section_path: Scientific approaches
section_name: Scientific approaches
paragraph_text: Scientific approaches
  
  Science has contributed to the free will problem in at least three ways. First, physics has addressed the question of whether nature is deterministic, which is viewed as crucial by incompatibilists (compatibilists, however, view it as irrelevant). Second, although free will can be defined in various ways, all of them involve aspects of the way people make decisions and initiate actions, which have been studied extensively by neuroscientists. Some of the experimental observations are widely viewed as implying that free will does not exist or is an illusion (but many philosophers see this as a misunderstanding). Third, psychologists have studied the beliefs that the majority of ordinary people hold about free will and its role in assigning moral responsibility.
  
  From an anthropological perspective, free will can be regarded as an explanation for human behavior that justifies a socially sanctioned system of rewards and punishments. Under this definition, free will may be described as a political ideology. In a society where people are taught to believe that humans have free will, free will may be described as a political doctrine.