Exploring the Illusion of Free Will and Moral Responsibility investigates the philosophical and scientific arguments for free will skepticism and their implications. Skepticism about free will and moral responsibility has been on the rise in recent years. In fact, a significant number of philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists now either doubt or outright deny the existence of free will and/or moral responsibility-and the list of prominent skeptics appears to grow by the day. Given the profound importance that the concepts of free will and moral responsibility hold in our lives-in understanding ourselves, society, and the law-it is important that we explore what is behind this new wave of skepticism. It is also important that we explore the potential consequences of skepticism for ourselves and society. Edited by Gregg D. Caruso, this collection of new essays brings together an internationally recognized line-up of contributors, most of whom hold skeptical positions of some sort, to display and explore the leading arguments for free will skepticism and to debate their implications.

Exploring the Illusion of Free Will and Moral Responsibility investigates the philosophical and scientific arguments for free will skepticism and their implications. Skepticism about free will and moral responsibility has been on the rise in recent years. In fact, a significant number of philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists now either doubt or outright deny the existence of free will and/or moral responsibility-and the list of prominent skeptics appears to grow by the day. Given the profound importance that the concepts of free will and moral responsibility hold in our lives-in understanding ourselves, society, and the law-it is important that we explore what is behind this new wave of skepticism. It is also important that we explore the potential consequences of skepticism for ourselves and society. Edited by Gregg D. Caruso, this collection of new essays brings together an internationally recognized line-up of contributors, most of whom hold skeptical positions of some sort, to display and explore the leading arguments for free will skepticism and to debate their implications.

This volume makes a contribution to the field of neurolaw by investigating issues raised by the development, use, and regulation of neurointerventions. The broad range of topics covered in these chapters reflects neurolaw's growing social import, and its rapid expansion as an academic field of inquiry. Some authors investigate the criminal justice system's use of neurointerventions to make accused defendants fit for trial, to help reform convicted offenders, or to make condemned inmates sane enough for execution, while others interrogate the use, regulation, and social impact of cognitive enhancement medications and devices. Issues raised by neurointervention-based gay conversion "therapy", efficacy and safety of specific neurointervention methods, legitimacy of their use and regulation, and their implications for authenticity, identity, and responsibility are among the other topics investigated. Dwelling on neurointerventions also highlights tacit assumptions about human nature that have important implications for jurisprudence. For all we know, at present such things as people's capacity to feel pain, their sexuality, and the dictates of their conscience, are unalterable. But neurointerventions could hypothetically turn such constants into variables. The increasing malleability of human nature means that analytic jurisprudential claims (true in virtue of meanings of jurisprudential concepts) must be distinguished from synthetic jurisprudential claims (contingent on what humans are actually like). Looking at the law through the lens of neurointerventions thus also highlights the growing need for a new distinction - between analytic jurisprudence and synthetic jurisprudence - to tackle issues that increasingly malleable humans will face when they encounter novel opportunities and challenges.

Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Free Will and Responsibility brings together leading researchers from psychology and philosophy to present new findings and ideas about human agency and moral responsibility. Their contributions reflect the growth of research in these areas over the past decade and highlight both the ways that philosophy can be relevant to empirical research and how empirical work can be relevant to philosophical investigations. Mixing new empirical work with the meta-philosophical and philosophical upshot of the latest research being done, chapters cover motivated cognition and free will beliefs, folk intuitions about manipulation and agency, mental control in assessments of responsibility, the importance of skilled decision making to free will judgments and the relationship between free will and substance dualism. Blending cutting-edge research from philosophy with methods from psychology, this collection is a compelling example of the value of interdisciplinary approaches, contributing to our understanding of the complex networks of attitudes, beliefs, and judgments that inform how we think about agency and responsibility.

Moral Psychology: Historical and Contemporary Readings is the first book to bring together the most significant contemporary and historical works on the topic from both philosophy and psychology. * Provides a comprehensive introduction to moral psychology, which is the study of psychological mechanisms and processes underlying ethics and morality * Unique in bringing together contemporary texts by philosophers, psychologists and other cognitive scientists with foundational works from both philosophy and psychology * Approaches moral psychology from an empirically informed perspective * Explores a wide range of topics from passion and altruism to virtue and responsibility * Editorial introductions to each section explain the background of and connections between the selections

While most philosophers agree that intentional actions play an important role in our ascriptions of responsibility, there is disagreement concerning the precise nature of this role. Unfortunately, there has traditionally been a dearth of empirical data about ascriptions of intentional action. Lately, however, researchers have begun filing in this empirical lacuna. In this book, I discuss how this research sheds light on problems in action theory, ethics, and legal philosophy. In doing so, I first set the stage by discussing some of the problems traditionally associated with the concept of intentional action before turning my attention to recent research on the folk concept of intentional action. Finally, I compare and contrast the folk concepts of intention and intentional action with their legal counterparts. My goal is to flesh out the extent to which these concepts diverge-a problem that is particularly pressing given that in litigated cases involving juries, jurors are often asked to judge whether the defendant acted intentionally, purposely, and knowingly. This book is addressed to philosophers and psychologists working at the intersection of folk psychology and the law.

Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Free Will and Responsibility brings together leading researchers from psychology and philosophy to present new findings and ideas about human agency and moral responsibility. Their contributions reflect the growth of research in these areas over the past decade and highlight both the ways that philosophy can be relevant to empirical research and how empirical work can be relevant to philosophical investigations. Mixing new empirical work with the meta-philosophical and philosophical upshot of the latest research being done, chapters cover motivated cognition and free will beliefs, folk intuitions about manipulation and agency, mental control in assessments of responsibility, the importance of skilled decision making to free will judgments and the relationship between free will and substance dualism. Blending cutting-edge research from philosophy with methods from psychology, this collection is a compelling example of the value of interdisciplinary approaches, contributing to our understanding of the complex networks of attitudes, beliefs, and judgments that inform how we think about agency and responsibility.