Reply to Nichols and Knobe and Proposal for Research

Raleigh Miller
Georgia State University, 2008

0. Introduction
In this paper, I reply to a study by Nichols and Knobe (2008b). This study indicates that a
majority of subjects, given the stipulation that that a universe operates deterministically, report
incompatibilist intuitions when presented with abstract descriptions of behavior. That is to say,
subjects refrain from ascribing moral responsibility to actors within such a universe. Subjects in
the study increasingly reported compatibilist intuitions (assigned moral responsibility to actors
within the universe) as descriptions of behavior within that universe become more concrete.
They further indicate that subjects are increasingly likely to report compatibilist intuitions
concerning behavior to which they have an affected emotional response, compared to behavior to
which they have a neutral emotional response. Nichols and Knobe speculate that such findings
indicate compatibilist intuitions are generated by mechanisms governing affect. (c.f. 2008b, p.
106-7) I will suggest an alternative explanation. I develop an account of Nichols and Knobe‟s
data which can explain, to some extent, the observed shift into intuition reports with reference
only to the semantic maneuvers in Nichols and Knobe‟s survey. The extent to which I am right is
the extent to which Nichols and Knobe‟s conclusion (that psychological mechanisms governing
affect produce compatibilist intuitions) ought to be treated with hesitation and skepticism.
In §I, I will present and motivate Nichols and Knobe‟s argument. In §II, I will analyze
Nichols and Knobe‟s description of a deterministic universe. I will particularly draw attention to
their use of the phrase “it had to happen that.” I will introduce Knobe and Nichols‟ argument
(2008b, 110) that it is not incumbent upon them to present a theoretically neutral characterization
of determinism. I will refute this argument, reinstating Nichols and Knobe‟s obligation to present
a theoretically neutral characterization of determinism. In §III I will argue that the use of the
sentence form “it had to happen that John ate French fries” elicits incompatibilist intuitions when
used with reference to abstract cases. In §IV, I will argue that the use of the sentence form “it had
to happen that John at French Fries” elicits compatibilist intuitions when applied to particular
cases by priming subjects to read the previous phrase as “John had to eat French fries”. Of
particular importance will be my claim that this priming is unrelated to the tendency of particular
cases to activate psychological mechanisms that govern affect. In §V, I will conclude that an
alternative explanation of Nichols and Knobe‟s data may diminish the extent to which we can
speculate that neural and psychological mechanisms which govern affect are in turn responsible
for generating compatibilist intuitions. The increase in compatibilist reports in response to
concrete scenarios that invoke an affected emotional response may in part result from semantic
features of those scenarios, to which affect is irrelevant. Finally, I will consider the implications
of such an explanation upon the free will debate. In §VII, I will make some suggestions for
empirical investigation of my claims, particularly those I make in §III and §IV.
§I. Setting the Stage
Recently, the free will debate has largely been a dispute between the compatibilist and
the incompatibilist. The incompatibilist maintains that determinism is incompatible with the
proposition that human beings act freely and the proposition that human beings are morally
responsible for their actions. The compatibilist maintains that free action is still possible and
intelligible in a deterministic universe. To act freely is to act such that one is genuinely deserving1
of praise or blame for one‟s actions. Determinism is understood as the proposition that every
event in the physical world is completely caused by preceding events. That is, given the past and
the laws of nature, the future is entailed necessarily.2
Incompatibilists maintain that determinism is incompatible with free will and moral
responsibility. Historically, the incompatibilist has relied upon an intuition premise. The form of
the intuition premise is “Intuitively we would all say that X”. The incompatibilist has insisted
that the incompatibility of free will and determinism is intuitive. That is, competent language
users, upon investigation of their “free will” concept, would confidently assert that people in a
deterministic universe would not have free will. I am not suggesting that incompatibilist proceed
directly from the intuition premise to the incompatibilist conclusion, but a review of the literature
indicates that many have considered the intuition premise to be something that the incompatibilist
cannot do without.3 Recently, experimental philosophers have taken aim at such intuition
premises. Making use of empirical methods in experimental psychology, experimental
philosophers have sought to determine the extent to which such intuition premises assert
propositions to which the “folk”4 would so readily assent. (Knobe and Nichols (2008a), Nahmias
and Nadelhoffer (2007)) For instance, compatibilists have had modest success showing that the
majority of people will attribute moral responsibility and free will to hypothetical agents across a
range of deterministic scenarios and a range of actions (Nahmias and Nadelhoffer 2008). In
response, Nichols and Knobe (2008b) have collected competing data which suggests that the
majority of respondents will not attribute moral responsibility5 to an agent in a deterministic
scenario when it is described abstractly. Knobe and Nichols present data which indicates that
respondents increasingly attribute moral responsibility to such agents (more than 70%) as the
agent is characterized more concretely and her action is more imbued with negative affect.
§II. Characterization of Determinism
Nichols and Knobe‟s presentation of determinism is as follows:
Imagine a universe (Universe A) in which everything that happens is completely caused by
whatever happened before it. This is true from the very beginning of the universe, so what
happened in the beginning of the universe caused what happened next, and so on right up until the
present. For example one day John decided to have French fries at lunch. Like everything else, this
decision was completely caused by what happened before it. So, if everything in this universe was
exactly the same up until John made his decision, then it had to happen that John would decide to
have French fries. Now imagine a universe (Universe B) in which almost everything that happens
is completely caused by whatever happened before it. The one exception is human decision
making. For example, one day Mary decided to have French fries at lunch. Since a person‟s
decision in this universe is not completely caused by what happened before it, even if everything
in the universe was exactly the same up until Mary made her decision, it did not have to happen
that Mary would decide to have French fries. She could have decided to have something different.
The key difference, then, is that in Universe A every decision is completely caused by what
happened before the decision—given the past, each decision has to happen the way that it does.
By contrast, in Universe B, decisions are not completely caused by the past, and each human
decision does not have to happen the way that it does. (2008b, 110-1)

They subsequently offer one of the two following conditions

[Concrete condition] “In Universe A, a man named Bill has become attracted to his secretary and
he decides that the only way to be with her is to kill his wife and 3 children. He knows that it is
impossible to escape from his house in the event of a fire. Before he leaves on a business trip, he
sets up a device in his basement that burns down the house and kills his family. Is Bill fully
morally responsible for killing his wife and children?”

[Abstract condition] “In Universe A, is it possible for a person to be fully morally responsible?”
(2008b, 111)

I will suggest below that this characterization of determinism is decidedly not theoretically
neutral. Knobe and Nichols anticipate this accusation, and claim that it is not incumbent upon
them to present a neutral characterization of determinism, on the grounds that they are not
measuring the percentage of people who report [in]compatibilist intuitions. Rather, they are
measuring the change in reports of [in]compatibilist intuitions as details about the scenario vary.
They write,
…there are many ways of describing determinism, and the overall rate of incompatibilist
responses might have been higher or lower if we had used a somewhat different description. Still,
one cannot plausibly dismiss the high rate of incompatibilist responses in the abstract condition as
a product of some subtle bias in our description of determinism. After all, the concrete condition
used precisely the same description, and yet subjects in that condition were significantly more
likely to give compatibilist responses. (2008b)

Since everyone is reading the same characterization of determinism, Nichols and Knobe suggest
that any change in people‟s reports cannot be explained away by reference to a biased
characterization of determinism.
I am not the first to suggest that Knobe and Nichols presentation of determinism is
biased. Nahmias (2006) suggests that, insofar as the characterization aims at giving the folk the
concept of determinism (with which they may compare their concept of free will) the
characterization is simply inaccurate. Nahmias reads the phrase “it had to happen that John
decided to have French fries,” as suggesting that John necessarily decides to have French fries.
Determinism, strictly speaking, carries no such commitments; determinism‟s being true does not
entail determinism‟s being necessarily true, and thus does not entail its being the case that any
particular event in a deterministic universe necessarily occurred. Consequently, to say that a
token event in universe-A had to happen is misleading, to whatever extent it leads the respondent
to think that the token event necessarily happens. However, I fear that this leaves unanswered
Nichols and Knobe‟s contention that they need not provide a theoretically neutral characterization
of determinism. After all, if Nahmias is right, then the proposition that the universe is like the
one Nichols and Knobe describe is a stronger claim then the claim that the universe is
deterministic. If this is so, and if compatibilist intuitions increase in response to the given
scenario‟s being made more concrete and more conducive to activating psychological
mechanisms governing affect (as they did) this seems to strengthen Nichols and Knobe‟s
evidence that such mechanisms generate compatibilist intuitions.
In what follows, I suggest that things are not so simple. The fact that the characterization
of a determinism accompanying two different scenario is written in the same way does not entail
that it is read the same way. Nichols and Knobe assume that a biased characterization of
determinism could only serve to always prompt answer A, or to always prompt answer ~A. That
is, Nichols and Knobe only entertain the possibility that their characterization could be
unidirectionally biased. In the remainder of this section, I will introduce and develop the concept
of a multidirectional bias. In later sections, I will develop my claim that the above
characterization of determinism is multidirectionally biased.
Knobe and Nichols offer their respondents a characterization of determinism (C).
Suppose a characterization (C) either is semantically ambiguous, or invites an ambiguity. I say
that a characterization invites an ambiguity if it inclines (or tricks) a respondent to (into)
misinterpret(ing) the characterization (C), even if the characterization itself is unambiguous. If
the characterization (C) is semantically ambiguous or invites a semantic ambiguity, it might be
interpreted differently by different respondents (call such competing interpretations C1 and C2).
Suppose that one interpretation of the characterization (C1) biases a respondent towards a
particular response (A), and another (C2) biases a respondent towards a different response (~A).
After the characterization (C), Nichols and Knobe offer different stipulations, above labeled the
“concrete condition” and the “abstract condition” (call these, or any pair of different stipulations
R and T). It might be the case that different stipulations disambiguate the ambiguous
characterization differently. That is, one stipulation (R) might incline a respondent to interpret
the characterization (C) in one way (C1). Another stipulation (T) might incline a respondent to
interpret the characterization (C) in another way (C2). The property of the stipulation (R or T)
which disambiguates the characterization (as C1 or C2) might not be the property which the
experimenter aims to isolate (call this F). Thus, a strong correlation between a feature which the
experimenter aims to isolate (F) and an increase in a particular answer (e.g. A) may not indicate
that the presence of the feature (F) is responsible for that increase (in answer A).
Below I will clarify this with two examples, but first let me lift the veil, and apply the
above vocabulary to Nichols and Knobe particularly. I will suggest below (§III and §IV) that “it
had to happen that John eats French fries”(C)6 could be interpreted as “it had to happen that John
ate French fries” (C1) or “John had to eat French fries” (C2). My contention is that the abstract
condition (R) inclines the respondent to read the characterization accurately (C as C1) and the
concrete condition (T) inclines the respondent to read the characterization inaccurately (C as C2).
I argue that the accurate reading of the characterization (C1) prompts incompatibilist reports (A)
and the inaccurate reading of the characterization (C2) prompts compatibilist reports (~A).
Finally, I suggest that the feature of the given stipulations (R and T) which guides the respondent
to read the characterization (C) accurately (C1) or inaccurately (C2) is not the stipulations‟
tendency to activate mechanisms that govern affect (F).
I now offer a few examples of the phenomenon I am pointing to. Consider the following
sentence: “I will meet you at the bank.”(C) This is a familiar ambiguous phrase. This might be
interpreted as “I will meet you at the riverside” (C1) or “I will meet you at the monetary
institution” (C2). Now consider two added stipulations (R and T). First, “I will meet you at the
bank. Bring your fishing pole” (Call this C&R). Second, “I will meet you at the bank. [blink,
blink, blink] Bring your checkbook” (Call this C&T). The fishing pole stipulation (R) will prompt
the respondent to understand the characterization as referring to the riverside (C1). The
blinking/checkbook stipulation (T) will prompt the respondent to understand the characterization
as referring to a monetary institution. The blinking/checkbook stipulation is also unique insofar as
it includes blinking (this will be F). In an experiment that uses these stipulations, blinking (F)
will be strongly correlated with the report of monetary institution thoughts. We might absurdly
conclude that being blinked at (F) increases one‟s propensity to attribute monetary-institution
properties to the word bank. Clearly, however, our blinking/checkbook stipulation disambiguates
between riversides and monetary institutions, and to attribute this discrepancy to blinking (F)
would be hasty indeed.
 I will now tweak the above example slightly, to bring it slightly closer to Nichols and
Knobe‟s study. Consider again following sentence: “I will meet you at the bank.”(C) Now
consider two added stipulations (R and T). First, “I will meet you at the bank. Bring your fishing
pole” (Call this C&R). Second, “I will meet you at the bank. Don‟t forget your gun and cattle
prod, with which you will needlessly torture innocent hostages while I take all the money out of
the safe. ” (Call this C&T). Clearly the fishing pole stipulation (R) will prompt the respondent to
understand the characterization as referring to the riverside (C1). The cattle prod stipulation (T)
will prompt the respondent to understand the characterization as referring to a monetary
institution. The cattle prod stipulation is also unique insofar as it activates psychological
mechanisms governing affect (this will be F). In an experiment that uses these stipulations, affect
(F) will be strongly correlated with the report of monetary institution thoughts. We might
absurdly conclude that the activation of affect mechanisms (F) increases one‟s propensity to
attribute monetary-institution properties to the word bank. Clearly, however, our cattle prod
stipulation disambiguates between riversides and monetary institutions, and to attribute this
discrepancy to affect (F) would be hasty indeed.7
§III. “It had to happen that John would decide to eat French Fries”
In the previous section I roughly outlined a multidirectional bias. I have presented three
features which could cause a multidirectional bias. First, a survey contains characterization (C)
that is ambiguous or invites ambiguity.8 Second, further stipulations (R or T) by the survey
disambiguate between possible understandings of the characterization (C1 or C2). Further,
different stipulations disambiguate the phrase differently. Finally, the property of the stipulation
which disambiguates the characterization is not the property (F) about which the conclusion is
drawn. I will now suggest that Knobe and Nichols capitalize upon a multidirectional bias.
Knobe and Nichols‟ characterization of determinism contains the following sentence:

“So, if everything in this universe was exactly the same up until John made his decision, then it
had to happen that John would decide to have French fries.” (2008b, 110)

The phrase I shall concentrate on is “it had to happen that.” This particular wording is
very strange, though its frequent employment in the free will debate may numb us to this fact.
The phrase, as written, is hardly familiar to the folk. An internet search for “it had to happen that”
indicates as much. Use of the phrase is sparse, and generally fall into three camps, (1) uses in
which “that” is a demonstrative, not the antecedent to a proposition (such as “it had to happen that
day” or “it had to happen that way”) (2) explicitly fatalistic discussions (“And it had to happen
that he should come specially to Petersburg while we are here. And it had to happen that we
should meet at that ball. It is fate. Clearly it is fate, that everything led up to this.”9) and events,
understood by the speaker to involve “actors” to whom no one ascribes free will or moral
responsibility (“Shinkle said he had been anticipating a meltdown in the credit markets given the
rising number of mortgage defaults and foreclosures. „It just seemed like it had to happen -- that
there would be some ugly mortgage crunch,‟ he said.”10).11 Observation of this phrase “in the
wild” suggests that it plays a special role in language acts that deliberately diminish attributions
of human agency and moral responsibility. “It had to happen that” is part of a particular language
maneuver, in which the speaker would describe the scenario as one in which the actor is not in
control. The phrase itself is, to some extent, technical, as indicated by its prevalence within, and
its sparseness outside of, the free will debate. This should be alarming, given Nichols and
Knobe‟s rejection of experiments whose technical language, they think, raises questions
concerning the folk‟s ability to properly digest the contents of the survey (2008b, see pp.109-110
and note 23). Consider the phrase in question. “Has” is the third person conjugation of the verb
have. To have is to possess or to cause. One might “have a twenty dollar bill”, that is, possess a
twenty dollar bill. One might also “have Bob fired.” This is to cause Bob to be fired. These two
denotations of “have”, though distinct, are intertwined. To “have a twenty dollar bill” is to be
able to exercise causal power over the twenty dollar bill. To “have Bob fired” is to, in a certain
sense, be in possession of Bob‟s employment status. The subject in the phrase, that which has
something, is “it.” What is “it”? If “it has to happen that John kills his wife,” possession of
John‟s so doing is given to something (“it”) which is not John. Concerns, like those expressed by
Nahmias et al. (2007), that determinism is too often interpreted as mechanism, fatalism, or
epiphenomenalism, should come to mind. If John‟s agency is “had” by “it”, than we no longer
think that John is the one killing his wife. In this sense Knobe and Nichols‟ characterization
primes incompatibilist intuitions.
So far I have argued that Nichols and Knobe‟s use of “it had to happen that” in their
characterization of determinism is biased towards eliciting incompatibilist intuitions. But this
does not demonstrate my thesis. It is still available to Nichols and Knobe to say that this bias
does not explain the increase in compatibilist intuitions in when subjects are presented with
negatively affected scenarios. Those subjects who said that the murderous adulterer is morally
responsible, after all, were presented with the exact same characterization of determinism. I still
need to demonstrate that Nichols and Knobe‟s characterization of determinism includes what I
have called a multidirectional bias. In order to show this, I must first show that the
characterization contains an ambiguity or invites an ambiguity, and that this ambiguity behaves in
the way I developed in §II.
 §IV. “John had to order French fries”
I suggested above that “it had to happen that John would decide to eat French fries” is an
awkward sentence form and rare in common discourse. This ordering of words appears rarely “in
the wild.” On the other hand, a similar word combination is very natural and common in
everyday discourse: S had to a.12 A respondent to Nichols and Knobe‟s survey will find the
questions unsettling, the conceptual analysis difficult to execute cleanly.13 It is quite possible that
many respondents are reading “it had to happen that John decided to order French fries” simply as
“John had to order French fries.
In the previous section I argued that “It had to happen that John ordered French fries”
primed incompatibilist intuitions by attributing possession of and causal power over the agent‟s
behavior to something other than the agent. Contrastingly, I now suggest that “S had to decide to
order French fries” primes compatibilist intuitions. To say that someone “had to a” is part of our
agency vocabulary. Such a phrase is one we feel at home with when we are considering
deliberate, intentional action. Again, a brief search for the phrase in the wild will demonstrate
this to be true. Doctors insist that they “had to kill [their] patients”,14 Amanda Marcotte explains
“why [she] had to quit the John Edwards campaign”15 and Eugene Robinson explains “why Imus
had to go.” 16 These uses of “had to” language to do not diminish the role of agency in behavior.
They suggest that certain factors in the world rationally compelled the actor to act in a certain
way, but they do not diminish the extent to which the agent was acting, and if asked, the folk
would say of such people (in our universe) that they act freely. I thus suggest that “S has to a” is
part of our intentional vocabulary. We do not regularly say of inanimate objects that they “had to”
act according to particular laws. This language strikes us as inappropriate. In the case that I say
that “the stone had to fall” or “the sun had to rise,” I am usually, in some sense, attributing
agency to the stone or the sun. Indeed, we may say that “because the pressure was so high, the
gauge had to break” and we may say so without absurdity. I insist, however, that we don’t say so.
That is simply not the way we speak. In such a situation, we say that the high pressure made the
gauge break. For lack of a better word, saying that the gauge had to break is weird. If we are
involved in a vocabulary that employs the sentence form “S has to a”, there is a sense in which
we are already taking the actor‟s agency for granted. If it is the case that certain respondents are
primed to read “it had to happen that John would decide eat have French fries” as “John had to
eat French fries” then it would be fair to say that such priming could in turn prime compatibilist
intuitions.
What reason do I have to think that some respondents are primed to read “it had to
happen that John would decide to eat French fries” as “John had to eat French fries”? It is
plausible to think that concrete circumstances, and circumstances which heavily involve affect
prime a subject to understand “it had to happen that S would a” as “S had to a,” for the simple
reason that in such scenarios the respondent has a great deal more to process. With so much to
consider, weigh, and clarify, it is far less likely that they will strictly remember the particular
wording in Nichols and Knobe‟s characterization of determinism. Nichols and Knobe provide
some additional data that supports this speculation. When they reduced the length and number of
details given in the concrete stipulation17, report of compatibilist intuitions reduced from 72% to
50%. The remaining gap between this number and the percentage of subjects that report
compatibilist intuitions when faced with an abstract case could be explained accordingly: even in
the case of the shorter concrete scenario, the subject still has more details to process than they do
in the abstract scenario. I suggest that the reduction in mental processing necessary in order to
grasp the given stipulation makes the respondent far more likely to retain the wording given in the
characterization. As I argued in §III, the more likely the respondent is to retain the wording
given in the characterization, the more likely they are to be affected by, what I take to be,
language biased towards the elicitation of incompatibilist intuitions.
An increase in the complexity of the stipulation gives the respondent more to process, and it
becomes increasingly likely that the subject will retroactively assimilate data they‟ve received
into familiar speech patterns. It is plausible to suggest that after such a process, they are far more
likely to think of the deterministic universe as one in which people have to do what they do,
rather than one in which it has to happen that people do what they do. Such assimilation will
situate the respondent in agency vocabulary, and make compatibilist responses more likely. On
the other hand, respondents who do not have to process concrete details about John and his
exploits are more likely to keep the precise wording of the scenario in mind, and (as per §III) be
primed to report incompatibilist responses.
§V. Conclusion
Knobe and Nichols have suggested that their findings indicate that our reports of
compatibilist intuitions depend upon mental modules that govern affect. I do not deny that this is
a plausible explanation, and may well have something to do with their results. I suggest,
however, that semantic considerations regarding the characterization of determinism complicate
this conclusion by allowing for an alternative explanation. I have argued that Knobe and Nichols‟
presentation of determinism to subjects is not theoretically neutral, and may cause a multi-
directional bias. Such a bias raises doubts about Nichols and Knobe‟s claim that they need not
represent determinism to subjects in a theoretically neutral way.
 In particular, I have aimed to show that the Knobe and Nichols‟ distinction between abstract
and concrete scenarios, may have disambiguated between “it had to happen John would decide to
eat French fries” and “John had to eat French fries.” This in turn could explain the correlation
between concrete, negatively affected scenarios and reports of compatibilist intuitions without
indicating that mechanisms which govern affect produce compatibilist intuitions. It could also
explain the correlation between abstract and neutrally affected scenarios and reports of
incompatibilist intuitions without indicating that neural mechanisms which govern rational
deliberation tend to produce incompatibilist intuitions.
Notably, I have not challenged the claim that concrete conditions elicit compatibilist
intuitions and that abstract conditions elicit incompatibilist intuitions. My target has been the
claim that psychological mechanisms governing affect are responsible for the report of
compatibilist intuitions, and that psychological mechanisms governing rational deliberation are
responsible for the report of incompatibilist intuitions. Indeed, in accounting for the increased
report of compatibilist conditions when told of Bill‟s murderous, adulterous, arsonous exploits, it
is the concreteness of the stipulation (and the extra details provided thereby) to which I have
attributed the disambiguation of Nichols and Knobe‟s characterization of determinism. If Nichols
and Knobe are correct in concluding that mechanisms governing affect are responsible for
compatibilist intuitions, and that mechanisms governing rational deliberation are responsible for
incompatibilist intuitions, this weighs heavily towards the conclusion that cognitively reliable
psychological mechanisms are responsible for incompatibilist reports. This, in turn, supports the
conclusion that incompatibilism best reflects our conceptual commitments concerning free will.
If this conclusion is treated hesitantly, as I have suggested it ought to be, we are left with the (I
think) more plausible conclusion that mechanisms governing beliefs about particulars tend to
produce compatibilist intuitions, while mechanisms governing beliefs about abstractions tend to
produce incompatibilist intuitions. If we are left with this, however, it is not so clear that
mechanisms governing beliefs about abstractions are more reliable than mechanisms governing
beliefs about particulars. Such a conclusion, while potentially interesting, does not significantly
support the claim that incompatibilism is intuitive.
§VI. Proposal for Empirical Investigation.
I hope to substantiate the claims of this paper through further empirical investigation.
The format of the survey I hope to administer is to be found attached to this document.
In particular, my hypothesis predicts that characterizations in which the sentence form “S
has to a” is used will tend to increase reports of compatibilist intuitions. Further, my hypothesis
predicts that, among the respondents whose characterization of determinism included the phrase
“It had to happen that S a‟d,” those that report compatibilist intuitions will be more likely to
misremember the wording of the characterization of determinism, and report that the
characterization of determinism included a sentence of the form “S had to a”.
 Acknowledgments

Special thanks to Dan Burnston, Lucas Keefer, Eddy Nahmias, and Ben Sheredos for
comments on an earlier draft of this work.

Works Cited

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Nahmias, E. & Morris, S. & Nadelhoffer, T. & Turner, J. (2008). “Is Incompatibalism
Intuitive?” Experimental Philosophy. Oxford University Press. 105-126.
Nahmias, E. & Coates, D. J. & Kvaran T. “Free will, Moral responsibility, and
Mechanism. Experiments on Folk Intuitions.” Midwest Studies in Philosophy,
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Nichols, S. & Knobe, J. (2008b). “Moral Responsibility and Determinism: The Cognitive
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Pereboom, Derek. (2007) “Hard Incompatibilism”. Four Views on Free Will (co-
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 Notes

1
This is intended to ward off misunderstandings according to which an action may be free if it is proper,
effective, or prudent to praise them or blame them. The question is not just whether we can or should hold
people responsible for actions but whether the agent possesses enough genuine control over their actions
that they actually are responsible for what they do.
2
Concerning a recent dispute over the proper logical formulation of determinism, I will understand
determinism to be the proposition that our world is deterministic. I will understand the claim that a world
is deterministic as follows: (x)(y)((Vx&Dx&Uyx)(z)( ((Vz&Pxz&Lxz)Uyz)))) where Dx=x is
deterministic, Vx=x is a universe, Uxy=x obtains in y, Pxy=The past in x is the same as in y, Lxy=the
physical laws in x are held fixed in y. All visible (Pxz&Lxz) worlds will be worlds in which Uyz obtains.
We need not be worried about possible visible indeterministic universes, since presumably the fact that z is
a deterministic universe will be fixed by virtue of the laws being held fixed (any universe in which the laws
are indeterministic will be a world in which the laws are different.) This is very rough, and I‟m unsure
whether it‟s as clean and clear as it should be, but the general idea is that if a single universe (e.g. ours) is
deterministic, than any visible universe with the same past and same (deterministic) laws is one in which all
the same events will obtain, and that any visible universe in which the events aren‟t all the same is a
universe with different laws or a different past. I don‟t intend this to be definitive or uncontroversial, but I
consider it close enough to a widely held understanding of determinism that I may proceed without being
guilty of ambiguity.
3 e.g. Pereboom (2007), van Inwagen (1986)
4
I have been begged by a number of my generous editors to define some of my terms more precisely, such
as “moral responsibility” and “the folk.” I can only respond to such inquiries with an uncomfortable
silence. I don‟t pretend to know how best to explicate these terms, but any resulting vagueness is a
problem with the claims made in the study to which I‟m responding and the larger community in which this
debate is occurring. I have inherited this conceptual confusion from the dialogue in which I am taking part.
Any persisting unease with my use of such terms warrants further investigation and philosophical work, to
be sure, but should not stand to discredit the present essay as a response to previous work done in this field.
5
Knobe and Nichols‟ leave free will out of the discussion entirely, assuming it to be a strictly technical
notion.
6
This is not exactly right, since the characterization in question is of determinism. However, I could be
understood as saying (C) that the universe is such that it had to happen that Mary ate French fries. In this
case, (C1) is “that the universe is such that it had to happen that Mary ate French fries” and (C2) is “the
universe is such that Mary had to eat French fries”. This comes closer to the characterization (and its
disambiguation) being of a deterministic universe.
7
Much thanks to Ben Sheredos for his help on this section.
8
For a clarification of “inviting ambiguity,” see section II.
9
Chong, Ilyong. (2002) Information Network. Wireless Communications Technologies and Network
Applications. Springer. p. 502. My emphasis.
10
Sage, Alexandria. “Countrywide bank customers fret over deposits”. Reuters. Fri Aug 17, 2007. My
emphasis.
11
A notable exception: this phrase will appear frequently in philosophy blogs amidst a discussion of
determinism.
12
Compare 700 “hits” for “it had to happen that” to 355,000,000 for “had to”.
13
My own informal polling has suggested that people do not process the words they are given as is. They
must digest, juggle, and reorganize the words in order to make them familiar enough that they may feel
more confident in an answer.
14
Graham, Carolyn and Knowsley, Jo. “We Had to Kill our Patients.” Daily Mail. September 11 2005.
15
Marcotte, Amanda. “Why I had to quit the John Edwards Campaign”. Salon.com
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/02/16/marcotte/
16
Robinson, Eugene. “Why Imus had to go.” Washington Post. April 13, 2007.
17
“In Universe A, Bill stabs his wife and children to death so that he can be with his secretary. Is it
possible that Bill is fully morally responsible for killing his family?” (2008b, 112) It‟s a strange feature of
this shortened question that it asks whether it is “possible that Bill…” is responsible for his actions. This
word does not appear in the longer concrete stipulation.