While our current style of punishment rests on a bedrock of personal volition and blame, our modern understanding of the brain suggests a different approach. Blameworthiness should be removed from the legal argot.
It is a backward-looking concept that demands the impossible task of untangling the hopelessly complex web of genetics and environment that constructs the trajectory of a human life. Eagleman and other determinists are against punishment but they recognize that incarceration still has a role to play because the public has a right to be safe.
Philosopher Saul Smilansky now pounces with a timely paper on determinism and punishment. It is surely wrong to punish people for something that is not their fault or under their control. Hard determinists agree with this premise. 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. Choi, I. Causal attribution across cultures: variation and universality. Clark, C. Making punishment palatable: belief in free will alleviates punitive distress.
Free to punish: a motivated account of free will belief. Forget the folk: moral responsibility preservation motives and other conditions for compatibilism. Cohen, M. Individual differences in extraversion and dopamine genetics predict neural reward responses. Brain Res. Cova, F. Judgments about moral responsibility and determinism in patients with behavioural variant of frontotemporal dementia: still compatibilists. Estimating the reproducibility of experimental philosophy.
Cullen, S. When do circumstances excuse? Cognition , — Accordingly, Oliver Wendell Holmes held that if an offender were hereditarily or environmentally determined to offend, then her free will would be reduced, and her responsibility for criminal acts would be correspondingly diminished.
In this respect, Holmes followed his father, Dr. Holmes, a physician and man of letters. Similar theories, such as neuropsychological theories of determinism, continue to influence views on criminal responsibility, although such theories do not imply that it is physically impossible for accused persons to act other than they do.
This suggests that some amount of free will is compatible with theories of this kind. Nevertheless, the common understanding that accused persons can be free and responsible agents might disappear altogether if people were to accept the truth of causal determinism, which is the philosophical thesis that there is only one physically possible future consistent with the past and the laws of nature.
Assume instead that it's wrong that there's no free will, then you're free to deal with things, ideally in an ethical way. Add a comment.
Active Oldest Votes. I found one writer page who seems to describe the Hard Determinist point-of-view in a way that allows for some response to criminal acts: Can we say of an [ethically disabled] indvidual - Robert Harris, for example - that he ought not have killed the two young men?
So, a couple points I take away from this: Hard Determinists believe you don't ignore criminal acts at least because the person can be changed in the future To say that someone had no ultimate choice in the matter does not mean that the thing that was done was morally ok. It is ok to even go so far as make judgements about whether an individual is capable of moral reasoning. Improve this answer. James Kingsbery James Kingsbery 5, 1 1 gold badge 16 16 silver badges 41 41 bronze badges.
It's the rest of society or.. At a later moment, a reconciliation of points of view either after RH has reflected on things, or in court etc perhaps result in remorse in Robert Harris, or punishment — user My thought is that this joining of points of view reconcilliation, i guess which allows for individuality and punishment, with hardish determinism when dealing with criminality. I'm no expert though.. A Slight Misunderstanding From your question body, it seems you may misunderstand hard determinism slightly.
Hard Determinism and the Absence of Moral Responsibility In a deterministic universe, the outcome of any events is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences. The reason why we have to punish the proximate cause is two-fold: If we didn't punish Johnny, he would never be taught that such actions are morally wrong.
He may then simply continue killing cats, and we don't want that. Hard determinists still want serial killers behind bars because while we don't morally blame the killer, we would like people to stop getting murdered. In other words, it ends up being a contributing cause to future actions which lead to more undesirable outcomes more killed cats. We don't want other people to think they can get away with killing cats, so punishment acts as a deterrent and helps prevent future cat killings.
Update in response to OP's comments: I never spoke to rehabilitation specifically, only empathy for criminals. Community Bot 1. Your point 1 is basis of my disconnect. If somebody truly believes in hard determinism - not just acknowledges it's conceptual validity, but truly believes it is the way things are and accepts it - then why would the concept of "punishment" even exist? Criminals and non-criminals are separated only by their differing environmental variables. If a boy was discovered in Yellowstone National Park that had been raised by mountain lions, he wouldn't be arraigned on federal charges for poaching and vagrancy in a national park, they would attempt to rehabilitate him back into the societal norm.
Shouldn't the same apply to criminals? Both are victims of circumstance. The heinousness of a crime shouldn't factor in. Now if the idea is that they're too far gone to be rehabilitated, so lock 'em up so they'll be out of our way, or just end the lives, I can understand that, but punishment to make the rest of us feel better doesn't seem valid to me. Maybe the only difference is the use of the word "punish". Another consequentialist in the causal, not moral sense argument for "proportional justice" is that it does not produce escalation of crimes: if I'm always subject to the death penalty there is no additional cost in terms of the punishment I will receive to me for killing the police officer trying to apprehend me after stealing a candy bar.
Dave - Very true, good point. Short answer: It doesn't matter , because there is no "should" in determinism. Foo Bar Foo Bar 1 1 silver badge 9 9 bronze badges. I don't understand why this has upvotes. It does not answer the question "How should you respond to criminal behavior if you believe in hard determinism? It is simply a re-affirmation of the questions premise Even if you agree with hard determinism, you could still ask philosophical questions.
This just means, according to you, that you are pre-ordained to ask these questions ;. It's irrelevant what does the asker believe. BartoszKP No, it isn't. If you believe in determinism and no free will then the whole idea of morality and how you "should" behave is pretty pointless.
Because it is out of your control and effectively pre ordained. MartinSmith You can believe in determinism and still be interested in answer to whatever question you want. Especially if you believe that you were ought to ask such a question. Show 1 more comment. Thus there can be instrumental utilitarian justifications for punishing criminals.
Dave Dave 4, 14 14 silver badges 46 46 bronze badges. How can they prevent harm for hard determinists? Considering the future actions are already decided in advanced and don't involve the negotiation of a will against determined elements. DaveMulder that doesn't actually address this answer. This answer claims punishment can prevent future harm The idea that they do wrong and we punish anyway is s separate answer. For people where there is a more rational deterministic relationship between knowledge states and future actions, the expectation of future punishment is one of the causal factors in their decision process.
In hard determinism, the course of the universe is merely unfolding. There's no genuine responses to stimulus. In soft determinism, what you are saying makes sense as there are rational agents responding to stimuli even if they are not free in those responses. Show 3 more comments. We are then left with two possibilities: 1 Morality is real outside of human psychology, and we can observe it in the same way that we observe light or touch.
Looking back at my answer I can see how I could make it clearer, but also I can see a similar but very differently written answer that might be better.
Should I edit this one? Should I add a new answer? One or the other or both or neither? This is a great description for the precursor to the problem, but what's the resolution - do you watch maniacs in their SUV's mowing down pedestrians and throw you hands up and say "it is what it is! The fact is, you need to redefine crime under determinism.
In your note you are mixing determinism and some "free will" on these maniacs. Or we won't punish him. Once you take the view that determinism has ruled out moral choice, there's no point worrying about what our actions should be. Other than the fact that we're causally determined to worry about it
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