Free will beliefs are better predicted by dualism than determinism beliefs across different cultures

Most people believe in free will. Whether this belief is warranted or not, free will beliefs (FWB) are foundational for many legal systems and reducing FWB has effects on behavior from the motor to the social level. This raises the important question as to which specific FWB people hold. There are many different ways to conceptualize free will, and some might see physical determinism as a threat that might reduce FWB, while others might not. Here, we investigate lay FWB in a large, representative, replicated online survey study in the US and Singapore (n = 1800), assessing differences in FWB with unprecedented depth within and between cultures. Specifically, we assess the relation of FWB, as measured using the Free Will Inventory, to determinism, dualism and related concepts like libertarianism and compatibilism. We find that libertarian, compatibilist, and dualist, intuitions were related to FWB, but that these intuitions were often logically inconsistent. Importantly, direct comparisons suggest that dualism was more predictive of FWB than other intuitions. Thus, believing in free will goes hand-in-hand with a belief in a non-physical mind. Highlighting the importance of dualism for FWB impacts academic debates on free will, which currently largely focus on its relation to determinism. Our findings also shed light on how recent (neuro)scientific findings might impact FWB. Demonstrating physical determinism in the brain need not have a strong impact on FWB, due to a wide-spread belief in dualism

Alltagsintuitionen zur Willensfreiheit

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

2018_04_FreeWillBeliefs_Determinism_Dualism

Here, you will find all data and code described in: Wisniewski, Deutschländer, Haynes (2019) Free will beliefs are better predicted by dualism than determinism beliefs across different cultures. PLOS ON

Investigation of Shared Genetic Risk Factors Between Parkinson's Disease and Cancers

BackgroundEpidemiological studies that examined the association between Parkinson's disease (PD) and cancers led to inconsistent results, but they face a number of methodological difficulties.ObjectiveWe used results from genome-wide association studies (GWASs) to study the genetic correlation between PD and different cancers to identify common genetic risk factors.MethodsWe used individual data for participants of European ancestry from the Courage-PD (Comprehensive Unbiased Risk Factor Assessment for Genetics and Environment in Parkinson's Disease; PD, N = 16,519) and EPITHYR (differentiated thyroid cancer, N = 3527) consortia and summary statistics of GWASs from iPDGC (International Parkinson Disease Genomics Consortium; PD, N = 482,730), Melanoma Meta-Analysis Consortium (MMAC), Breast Cancer Association Consortium (breast cancer), the Prostate Cancer Association Group to Investigate Cancer Associated Alterations in the Genome (prostate cancer), International Lung Cancer Consortium (lung cancer), and Ovarian Cancer Association Consortium (ovarian cancer) (N comprised between 36,017 and 228,951 for cancer GWASs). We estimated the genetic correlation between PD and cancers using linkage disequilibrium score regression. We studied the association between PD and polymorphisms associated with cancers, and vice versa, using cross-phenotypes polygenic risk score (PRS) analyses.ResultsWe confirmed a previously reported positive genetic correlation of PD with melanoma (Gcorr = 0.16 [0.04; 0.28]) and reported an additional significant positive correlation of PD with prostate cancer (Gcorr = 0.11 [0.03; 0.19]). There was a significant inverse association between the PRS for ovarian cancer and PD (odds ratio [OR] = 0.89 [0.84; 0.94]). Conversely, the PRS of PD was positively associated with breast cancer (OR = 1.08 [1.06; 1.10]) and inversely associated with ovarian cancer (OR = 0.95 [0.91; 0.99]). The association between PD and ovarian cancer was mostly driven by rs183211 located in an intron of the NSF gene (17q21.31).ConclusionsWe show evidence in favor of a contribution of pleiotropic genes to the association between PD and specific cancers. © 2023 The Authors. Movement Disorders published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society. This article has been contributed to by U.S. Government employees and their work is in the public domain in the USA