, we aim to employ maximally matched stimuli, and pre-test instructions that facilitate comprehension and balance exclusion rates across conditions. Third, because our study did not specifically measure dispositional and situational explanatory styles, we submit that the observed difference between Asia and other world regions could instead be driven by other dimensions of cultural psychology, such as individualism versus collectivism Triandis, , the prevailing self-concept Markus and Kitayama, ; Heine and Hamamura, , or analytic versus holistic thinking Nisbett et al.
Yet, prior research on judgments of free will suffered from an important limitation: Most past studies relied on small and homogeneous North American samples but see Sarkissian et al. The present work addressed this limitation by surveying thousands of participants in twenty countries and sixteen languages. In so doing, our study documented individual and cultural variations in views about the problem of free will.
First, in most world regions, people ascribe greater free will to an agent who merely lacks alternate possibilities in a Frankfurt case than to one who also lacks sourcehood in a deterministic universe. Second, reflective participants were more likely to treat ultimate sourcehood as a condition for free will, even in predominantly situationist cultures.
Importantly, the cultural difference — i. Rather, culture and reflectivity independently contributed to lay judgments about the conditions for free will and moral responsibility. In closing, our findings have certain implications for philosophical methodology: Debates about the problem of free will have generally focused on establishing the predominant intuition as an element in empirically informed argumentation. Given the present evidence of substantial individual and cultural variability, this approach seems misguided Machery, Clearer insights into the free will problem may instead be gleaned by understanding the psychological and cultural bases of disagreement concerning the tension between determinism and free will.
The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the University of Pittsburgh. IH drafted the manuscript. All authors were involved in data collection, and approved the final manuscript for publication. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Fuller Thrive Center or the John Templeton Foundation.
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Bates, D. Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Google Scholar. Benjamin, D. Redefine statistical significance. Caruso, G. Lanham, MA: Lexington Books. Chernyak, N. Chiorri, C. Psychometric properties of a revised version of the ten item personality inventory. Chiu, C. Motivated cultural cognition: the impact of implicit cultural theories on dispositional attribution varies as a function of need for closure.
So, in order for a will to be free, it must operate according to laws that it imposes on itself. This leads to Kant's positive characterization of freedom as "the will's property of being a law to itself" G IV; cf.
Kpv V33 and MS V Equivalently, a free will is an autonomous will. Now, in GMS II, Kant had argued that for a will to act autonomously is for it to act in accordance with the categorical imperative, the moral law.
Thus, Kant famously remarks: "a free will and a will under moral laws is one and the same" ibd. The question of whether freedom of the will can be presupposed is taken up in the next part of section three, which is titled "Freedom Must be Presupposed as a Property of the Will of All Rational Beings. By referring to the kind of freedom that he wants to show that all rational agents have as "freedom in a practical respect", Kant is distinguishing his project from that of showing that every rational agent is in fact free, which Kant refers to as "freedom in a theoretical respect" cf.
Kant's footnote to IV To show that all rational agents have freedom in a theoretical respect would be to show that all rational agents are free. To show that all rational agents are free in a practical respect, by contrast, would be merely to show that all rational agents must regard themselves as free. The reason why it is sufficient for Kant's purposes to prove only that all rational beings are free in a practical respect is that being free in a practical respect means being committed to viewing the moral law as applying to oneself.
For, as we said before, to be free is just to act in accordance with the moral law. Thus, the crucial part of the argument is the next step, in which Kant argues that all rational beings are free in a practical respect.
It is in this portion of the argument that the key passage that I want to deal with occurs. Kant begins by asserting that for "[every rational being] we think of a reason that is practical, that is, has causality with respect to its objects" GIV The idea that the will is a "causality with respect to objects" is meant to suggest that to have practical reason is to have a will that is capable of generating reasons for action from itself.
What Kant wants to say is that in order to view oneself as having a practical will, one must regard one's will itself as generating motivation for acting. If one only views oneself as acting on the basis of impulses, then one cannot also view oneself as having a practical will. Now, the passage that I want to focus on throughout the rest of this essay occurs immediately after the sentence just quoted. I quote it in full, labeling the two sentences for clarity in my later discussion:.
Now, Sentence 2 states the conclusion of the argument, and specifically, the part of the conclusion that is of most interest for our purposes, is 2a, so let us begin our analysis of this passage by considering that. What does Kant mean when he says, "Reason must regard itself as the author of its principles independently of alien influences?
Regarding 1 , the context of the argument is, of course, a discussion specifically of practical reason. So one might think that Kant is making a point here only about the practical domain.
But I believe it is fair to think that Kant is talking about both practical and theoretical reason based on three considerations. First, Kant states the argument in terms of reason as such, so, taken at face value, it seems obvious that we ought to take him as speaking not only about practical reason, but about theoretical reason as well. Second, when one considers the argument, it seems clear that if it is sound, it will apply just as much to theoretical reason as to practical reason.
So, even if Kant had framed the argument specifically in terms of practical reason, it would still be reasonable to extend the argument to apply to the theoretical case as well. So much, then, for what the intended referent of "reason" here is.
Now, regarding 2 there seems to be two questions that need to be answered: a what, in general, is meant when Kant says that x must regard itself as y? And b , what does it mean for reason to have to regard itself as whatever?
I shall have relatively little to say in response to a other than to point out the difference between the claim that reason must hold that it is free and the claim that reason must regard itself as free. The difference between the two might elude the casual reader, insofar as locutions like the following seem to mean roughly the same thing: "I regard her as the best athlete on campus" and "I think that she is the best athlete on campus.
This is seen from the fact that Kant is very careful to make clear that he does not intend to give a theoretical proof, but rather a practical proof of freedom of the will.
The difference between these two kinds of proof is precisely the difference between showing that some claim is true and showing that we must act or think as if some claim is true, where this leaves open the theoretical question of whether the claim is true or not.
What it is to regard x as y, in Kant's sense, then, seems intuitive enough. But why does Kant say that reason must regard itself as free instead of that we must regard ourselves as free? One way to gloss this claim might be to say that insofar as we are rational, we must regard ourselves as free. But I think this is unsatisfactory since it seems to imply that we are rationally obligated to think that we are free. But if Kant has shown that we are rationally obligated to believe that we are free, then he seems to have given a theoretical proof of the proposition rather than a practical proof.
A better way to gloss Kant's conclusion, then, would be to say that insofar as we take ourselves to be rational, we must take ourselves to be free.
This gloss would explain why Kant frames his conclusion in the immediately surrounding context as that freedom is a property of all rational beings. The thought is that to be rational is to be free in a certain sort of way so if one regards oneself as rational, one must regard oneself as free. Having said this much, we are able to provide a rough sketch of what the argument in this passage is supposed to be.
What it is for a will to be free is for it to act autonomously the positive definition of freedom , or equivalently, for it to act independently of alien influences the negative definition of freedom.
To take oneself to be rational is to take oneself as able to act or believe independently of alien influences. Therefore, to take oneself to be rational is to take oneself to act or believe independently of alien influences.
The main interpretative question that remains for us is, then, to explain why does Kant endorse 2. And to answer this, we must answer the question of what Kant means when he refers to reason being independent of alien influences. Thus, Kant is providing here a kind of argument against determinism: we cannot rationally believe that determinism extends so far as to include even our beliefs and rational assessments, because if we do, then we abolish the possibility of regarding any of our beliefs as rational.
To see why Kant thinks this, let us turn to Sentence 1. The thought in Sentence 1 is, I think, best illustrated by an example. If I form the belief that quiche is an unhealthy food and realize upon reflection that the only reason for my belief is a dislike for its taste, then I cannot regard the belief that quiche is unhealthy as rational.
In this case it was not my rational faculty, or as Kant simply puts it, "reason" that was active in forming the belief at all. It is not the case that one way of using one's reason is by being guided by impulses in this way; rather, this is a way of not employing one's reason.
This is why Kant says that "one cannot possibly think of a reason" IV that would be affected in this kind of way. So, if we want to understand Kant's argument, we ought to begin by analyzing cases such as these. Let us focus on the following case. Suppose Ned has some belief p and comes to believe that the reason that he believes p is because of, say, the presence of a certain chemical in the drinking water. In this case, the rational basis that Ned has for believing the proposition in question is completely undercut.
Upon finding out the unsavory origin of his belief, he is rationally obligated to decrease his credence in the proposition. So, one way to make sense of Kant would be to find the principle that underlies the fact that Ned cannot rationally take himself to be rationally justified in believing p and explain why one might think that this principle applies to all of one's beliefs if determinism is true. So, what might this principle be? One, I think, clearly unsatisfactory answer might be something like the following:.
P1 If s discovers that he believes p purely based on material causes, then s cannot take himself to be rationally justified in holding that belief. This principle, if true, would of course get Kant to his desired conclusion. But it is problematic for several reasons. First, the fact that the cause of the belief in Ned's case is the outcome of material causes is irrelevant to whether Ned is justified in his belief. To see this, we can just modify the case so that instead of a chemical in the drinking water, it is an immaterial demon that is responsible for implanting the belief in Ned's mind.
Regression-based pairwise comparisons between world regions on each dependent measure. Therefore, in line with previous studies on the problem of free will Nichols and Knobe, ; Miller and Feltz, , people revealed compatibilist responses to both concrete scenarios — whether the agent was characterized as lacking alternate possibilities or sourcehood.
There were few reliable differences between Europeans, Middle Easterners and Americans only 2 of the 12 pairwise comparisons revealed significant or suggestive differences. We therefore sought to understand whether cognitive style better predicted compatibilist judgments than did extraversion. The AS and CI scenarios differ in a few respects; yet, the most salient philosophical difference concerns the question of ultimate sourcehood Pereboom, Neither perpetrator could have done otherwise, but they differ with regards to sourcehood: The perpetrator in the AS case lacks sourcehood, while the perpetrator in the CI case is the ultimate source of his actions.
Does the presence of sourcehood promote the perception that an agent acted freely and should be held morally responsible? To shed light on this question, we compare responses to both thought experiments below. Tests of the simple effect of scenario in each site revealed systematic regional variation, dovetailing with previously reported East-West differences Miller, ; Morris and Peng, ; Choi et al.
In contrast, among most Asian countries, we found no corresponding effect of scenario: Rather, Asian participants tended to assign comparable blame and punishment to both perpetrators, i. Mean ascriptions of freedom, control, blame and punishment by scenario.
A dotted vertical line represents the scale midpoint, and world region means are displayed using solid and dashed vertical lines. Attribution theory Heider, ; Weiner, predicts that the greater tendency to hold agents with sourcehood morally responsible e. Specifically, the CI condition, in which the counterfactual intervener did not have to interfere, may invite an intrinsic attribution — i.
Meanwhile, the AS case — in which behavior is ultimately explained by antecedent causes and the laws of nature — invites an extrinsic attribution, and the corresponding assessment that the agent should not be held morally responsible. As with all of our prior models, both our mediator and outcome models incorporated age and gender as covariates:. We calculated the proportion of the total effect that is mediated i. Averaging the indirect effect estimate, ab , across Monte Carlo simulations yields the average causally mediated effect, ACME.
In each of these world regions, people viewed the perpetrator in the CI scenario as having exercised greater control than the perpetrator in the AS scenario. This difference in perceived control accounted for part of the effect of scenario on moral responsibility evaluations — as predicted by theories of attributional reasoning. A wide literature reveals that Asian individuals gravitate toward situational and not dispositional attributions — which could explain why they evaluate these two crimes in a very similar way — i.
No corresponding association was shown for the CI case — if anything, reflective participants ascribed slightly more moral responsibility to the perpetrator, when merely lacking alternate possibilities see Table 1 and Figure 2. Mean ascriptions by scenario and CRT score. Point size is proportional to the number of observations. A dotted horizontal line represents the scale midpoint, and linear trends by world region are displayed using solid and dashed lines.
Taken together, these results may indicate that cognitive reflection supports the conclusion that ultimate sourcehood is a condition for free will and moral responsibility see, e. Perhaps, reflective individuals are more likely to engage in dispositionist reasoning, and ascribe control when the agent in question is seen as the ultimate source of her behavior. Does the greater difference in control ascriptions among reflective participants explain why they tended to selectively exculpate the agent in the AS scenario on measures of moral responsibility?
If cognitive reflection underlies dispositionist reasoning, we should observe that the indirect effect via control is larger among reflective than unreflective participants. In other words, reflective individuals selectively ascribed less moral responsibility to the agent in the AS scenario than did intuitive individuals, and this effect was mediated by differences in the degree to which they viewed the agent as exercising control.
Moderated mediation diagram. In several Asian countries, participants did not perceive a difference in control across scenarios — which we interpreted in light of their documented emphasis on situationist explanations. Might reflection therefore play a qualitatively distinct role in attitudes toward the free will problem in these cultural contexts? In sum, reflective participants ascribed less freedom and control — and derivatively, assigned reduced moral responsibility — to the perpetrator in the AS condition but not in the CI condition.
This effect of cognitive reflection accounted for previously reported associations with extraversion, and emerged even throughout Asian cultures that tended not to sharply distinguish the AS and CI scenarios. Importantly, failure to comprehend the scenarios is unlikely to explain these results, since we excluded participants who failed our comprehension checks in each condition. At the aggregate level, we found that participants blamed and punished agents whether they only lacked alternate possibilities Miller and Feltz, or whether they also lacked sourcehood Nahmias et al.
Thus, echoing early findings, laypeople did not take alternate possibilities or sourcehood as necessary conditions for free will and moral responsibility. Yet, our study also revealed a dramatic cultural difference: Throughout the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East, participants viewed the perpetrator with sourcehood in the CI scenario as freer and more morally responsible than the perpetrator without sourcehood in the AS scenario.
Meanwhile, South and East Asian participants evaluated both perpetrators in a strikingly similar way. We interpreted these results in light of cultural variation in dispositional versus situational attributions Miller, ; Morris and Peng, ; Choi et al. From a dispositionist perspective, participants may be especially attuned to the absence of sourcehood: When an agent is the source of their action, people may naturally conjure dispositionist explanations that refer to her goals, desires e.
In contrast, when actions result from a causal chain originating at the beginning of the universe, explanations of this sort — implying sourcehood — seem particularly unsatisfactory and incomplete. Throughout American, European, and Middle Eastern cultures, dispositionist explanations seemed to prevail: Participants tended to hold the perpetrator with sourcehood morally responsible, but ascribed less moral responsibility to the perpetrator without sourcehood — and this effect was even larger among participants who exhibited greater cognitive reflection.
Meanwhile, consistent with past evidence Miller, ; Morris and Peng, ; Choi et al. Still, as with other world regions, reflective participants throughout Asia were more likely to selectively exculpate the agent lacking sourcehood. It could be that Asians tended intuitively toward situationist explanations, but were more likely to conjure alternative dispositionist explanations upon further reflection.
Our study also shed new light on the understanding of individual differences in compatibilist beliefs. Several studies previously reported that extraverts and introverts differ in their assessments of whether free will and determinism are compatible Feltz and Cokely, ; Schulz et al. Building on evidence that extraverts and introverts differ in their cognitive style, we found that a tendency toward cognitive reflection largely subsumed the previously reported effect of personality.
While reflective individuals may evaluate the implications of determinism for free will, concluding that sourcehood but not alternate possibilities is a condition for free will, less reflective participants may readily attribute moral responsibility, and even ascribe free will, motivated by their initial punitive drive Clark et al. First, throughout our comparative analyses we emphasized sourcehood as the primary factor driving the difference between scenarios.
Yet, the AS and CI scenarios differed in several other ways e. Second, participants faced acute comprehension difficulties in the AS scenario — introducing potential assignment bias into the comparative analyses. This high rate of comprehension failure has been documented in previous studies, and attributed to overpowering indeterministic assumptions Rose et al.
It may also have been aggravated by the complexity with which determinism was introduced in our vignette. The results of our Supplementary Analysis 1 help to alleviate both concerns. Still, in future research, we aim to employ maximally matched stimuli, and pre-test instructions that facilitate comprehension and balance exclusion rates across conditions.
Third, because our study did not specifically measure dispositional and situational explanatory styles, we submit that the observed difference between Asia and other world regions could instead be driven by other dimensions of cultural psychology, such as individualism versus collectivism Triandis, , the prevailing self-concept Markus and Kitayama, ; Heine and Hamamura, , or analytic versus holistic thinking Nisbett et al.
Yet, prior research on judgments of free will suffered from an important limitation: Most past studies relied on small and homogeneous North American samples but see Sarkissian et al. The present work addressed this limitation by surveying thousands of participants in twenty countries and sixteen languages. In so doing, our study documented individual and cultural variations in views about the problem of free will.
First, in most world regions, people ascribe greater free will to an agent who merely lacks alternate possibilities in a Frankfurt case than to one who also lacks sourcehood in a deterministic universe.
Second, reflective participants were more likely to treat ultimate sourcehood as a condition for free will, even in predominantly situationist cultures. Importantly, the cultural difference — i. Rather, culture and reflectivity independently contributed to lay judgments about the conditions for free will and moral responsibility. In closing, our findings have certain implications for philosophical methodology: Debates about the problem of free will have generally focused on establishing the predominant intuition as an element in empirically informed argumentation.
Given the present evidence of substantial individual and cultural variability, this approach seems misguided Machery, Clearer insights into the free will problem may instead be gleaned by understanding the psychological and cultural bases of disagreement concerning the tension between determinism and free will.
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