Free Will Foundations: Metaethical and methodological underpinnings of free will theories

This project examines how the plausibility of free will theories depends on implicit methodological and metaethical assumptions.

In the philosophical free will literature, incompatibilists hold that if human actions are determined by the laws of nature and past events, this precludes the kind of free will necessary for moral responsibility. Compatibilists hold that it doesn’t.

Both argue that intuitions about relevant cases support their view, leaving the debate in a sort of impasse.The starting point of the project is that the validity of standard arguments for/against free will theories seems to depend on assumptions that are rarely made explicit – methodological assumptions about the evidential role of intuitions, and metaethical assumptions about whether morality is objective or a human construction.

Through developing new arguments about how such assumptions affect the plausibility of free will theories, and affect what counts as valid evidence, this project aims to provide the means for a more transparent evaluation of free will theories, and bring the debate beyond the intuition-based impasse.In a wider perspective, the project concerns our understanding of moral responsibility within a scientific world-view, and potentially has societal implications: it has, e.g., been argued that if free will is rejected, the criminal justice system must be radically changed.Four researchers with a background in metaethics and free will research will cooperate in the project.