Moral Responsibility and Determinism: The Cognitive Science of Folk Intuitions

Abstract

Using experimental methods, the authors investigate folk intuitions about the relationship between determinism and moral responsibility. When participants are asked abstractly whether agents in a deterministic universe can be fully morally responsible, most give incompatibilist answers; when presented with a concrete, emotionally charged case, most give compatibilist answers. To explain this discrepancy, the authors consider three models – the performance error model, the affective competence model and the concrete competence model – as well as possible hybrid accounts. They tentatively favour the performance error model, on which affective reactions distort otherwise incompatibilist judgments, while stressing that the question remains open.