From Moral Intuitions to Free Will Intuitions: A Dual Interacting-Process Model

Abstract

In this essay, after first briefly reviewing the literature on experimental philosophy and how and why it is important especially for contemporary analytic philosophy, we focus on two earliest experimental research papers on free will intuitions. We also present psychological mechanisms that try to explain why both philosophers and ordinary people have incompatibilist and compatibilist intuitions and free will and moral responsibility. We then move on to another experimental research on moral intuitions and develop a dual process model based on the model to explain moral intuitions. However, our dual interacting-process model is not intended for moral intuitions but free will intuitions. Finally, we critically examine other mechanisms and briefly defend our model.