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The objective was to examine students’ attitudes versus the concepts of free will and determinism, and to juxtapose these to anxiety and religiosity.An online survey was filled in by 162 Swedish students aged between 18 and 20 in an upper secondary high school. To measure the concepts of free will and determinism the Paulhus & Carey FAD-Plus scale (2011) has been used. Anxiety was measured with two types of the short STAI-index.The factor analysis did not support the idea of an extra division of the original FAD-plus index into the factors ‘free will without moral responsibility’ and the fac-tor ‘moral responsibility’. Some minor sex differences were notices in that females scored higher on fatalistic determinism as well as anxiety. The correlation be-tween free will and scientific determinism were very small negative and not sig-nificant, implying that the two concepts are compatible to at least some respond-ents. The same week correspondence were noticed between scientific determin-ism and moral, showing that the dichotomy between the concepts having low support among students.The traditionally seen opposite concepts of fatalistic and scientific determin-ism were surprisingly positively and significant corresponding.Conclusion of the survey results support the view that the question on free will and determinism is more complex than a simple two way street as shown by Paulhus & Carey (2011) and Nichols & Knobe (2007). Moral responsibility is strongly connected to free will, but is not negatively correlated to determinism showing an interesting paradox in the traditional view of these concepts.

Die Willensfreiheit ist ein zentraler Bestandteil des alltäglichen menschlichen Denkens und bildet eine wichtige Grundlage für Mechanismen unserer Gesellschaft. Trotz dieser zentralen Stellung herrscht unter Philosophen und Psychologen Uneinigkeit darüber, was Willensfreiheit eigentlich bedeutet. Dies wird besonders bei Experimenten zur Untersuchung der Willensfreiheit wie das Libet-Experiment deutlich. In dieser Arbeit wird in drei Surveys empirisch untersucht, ob der Freiheitsbegriff, mit dem die Libet-Experimente operieren, von den Freiheitsintuitionen der Laien gestützt wird, oder ob Laien eher den konträren Freiheitsintuitionen der Philosophen zuneigen. Die Ergebnisse der vorgestellten Untersuchungen zeigen, dass Laien eine von den philosophischen Vorstellungen abweichende Vorstellung von Freiheit haben. / Free will is one of the most crucial concepts in our daily life. It represents one of the most important aspects of daily human behaviour and has crucial importance in societal mechanism. However, despite its importance and long tradition philosophers still disagree on a definition. At the heart of the problem lie diverging intuitions about what is important for the concept of freedom. This is particular obvious in neuroscientific experiment, like the famous Libet-Experiment. Here I investigate in three empirical surveys whether the lay intuitions about freedom match freedom intuitions on which the Libet-experiment are based or rather the classical philosophical intuitions about freedom. For this purpose I adopt the empirical approach of experimental philosophy. The results demonstrate that lay people’s intuitions are pretty much in line with assumption that are made by the Libet-Experiment and contradict common philosophical intuitions about free will.

[pt] A responsabilidade jurídica é, sem dúvidas, um dos institutos mais relevantes do direito, tendo em vista o seu papel de assegurar a coesão social. Dentro da tradição jurídica, os modelos explicativos sobre a atribuição de responsabilidade buscaram prescrever, a partir da uma perspectiva racional, quais os fatores que deveriam ser levados em conta a fim de produzir juízos de responsabilização de forma acurada. Segundo estes, tais juízos deveriam ser produtos de um processo iniciado pela análise causal do evento danoso, seguida da análise das intenções do agente para somente depois assinalar sua culpa e a respectiva punição. No entanto, a tais modelos tradicionais escaparam o fato de que a nossa capacidade de realizar juízos de responsabilidade está inclusa em uma complexa estrutura cognitiva a partir da qual normativizamos o mundo. Recentes descobertas de pesquisadores pertencentes aos campos das ciências cognitivas, da filosofia experimental, da psicologia moral e da psicologia social demonstraram uma inversão na forma como enxergamos o processo de atribuição de responsabilidade. As teorias e pesquisas empíricas formuladas por essas áreas apontam a ingerência da moralidade, das intuições e das emoções em conceitos considerados como neutros pela teoria do direito, como os de causalidade e intencionalidade, e na forma como as pessoas formulam seus juízos de responsabilidade. Neste trabalho busco demonstrar a influência de julgamentos morais e de processos de natureza intuitivo-afetiva sobre a tomada de decisão acerca do instituto da responsabilidade jurídica, com enfoque na responsabilidade penal. Ao final do trabalho, deixo algumas pistas investigativas sobre os impactos dessa influência para o nosso sistema penal. / [en] Legal responsibility is, undoubtedly, one of the most relevant institutes of Law, considering its part in assuring social cohesion. Among legal tradition, the explaining models on the attribution of responsibility intend to assign, from a rational perspective, which factors should be taken in consideration in order to produce accurate responsibility judgments. According to them, such judgments should be products of a process started by the causal analysis of the harmful event, followed by the analysis of the intentions of the agent, to only later assign its blame and respective punishment. However, such traditional models miss the fact that our ability to make responsibility judgments is integrated among a complex cognitive structure from which we normatize the world. Recent discoveries from researchers of the cognitive sciences, experimental philosophy, moral psychology and social psychology fields demonstrate an inversion in the way we see the process of the attribution of responsibility. The theories and empirical researches formulated by these areas point to the interference of morality, intuitions and emotions in concepts considered as neutral by legal theory, such as the concepts of causality and intentionality, and in the way people formulate their responsibility judgments. In this work, I intend to demonstrate the influence of moral judgments and of processes of intuitive and affective nature over the decision-making about the institute of legal responsibility, focusing on criminal responsibility. At the end of this work, I trace some investigative clues about the impact of such influence on our criminal system.

[pt] O direito à felicidade vem, recentemente, ganhando destaque dentro do universo jurídico brasileiro. Sua relevância ganhou uma dimensão ainda maior com a apresentação de duas Propostas de Emenda à Constituição (n.º 19 e 513, de 2010) que tiveram como objetivo inclui-lo no rol de direitos fundamentais. Apesar do arquivamento destas PECs, o posicionamento que vem ganhando destaque entre os juristas brasileiros é que o direito à felicidade está implícito em nosso ordenamento. Entretanto, isso pode não ser benéfico para o ordenamento jurídico, tendo em vista as pesquisas recentes produzidas pela filosofia experimental e pela psicologia comportamental. As primeiras demonstram que o conceito ordinário de felicidade, além de capturar o estado psicológico do agente, possui – diferentemente do esperado – um componente valorativo; enquanto as segundas demonstram que as pessoas, de maneira sistemática, falham em prever ou escolher (caso tenham previsto) aquilo que maximiza sua felicidade. Partindo dessas contribuições, trabalha-se com três hipóteses: (1) O conceito de felicidade, por ser simultaneamente psicológico e valorativo, é bastante variável em virtude da concepção moral de cada sujeito, o que pode trazer resultados negativos para a tomada de decisão judicial; (2) Os diferentes vieses aos quais os indivíduos estão sujeitos no momento de avaliar o que lhes traz mais felicidade podem gerar resultados contrários ao esperado em casos juridicamente relevantes; e (3) Devido às limitações impostas a todos os sujeitos, é prejudicial para o direito a positivação do direito à felicidade. A partir da utilização de uma metodologia tanto bibliográfica quanto experimental, foi possível comprovar as duas primeiras hipóteses da pesquisa, além de terem sido encontrados fortes indícios de que a terceira também está correta. Conclui-se que não vale a pena para o ordenamento jurídico, ao menos no atual cenário jurídico brasileiro, positivar o direito à felicidade às custas da assunção de riscos possivelmente desastrosos para o direito. / [en] The right to happiness has recently gained relevance in Brazil s Constitutional Law debate, mostly because of two Proposed Constitutional Amendments aiming to constitutionalize such right. Even though such amendments did not pass, most legal scholars have adopted the position that the right to happiness is implicit in our legal system. However, this might not be beneficial for the legal system, when taken into consideration the recent finding from the fields of experimental philosophy and behavioral psychology. Research from the former demonstrates that the ordinary concept of happiness, besides capturing the psychological states of an agent, captures – unexpectedly – moral evaluations; while research from the latter demonstrates that people, systematically, fail in predicting and making decisions (if they had predicted) that maximize their happiness. From this point, the research attempts to prove three hypotheses: (1) the concept of happiness, because of its psychological and evaluative components, is highly variable due to the moral conceptions of each subject, what might implicate in negative results for cases based on its grounds; (2) The different types of biases that affect people s decision on what makes them happier might lead to results contrary to the expected in legally relevant cases; (3) Due to the limitations imposed to all people, the insertion of the right to happiness might be extremely harmful to the legal system. With the use of a bibliographical and experimental methodology, it was possible to prove the first two hypotheses presented, as well as to find reliable grounds that point toward the correctness of the third. Therefore, the work concludes that, at least in Brazil s current legal scenario, it is not worth constitutionalizing the right to happiness if this means taking the risks of producing possibly disastrous results for the legal system.

We describe and report on results of employing a new method for analyzing lay conceptions of intentional and unintentional action. Instead of asking people for their conceptual intuitions with regard to construed scenarios, we asked our participants to come up with their own scenarios and to explain why these are examples of intentional or unintentional actions. By way of content analysis, we extracted contexts and components that people associated with these action types. Our participants associated unintentional actions predominantly with bad outcomes for all persons involved and linked intentional actions more strongly to positive outcomes, especially concerning the agent. People’s conceptions of intentional action seem to involve more aspects than commonly assumed in philosophical models of intentional action that solely stress the importance of intentions, desires, and beliefs. The additional aspects include decisions and thoughts about the action. In addition, we found that the criteria that participants generated for unintentional actions are not a mere inversion of those used in explanations for intentional actions. Associations between involuntariness and unintentional action seem to be stronger than associations between aspects of voluntariness and intentional action.

In this dissertation I study and empirically test whether belief attributions are context-sensitive, i.e., whether the truth value of a belief report of the form ‘A believes that S’ is sensitive to contextual parameters. More specifically, I examine whether the Referential Knowledge that the Audience possesses (that is, whether the hearer of a report is familiar with the name employed in it) and/or the Stakes for the agent at the time of attribution, affect patterns of attribution in a way such that the variation in them causes that a single report be correctly made in one context but not in other while nothing in the mental state of the agent has changed. To this end, I designed original experimental material and tested it on several samples of undergraduates at the Universitat de Barcelona and Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. I here make an analysis of methodological approaches in empiric testing of some philosophical matters and offer considerations about experimentation on belief ascriptions in particular. I conclude the data gathered supports the hypothesis that there are contextualist patterns of belief attribution as regards the Referential Knowledge of the Audience parameter, but not for the Stakes variable.

We describe and report on results of employing a new method for analyzing lay conceptions of intentional and unintentional action. Instead of asking people for their conceptual intuitions with regard to construed scenarios, we asked our participants to come up with their own scenarios and to explain why these are examples of intentional or unintentional actions. By way of content analysis, we extracted contexts and components that people associated with these action types. Our participants associated unintentional actions predominantly with bad outcomes for all persons involved and linked intentional actions more strongly to positive outcomes, especially concerning the agent. People’s conceptions of intentional action seem to involve more aspects than commonly assumed in philosophical models of intentional action that solely stress the importance of intentions, desires, and beliefs. The additional aspects include decisions and thoughts about the action. In addition, we found that the criteria that participants generated for unintentional actions are not a mere inversion of those used in explanations for intentional actions. Associations between involuntariness and unintentional action seem to be stronger than associations between aspects of voluntariness and intentional action.

The thesis focuses on the irreducibility of the concept of a person to scientific view of the world. The main inspiration for thematising this specific aspect of folk dualism comes from Donald Davidson (two realms) and Wilfrid Sellars (two images). The theoretical sections are complemented by reflexion on results of empirical studies provided mostly by experimental philosophy in order to demonstrate how this approach benefits attempts to reach complex view of philosophical questions that have close connection to moral dimension of human life. The first chapter addresses a wider concept of self and introduces the idea of the necessity to bring the two conceptual realms on the scene: there is a specific conceptual realm (irreducible to physical realm or scientific image) enabling proper grasp of the concept of a person. The subsequent chapters address particular sub-concepts of the concept of self. The second chapter focuses on the concept of free will, and by referring to different views it points to the necessity to bring folk concepts into consideration. It concludes that the folk concept of free agent is transcendent with regard to scientific accounts and bears certain "supernatural" characteristics connected to the concept of conscious will. The third (and central) chapter brings focus on the...

[pt] Compreender regras é central para entender o direito. Porém, várias questões envolvendo o conceito de regra permanecem disputadas. Uma delas esteve no centro de um debate importante na filosofia do direito do século XX. Será que regras são fundamentalmente uma função de seus textos, como pensava HLA Hart? Ou será que os objetivos morais perseguidos por regras estão embutidos no próprio conceito – uma posição assumida por Lon Fuller? Apesar de muitas décadas de debate contínuo, as duas posições ainda encontram defensores e detratores. Nessa tese, argumento que isso é em parte o resultado de um conflito entre os apelos à intuições que embasam cada posição. Hart e Fuller invocaram experimentos mentais que elicitaram intuições conflitantes em cada um deles. A ideia de que essas reações aos experimentos mentais seriam compartilhadas por uma população alvo está implícita no apelo que cada autor faz. Em outras palavras, os autores apostam que membros da população alvo têm certas crenças e atitudes. Porém, não há nenhuma evidência a respeito do sucesso dessas apostas. A filosofia experimental oferece as ferramentas necessárias para enfrentar essa falta de evidência. Ao precisar exatamente quais afirmações empíricas subjazem o debate filosófico, é possível conduzir experimentos que testam o sucesso desses apelos. Nessa tese, eu aplico essas ferramentas para tentar resolver o empasse entre Hart e Fuller sobre os papéis de texto e propósito no conceito de regra. Após reformular o debate como dois pares de teses conflitantes que fazem previsões empíricas, eu reviso artigos experimentais recentes que investigam as intuições de juristas e leigos a respeito de regras. Esses estudos envolveram milhares de participantes em diversos países e trazem implicações importantes para a análise do conceito de regra. Eles mostram que texto e propósito são prevalentes sob circunstâncias diferentes. Além disso, eles revelam diferenças importantes entre as intuições de juristas (que são mais textualistas) e leigos (que usam propósitos de forma mais frequente). Essas diferenças também se manifestam na variação das intuições entre pessoas de culturas diferentes. Leigos de culturas diferentes apresentam diferenças em seus julgamentos a respeito de regras, enquanto juristas do mundo inteiro convergem. Os resultados também sugerem perguntas de pesquisa inteiramente novas para a teoria geral do direito a respeito da natureza precisa dos propósitos e sobre as diferenças interpessoais em estilo de tomada de decisão. Eu avalio a forma como cada um desses achados se relaciona com os temas mais amplos que dividem Hart e Fuller (como o debate a respeito das conexões entre direito e moral), assim como as limitações da evidência existente. Finalmente, argumento que o modelo da filosofia experimental do direito pode ser aplicado de forma frutífera a outros debates longevos em teoria do direito. / [en] Understanding rules is central to understanding law. However, several issues about the concept of rule remain disputed. One of them was at the center of an important debate in 20th century legal philosophy. Are rules mostly about their texts, as HLA Hart thought? Or are the moral goals pursued by a rule built into its very concept – a position taken by Lon Fuller? Despite many decades of sustained debate, both positions still have proponents and opponents. In this dissertation, I argue that this is partly the result of competing appeals to intuition at the heart of each position. Hart and Fuller evoked thought experiments that elicited conflicting intuitions in each of them. The thought that those reactions to each thought experiment are shared by their target audience is implicit in each author’s appeals. In other words, the authors bet that the members of the target audience should have certain beliefs and attitudes. But there is no evidence of whether this is the case. Experimental philosophy provides the tools needed to tackle this lack of evidence. By working out precisely what empirical claims underlie philosophical debate, it is possible to come up with experiments that test the success of those appeals. In this dissertation, I set out to employ those tools to try to break the stalemate between Hart and Fuller over the roles of text and purpose in the concept of rule. After restating the debate as two pairs of conflicting theses that make empirical predictions, I review recent experimental work surveying the intuitions of laypeople and lawyers about rules. These studies involved thousands of participants in several countries and have important implications for the analysis of the concept of rule. They show that text and purpose are prevalent under different circumstances. Moreover, there are important differences between the intuitions of lawyers (who lean textualist) and laypeople (who lean towards purposes). These differences include a cross-cultural divide, with substantial cultural variation among laypeople, but convergence among lawyers. The evidence also suggests entirely new research questions for general jurisprudence about the precise nature of purposes and interpersonal differences in decision-making style. I consider how each of those findings relate to the broader themes dividing Hart and Fuller (such as the debate regarding the connections between law and morality), as well as the limitations of the existing evidence. Finally, I argue that this model of experimental jurisprudence might be fruitfully applied to other longstanding debates in legal philosophy.