Neuroscientific Prediction and the Intrusion of Intuitive Metaphysics

How might advanced neuroscience-in which perfect neuro-predictions are possible-interact with ordinary judgments of free will? We propose that peoples' intuitive ideas about indeterminist free will are both imported into and intrude into their representation of neuroscientific scenarios and present six experiments demonstrating intrusion and importing effects in the context of scenarios depicting perfect neuro-prediction. In light of our findings, we suggest that the intuitive commitment to indeterminist free will may be resilient in the face of scientific evidence against such free will.

[1]  Paul Bloom,et al.  Religion is natural. , 2007, Developmental science.

[2]  Bertram F. Malle,et al.  Bringing free will down to Earth: People’s psychological concept of free will and its role in moral judgment , 2014, Consciousness and Cognition.

[3]  D. Kelemen,et al.  The Human Function Compunction: Teleological explanation in adults , 2009, Cognition.

[4]  Peter van Inwagen,et al.  Free Will Remains a Mystery , 2005 .

[5]  K. Vohs,et al.  Free Will and Consciousness , 2010 .

[6]  D. Kelemen.  Are Children “Intuitive Theists”? , 2004, Psychological science.

[7]  D Kelemen,et al.  Why are rocks pointy? Children's preference for teleological explanations of the natural world. , 1999, Developmental psychology.

[8]  Wesley Buckwalter,et al.  Choosing and refusing: doxastic voluntarism and folk psychology , 2018 .

[9]  John Turri.  Exceptionalist naturalism: Human agency and the causal order , 2018, Quarterly journal of experimental psychology.

[10]  H. D. Cruz,et al.  The Role of Intuitive Ontologies in Scientific Understanding – the Case of Human Evolution , 2007 .

[11]  D. Kelemen.  HOW NATURAL INTUITIONS ABOUT AGENCY AND PURPOSE INFLUENCE LEARNING ABOUT EVOLUTION , 2011 .

[12]  Sarah K. Brem,et al.  Evolution challenges : integrating research and practice in teaching and learning about evolution , 2012 .

[13]  S. Gelman,et al.  Mapping the Mind: Domain Specificity In Cognition And Culture , 1994 .

[14]  Derk Pereboom,et al.  Living without free will , 2001 .

[15]  Eddy A. Nahmias,et al.  It’s OK if ‘my brain made me do it’: People’s intuitions about free will and neuroscientific prediction , 2014, Cognition.

[16]  Joshua D. Greene,et al.  For the law, neuroscience changes nothing and everything. , 2004, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences.

[17]  Thomas Nadelhoffer,et al.  Is Incompatibilism Intuitive , 2006 .

[18]  D. A. Kenny,et al.  The moderator-mediator variable distinction in social psychological research: conceptual, strategic, and statistical considerations. , 1986, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[19]  Shaun Nichols.  The Indeterminist Intuition: Source and Status , 2012 .

[20]  Galen Strawson.  Freedom and Belief , 1986 .

[21]  Eddy A. Nahmias,et al.  Explaining Away Incompatibilist Intuitions , 2014 .

[22]  Leonardo González Galli,et al.  The Role of Teleological Thinking in Learning the Darwinian Model of Evolution , 2011, Evolution: Education and Outreach.

[23]  Joshua Rottman,et al.  Journal of Experimental Psychology : General Professional Physical Scientists Display Tenacious Teleological Tendencies : Purpose-Based Reasoning as a Cognitive Default , 2012 .

[24]  Tania Lombrozo,et al.  Evidence of a Preference for Teleological Explanations in Patients With Alzheimer’s Disease , 2007 .

[25]  D. Sperber.  The modularity of thought and the epidemiology of representations. , 1994 .

[26]  Felipe De Brigard,et al.  Is Belief in Free Will a Cultural Universal , 2010 .

[27]  J. Knobe,et al.  Moral Responsibility and Determinism: The Cognitive Science of Folk Intuitions , 2007 .

[28]  Kostas Kampourakis,et al.  Students’ intuitive explanations of the causes of homologies and adaptations , 2008 .

[29]  T. Ryan Gregory,et al.  Understanding Natural Selection: Essential Concepts and Common Misconceptions , 2009, Evolution: Education and Outreach.

[30]  Joshua Shepherd.  Free will and consciousness: Experimental studies , 2012, Consciousness and Cognition.

[31]  D. Kelemen,et al.  Intuitions About Origins: Purpose and Intelligent Design in Children's Reasoning About Nature , 2005 .

[32]  Deborah Kelemen,et al.  The scope of teleological thinking in preschool children , 1999, Cognition.

[33]  David Rose,et al.  Persistence through function preservation , 2014, Synthese.

[34]  Shaun Nichols,et al.  The Lesson of Bypassing , 2013 .

[35]  Alfred R. Mele,et al.  Free will in everyday life: Autobiographical accounts of free and unfree actions , 2011 .

[36]  F. Keil,et al.  Conceptualizing a Nonnatural Entity: Anthropomorphism in God Concepts , 1996, Cognitive Psychology.

[37]  Margaret J. Inglis,et al.  Undergraduates' understanding of evolution: ascriptions of agency as a problem for student learning , 2002 .

[38]  Pascal Boyer,et al.  The Naturalness of Religious Ideas: A Cognitive Theory of Religion , 1995 .

[39]  D. Iacobucci,et al.  A Meditation on Mediation: Evidence that Structural Equations Models Perform Better than Regressions , 2007 .