Consciousness, free will, and moral responsibility: Taking the folk seriously.
Philos Psychol October 3, 2014 Joshua Shepherd 33 citations
Folk views of free will and moral responsibility center on consciousness, not on whether actions align with an agent's long-standing values, motivations, or character traits. Experiments show that people consider conscious action production far more important for free will than concordance with the agent's deep self. When behaviorally identical agents differ only in consciousness, most participants attribute free will to conscious agents but not to nonconscious ones. These findings challenge leading philosophical theories—Deep Self and Reasons-Responsive Views—to develop a substantive account of the connection between consciousness, free will, and moral responsibility that takes ordinary intuitions seriously.