Free will, folk intuitions, and person standpoints: Evidence from experiments

In the dispute between incompatibilism and compatibilism, many philosophers rely on people’s intuitions about free will and moral responsibility. This pushes the so-called “experimental philosophers” to assign importance to experimental studies on folk intuitions about free will and moral responsibility. This paper aims to disclose an important factor that affects the formation of intuitions about free will and moral responsibility, which has been dismissed in the debate. Namely, individual perspectival differences have been overlooked: people may regard the presence or absence of free will and moral responsibility from their own internal point of view (subjective) or from an external (objective) point of view. In two experiments, we demonstrate the effects of the perspectival differences on the formation of beliefs about free will and moral responsibility. The results of our experiments show that apparently compatibilist intuitions about free will and moral responsibility are prompted by adopting the first- and second-person standpoints rather than the third-person standpoint. The results of both experiments, but especially those in the second experiment showed that adopting a second-person standpoint on positively affected judgments on whether people can actually exercise free will in a deterministic world.在不相容论（incompatibilism）与相容论（compatibilism）的学术争论中，诸多哲学家均诉诸人们关于自由意志（free will）与道德责任（moral responsibility）的直觉判断。这一研究取向促使所谓的“实验哲学家（experimental philosophers）”愈发重视针对大众直觉（folk intuitions）关于自由意志与道德责任的实验研究。本文旨在揭示一个影响自由意志与道德责任直觉形成的关键因素——该因素此前在相关争论中始终被忽视。具体而言，个体视角差异长期被忽略：人们或许会从自身内部视角（主观视角）或外部视角（客观视角）来判断自由意志与道德责任是否存在。本研究通过两项实验，验证了视角差异对自由意志与道德责任信念形成的影响。实验结果显示，人们对自由意志与道德责任的表面符合相容论的直觉，实则由第一人称视角（first-person standpoint）与第二人称视角（second-person standpoint）引发，而非第三人称视角（third-person standpoint）。两项实验的结果——尤其是第二项实验的结果——均表明，采用第二人称视角会正向影响人们关于“个体能否在决定论世界（deterministic world）中实际行使自由意志”的判断。