Consciousness, free will, and moral responsibility: Taking the folk seriously

Abstract

In this paper, I offer evidence that folk views of free will and moral responsibility accord a central place to consciousness. In sections 2 and 3, I contrast action production via conscious states and processes with action in concordance with an agent's long-standing and endorsed motivations, values, and character traits. Results indicate that conscious action production is considered much more important for free will than is concordance with motivations, values, and character traits. In section 4, I contrast the absence of consciousness with the presence of consciousness in behaviorally identical agents. Most participants attribute free will to conscious agents, but not to nonconscious agents. Focusing in particular on two leading views of free will and moral responsibility, namely, Deep Self and Reasons-Responsive Views, I argue that these results present philosophers of mind and action with the following explanatory burden: develop a substantive theory of the connection between consciousness on the one hand and free will and moral responsibility on the other that takes folk views on this connection seriously.

Determinism and attributions of consciousness

“…J. Shepherd (2012Shepherd ( , 2015Shepherd ( , 2017b has explored how consciousness impacts ascriptions of free and responsible agency, and Arico et al (2011) have explored the roles that agency-detection mechanisms play in attributions of consciousness. 1 In this paper, we aim to further explore folk psychological connections between agency and consciousness.…”

These confabulations are guaranteed to improve your marriage! Toward a teleological theory of confabulation

“…There is some evidence that people take consciousness to be necessary for free agency, though this research does not distinguish between free agency requiring some form of consciousness and particular exercises of free agency requiring conscious mental activity in its immediate proximal etiology (Shepherd, 2015). Other evidence suggests that people easily confuse unconscious motivational factors with mechanistic causes of action (where mechanism is incompatible with agency; see De Brigard, Mandelbaum, & Ripley, 2009).…”

Free Will & Empirical Arguments for Epiphenomenalism

“…It seems plausible that agents need access consciousness in order to count as acting at all, and plausible, though more controversial, that agents might need phenomenal consciousness to count as acting at all (Shepherd 2015a). The latter will depend on whether a "phenomenal zombie" could still perform actions; a question which is not east to answer (Smithies 2012).…”

“…Various authors have tried to elucidate the importance of the sorts of processing that tend to be available to conscious awareness in this way. Shepherd (2015b) argues that the sorts of processing that are typically available to conscious introspection are those involved in "executive functions". The sorts of processes that are not available to conscious awareness are those that occur at a sub-personal level, and are not directly accessible to conscious reflection.…”