The question of the relationship between free will and determinism has engaged scholars since the earliest philosophical inquiries, yet the problem of free will remains unresolved despite centuries of debate. As theoretical arguments have often reached an impasse, recent research has increasingly turned to the empirical examination of lay intuitions as a possible guide for overcoming these deadlocks. With the turn to empirical, however, new questions arose, chief among them the stability and universality of intuitive judgments about such issues. If lay intuitions were shown to be cross-culturally stable, they could be incorporated into philosophical argumentation with fewer reservations; for now, however, this remains an open question. The aim of the present work was to identify key differences in how freedom is conceived within Western and East Asian intellectual and cultural frameworks, and, in light of these differences, design a research approach to examine how participants from two culturally and philosophically distinct contexts evaluate freedom of action in deterministic scenarios. The study included 113 participants (61 from Slovenia and 52 from China), each of whom was presented with two scenarios depicting different forms of determinism: a social-deterministic scenario, in which the action was explained by social and environmental factors, and a neurological-deterministic scenario, in which the causes of the action were situated in brain processes. For the purposes of the study, the concept of free will was broken down into six conceptual components, along with an overall assessment of freedom. In addition, the study assessed interpretative errors in reading the scenarios, including epiphenomenal bypassing, fatalistic bypassing, and indeterministic intrusion. After each scenario, participants rated statements corresponding to the six components and the interpretative errors on a 7-point Likert scale. Results showed that Slovenian participants were more likely than their Chinese counterparts to judge the action in the neurological-deterministic scenario as free, and they rated most components of freedom higher. Differences in the social-deterministic scenario were less pronounced. Despite relatively similar ratings, further analysis revealed that the components contributing to overall freedom judgments differed between the two groups. Moreover, interpretative errors were common in both samples, but their prevalence and influence on freedom judgments varied with cultural context. These findings suggest that lay intuitions about free will may not be as stable and universal as often assumed, but instead reflect culturally shaped patterns of understanding that emerge in specific reference–conceptual frameworks. The study thus broadens our understanding of the free will problem and highlights the need for philosophical discussions drawing on lay intuitions to consider the cultural background in which those intuitions arise.
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