I ended a previous post on free will by suggesting that assumptions about free will have "profound implications on practical matters such as moral and criminal responsibility, blaming and praising people, and appropriate consequences for misbehavior." The current post explores these implications.

In the aforementioned post on free will and in a follow-up post, I emphasized how two people can disagree about the existence of free will because they define free will differently. But when we blame someone for harmful behaviors, there is only one conception of free will that makes logical sense, which is that a person acted intentionally and could have behaved differently under those circumstances.

Belief that (1) someone's harmful behavior was intentional, and (2) that the person could have behaved differently is the basis for attributing moral responsibility in everyday life and criminal responsibility in the justice system (Guidry, 2024). Our intuitions tell us that if someone's behavior was purely accidental instead of intentional, or if they were not free to behave differently, then we are less justified in blaming them.

Our modern criminal justice system recognizes that obvious brain malfunctioning can reduce a defendant's free will. For example, people with schizophrenia sometimes hallucinate voices that tell them to harm people (Docherty, et al., 2015). Or someone with a brain tumor can have an irresistible urge to kill (Johnson, 2018). Neuroparasites can disrupt brain functioning (McAuliffe, 2017). When people with obvious brain abnormalities commit crimes, the court system is likely to recommend therapeutic intervention rather than punishment.

In addition to physical and mental illness, the criminal justice system similarly recognizes........

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