These fears usually come in two varieties. The first focuses on a worry coming out of neuroscience. Specifically, that as research uncovers more about the neural mechanisms underlying human choice, people will be forced to discard their belief in libertarian free will, and by extension their concept of moral responsibility. Or another way of phrasing this is: By telling people that their decisions are "determined" by their neurons, and that they cannot directly control their neurons, scientists give people carte blanche to do as they please.

The second worry concerns the hypothesized incompatibilism between free will and our deterministic universe. That is, the existence of free will runs counter to the physical laws of the universe. That, given the current state of the universe and the laws of physics, events can transpire in one (and only one) way given previous events (i.e., there is no ability to do otherwise). While it may be true, that our universe is determined - and we should probably hope that it is - it is hotly debated whether this rules out free will. Further, even if we accept that determinism eliminates the possibility of free will it is not clear that it would threaten moral responsibility.

Setting aside this second worry then, what do we have to fear from neuroscience? The concern that neuroscience will undermine people's belief in free will (and thereby moral responsibility) rests on a precarious assumption: Namely that people's definition of free will is imbued with deep philosophical (or even magical) assumptions that run counter to what empirical science has demonstrated regarding the function of our universe and minds. However, while some have gleefully derided the folk having a concept of free will that is "nonsensical and unsupported by any evidence" (Cashmore, 2010, p. 4501), or as "some kind of magical mental causation" (Greene & Cohen, 2004, p. 1780) that "springs forth from some special uncaused place" (Bayer, Ferguson, & Gollwitzer, 2003, p. 100), and that is reliant on "a belief in the magic of the soul" (Cashmore, 2010, p. 4499), there is little data to date to support such mocking descriptions.

It may be considered a scientific luxury to study what people think about free will. But it is not just a luxury. More is at stake here. Not only is the free will concept claimed to be obsolete, but morality and the law are thereby challenged as well. Without a belief in free will, "one deserves no credit for anything... nor ought one to blame others" (Darwin, 1840, p. 27). Similarly the erosion of free will places our legal system in jeopardy. "The law's intuitive support is ultimately grounded in a metaphysically overambitious, libertarian notion of free will... To retain any degree of reality, the criminal justice system will need to adjust accordingly" (Greene & Cohen, 2004, p. 1776). Now, it seems, we face a problem that is not just about the meaning of a term, or about some interesting new scientific findings, but instead we face a problem concerning the moral and legal underpinnings of society.

Yet, these fears rest on the accusation that people's belief in free will is corrupted by hopeless metaphysics-to wit, by the alleged reliance on a dualist soul and nonstandard causality. What if, instead of a metaphysically-laden belief, the folk concept of free will is a systematic, meaningful distinction in human social cognition, with little metaphysical baggage, compatible with all kinds of discoveries of nature? Consider, for a moment, the evolutionary origins of folk psychology. Whenever ancestral humans began to think of each other as agents who make choices on the basis of thinking and reasoning, our ancestors probably had no idea how (or where) those choices "occurred." Their reliance on the conceptual insight of intentional agency did not depend on an answer to this how-and-where question.

Or consider the developmental origins of folk psychology. When human infants begin to grasp the logic of goal-directed behavior, when they begin to distinguish intentional from unintentional behavior, and when they start to use desire and belief verbs in their explanations of behavior, they probably have no idea about how (or where) those mental states "occur." The power of folk psychology lies precisely in its independence from specific implementation knowledge. This leeway allows humans to apply folk psychology to groups, lower animals, as well as to certain machines, gods, and ghosts.

Therefore if people's folk belief in free will is part of an evolved and developed system of folk psychology, it is no longer obvious that it entails assumptions about souls and magical causality. Instead there is emerging evidence that people may not hold strong philosophic beliefs about free will - they define free will in a very ordinary and arguably pragmatic fashion. They define free will as the ability to choose (not in the philosophically strong sense) based on desires and being free of constraint (that is, no gun-to-the-head). The concept is functional, rather than philosophical. It classifies and makes sense of human action and guides moral and legal judgments in a way that, over the course of evolution, has fostered successful, cooperative social communities.

There is no doubt that many people believe in souls and magic. But the question is whether those features define the concept of free will. If they do, and if the free will concept undergirds human moral and legal practices, then those practices may indeed be suspect. However, if this is the case it is unclear what "work" such a concept would do: either in everyday life, or for our human ancestors. But if the free will concept is free of those fantastic features, then our moral and legal practices are safe-safe at least from challenges against souls and magic.