Experimental Philosophy and Moral Responsibility

Abstract

AbstractCan experimental philosophy help us answer central questions about the nature of moral responsibility, such as the question of whether moral responsibility is compatible with determinism? According to reasoning behind the Condorcet Jury Theorem (CJT), it might: If individual judges independently track the truth with even modest reliability, this reliability can quickly aggregate as the number of judges goes up. This chapter asks whether preconditions for such aggregation hold with respect to folk attributions of responsibility to deterministic scenarios, and whether it has consequences for philosophical method. Section 1 introduces the basic assumptions behind the CJT. Section 2 looks at the distribution of responsibility attributions in recent empirical studies. Section 3 looks at evidence concerning folk reliability, including evidence supporting two error theories for folk compatibilism—the No Matter What and Indeterminist Intrusion hypotheses—and one error theory for folk incompatiblism—the Bypassing hypotheses. It is argued that data undermines the first two error theories and suggests that only a limited class of judgments are subject to the third. Section 4 explains how conditional error theories can change the support of a position without begging the question. Section 5 asks whether the intricacies of the compatibilism question should lead us to deny that the folk are even modestly reliable in their judgments. Section 6 suggests that even if they are, their judgments will often not be independent enough to add much to the judgments of professional philosophers. Section 7 concludes.