Failure to Comprehend Determinism or Failure to Measure Comprehension? Methodological Issues in Experimental Philosophy of Free Will.

ABSTRACT: In the past 20 years, experimental philosophers have been investigating folk intuitions about the compatibility of determinism with free will and moral responsibility using vignettes depicting agents in deterministic universes. However, recent research suggests that participants massively fail to understand these vignettes. Moreover, it has also been proposed that these comprehension errors might even be systematic and thus unavoidable, threatening the project of probing folk intuitions about free will and determinism through vignettes. Through five studies, we suggest that past studies have overestimated participants' failure to understand vignettes depicting deterministic universes, mainly by relying on unreliable samples and by using non-validated measures. We also show that using new v

SUBMITTER: Cova F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12423183 | biostudies-literature | 2025

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature