The Willies

As the euphoria subsides, and with all Red Sox business settled, I have to find new ways to proscrastinate. So since everyone else seems to have their own awards show...

The First Annual Free Will and Moral Responsibility Awards. (The Willies?)

Note: My nominations reflect a mild bias toward my pre-conversion skepticism (the days when I believed that there was no such thing as just-deserts and that even if there were such a thing, loathsome teams with bloated payrolls and pear-shaped catchers would not receive them).

Other nominations and/or category suggestions welcome...

Best Essay Title: (And the Willie goes to…) “Determinism al Dente” (Derk Pereboom)

Truest Essay Title: “Luck Swallows Everything.” (Galen Strawson)

Best Opening Paragraph: : Ludwig Wittgenstein once said that “to solve the problems of philosophers you have to think even more crazily than they do.” This task (which became even more difficult after Wittgenstein than it was before him) is certainly required for the venerable problem of free will and determinism.
--Robert Kane

Greatest Paper to Have Had a Positive Impact on the Debate: “Freedom and Resentment.”

Greatest Paper to Have Had a Negative Impact on the Debate: (I better keep that one to myself.)

Most Underappreciated Participant in the Debate: Bruce Waller

Most Respected Position within the Industry: Sophisticated Compatibilism

Least Respected Position within the Industry. (tie) Free will Skepticism/Nihilism; Agent-Causal Libertarianism

Best Neglected Paper: “Hard and Soft Determinism.” (Paul Edwards)

Best Writer: Susan Wolf.

Most Neglected Aspect of the Debate: Evolutionary accounts for the belief in free will. (What a coincidence...)

Best Derogatory Remark about Compatibilism:
Bronze--: “Wretched Subterfuge.” (Kant)
Silver-- “Quagmire of Evasion.” (James)
Gold-- “The most flabbergasting instance of the fallacy of changing the subject to be encountered anywhere in the complete history of sophistry… [a ploy that] was intended to take in the vulgar, but which has beguiled the learned in our time.” (W.I. Matson.)

Lifetime Achievement Awards: John Fischer/Gary Watson/Robert Kane

Comments

[Kip Werking]

"Most Neglected Aspect of the Debate: Evolutionary accounts for the belief in free will. (What a coincidence...)"

Hear! Hear!

In Slobogin's recent (and EXCELLENT) Law Review article The Civilization of the Criminal Law:

http://lsolum.blogspot.com/archives/2004_10_01_lsolum_archive.html#109753087255780029

in which he defends a "Free Will Progressive" view (one which argues against RMR and retribution but might be inclusive enough to include hard compatibilists), he mentions recent scientific research supporting his position.

In particular he cites the overwhelmingly supported finding of "The Fundamental Attribution Error":

"81Research has established that most of us routinely attribute to individual choice actions that are more likely the result of situational variables, a heuristic known as fundamental attribution error. See Lee Ross et al., Social Roles, Social Control, and Biases in Social-Perception Processes, 35 J. Personality Soc. Psychol. 485 (1977)(summarizing studies that find observers significantly exaggerate the causal power of personality). A system which de-emphasizes the importance of individual choice would tend to counteract this type of error, which is less prevalent in societies with less punitive criminal regimes. See Neal Feigensen, Legal Blame: How Jurors Think and Talk about Accidents 58 n.15 (2000)."

This made me mad, because, as far as I know, nobody has mentioned the importance of this finding for the free will controversy, and I wanted to be first. More importantly, if Free Will Progressives and Defenders of Orthodoxy can agree that we are arguing about emphasis, and not absolutist positions--that to claim victory either side need not show that all senses of freedom and responsible exist or do not, but only that the emphasis has historically been misplaced in one direction--then The Fundamental Attribution Error not only demonstrates who the victor should be, but provides a good explanation for this, too.

Of course, given all of this, the further question is "why did the Fundamental Attribution Error evolve?" (does anyone know of literature or speculation on this question?).

[Manuel]

Hi Kip-

Actually, we're on the cusp of seeing several things on the intersection of situationist social psych and free will. Eddy Nahmias has been banging around on these things for a bit, Dana Nelkin (I believe) has a forthcoming paper on this issue. And, of course, there are a couple of things out or soon-to-be-out by John Doris & Co. (a chapter in his book, and several co-authored papers, including a very interesting one on war crimes, written with Dominic Murphy). Heck, even I'm trying to bang out a paper on these things. And, I'm sure there are others in the publication pipeline that I'm not aware of, as well as some stuff that doesn't take up situationism specifically but other aspects of psych research relevant to free will/moral responsibility (e.g., Nichols, some stuff by Knobe, etc.). Given the lag-time for stuff to appear in print, I expect that we'll see a rash of papers on these issues in the next few years.

And Tamler- great idea on the Willies! It would be great to see a nominating and voting process for this every year- surely there are enough articles to have a best title and best paper every year, and at least every few years there would be enough books. And life time achievement- I'd nominate at least van Inwagen and Frankfurt to join that stellar list next time the Willies are handed out.

[John Fischer]

Tammler: I think it was brilliant to post "The Willies" on Halloween!! I'm just grateful you didn't call it, "The Creeps"!!

[Tamler Sommers]

Kip, regarding your last question, see Sommers 2005 (forthcoming somewhere soon, I hope). That's exactly what I'm working on right now--an evolutionary explanation for why we might believe ourselves and others to be free and responsible in a way in which we are not. I'll be giving a paper on this subject at the UAB conference (Distributive Cognition and the Will).

Manuel--you're right, they belong as well. I nominated Watson, Fischer, and Kane because in addition to producing great works on the topic, they have also put together valuable anthologies.

John-- Thanks, if only it were intentional.