Experimental philosophy

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Experimental philosophy is an emerging field of philosophical inquiry that makes use of empirical data—often gathered through surveys which probe the intuitions of ordinary people—in order to inform research on philosophical questions. This methodology is in direct contrast with the one used in analytic philosophy, sometimes referred to as "armchair philosophy", where philosophers begin by appealing to their own intuitions on an issue and then form an argument with those intuitions regarded as premises.^[1]

Experimental philosophy initially began by focusing on philosophical questions related to intentional action, the putative conflict between free will and determinism, and causal vs. descriptive theories of linguistic reference. However, experimental philosophy has continued to expand to new areas of research.

Disagreement about what experimental philosophy can accomplish is widespread and several philosophers have offered criticisms. One claim is that the empirical data gathered by experimental philosophers can have an indirect effect on philosophical questions by allowing for a better understanding of the underlying psychological processes which lead to philosophical intuitions.^[2] Others claim that experimental philosophers are engaged in conceptual analysis, but taking advantage of the rigor of quantitative research to aid in that project. Finally, some work in experimental philosophy can be seen as undercutting the traditional methods and presuppositions of analytic philosophy.^[3]

[edit] History

Though in early modern philosophy, natural philosophy was sometimes referred to as "experimental philosophy", the field associated with the current sense of the term dates its origins around 2000 when a small number of students experimented with the idea of fusing philosophy to the experimental rigor of psychology. Until 2006 the movement had seen a relatively small growth but since then there has been a substantial and ever increasing number of student involvement.

While the philosophical movement Experimental Philosophy began around 2000, the use of empirical methods in philosophy far predates the emergence of the recent academic field. Current experimental philosophers claim that the movement is actually a return to the methodology used by many ancient philosophers.^[4] Further, other philosophers like David Hume, René Descartes and John Locke are often held up as early models of philosophers who appealed to empirical methodology.^[5]

[edit] Areas of Research

[edit] Consciousness

The questions of what consciousness is, and what conditions are necessary for conscious thought have been the topic of a long-standing philosophical debate. Experimental philosophers have approached this question by trying to get a better grasp on how exactly people ordinarily understand consciousness. For instance, work by Joshua Knobe and Jesse Prinz (2008) suggests that people may have two different ways of understanding minds generally, and Justin Sytsma and Edouard Machery (2009) have written about the proper methodology for studying folk intuitions about consciousness.

[edit] Cultural diversity

Following the work of Richard Nisbett, which showed that there were differences in a wide range of cognitive tasks between Westerners and East Asians, Jonathan Weinberg, Shaun Nichols and Stephen Stich (2001) compared epistemic intuitions of Western college students and East Asian college students. The students were presented with a number of cases, including some Gettier cases, and asked to judge whether a person in the case really knew some fact or merely believed it. They found that the East Asian subjects were more likely to judge that the subjects really knew. Later, a Edouard Machery, Ron Mallon, Nichols and Stich performed a similar experiment concerning intuitions about the reference of proper names, using cases from Saul Kripke's Naming and Necessity (1980). Again, they found significant cultural differences. Each group of authors argued that these cultural variances undermined the philosophical project of using intuitions to create theories of knowledge or reference.

[edit] Determinism and moral responsibility

One area of philosophical inquiry has been concerned with whether or not a person can be morally responsible if their actions are entirely determined, e.g., by the laws of physics. One side of the debate, the proponents of which are called ‘incompatibilists,’ argue that there is no way for people to be morally responsible for immoral acts if they could not have done otherwise. The other side of the debate argues instead that people can be morally responsible for their immoral actions even when they could not have done otherwise. People who hold this view are often referred to as ‘compatibilists.’ It was generally claimed that non-philosophers were naturally incompatibilist, that is they think that if you couldn’t have done anything else, then you are not morally responsible for your action. Experimental philosophers have addressed this question by presenting people with hypothetical situations in which it is clear that a person’s actions are completely determined. Then the person does something morally wrong, and people are asked if that person is morally responsible for what she or he did. Using this technique Nichols and Knobe (2007) have argued that people hold largely compatibilist theories of free will and moral responsibility.

[edit] Epistemology

Recent work in experimental epistemology has tested the apparently empirical claims of various epistemological views. For example, research on epistemic contextualism has proceeded by conducting experiments in which ordinary people are presented with vignettes which involve a knowledge ascription. Participants are then asked to report on the status of that knowledge ascription. The studies address contextualism by varying the context of the knowledge ascription (for example, how important it is that the agent in the vignette has accurate knowledge). Data gathered thus far show no support for what contextualism says about ordinary use of the term "knows".^[6] Other work in experimental epistemology includes, among other things, the examination of moral valence on knowledge attributions (the so-called "epistemic side-effect effect")^[7] and judgments about so-called "know-how" as opposed to propositional knowledge.^[8]

[edit] Intentional action

A prominent topic in experimental philosophy is intentional action. Work by Joshua Knobe has especially been influential. "The Knobe Effect", as it is often called, concerns an asymmetry in our judgments of whether an agent intentionally performed an action. Knobe (2003a) asked people to suppose that the CEO of a corporation is presented with a proposal that would, as a side effect, affect the environment. In one version of the scenario, the effect on the environment will be negative (it will "harm" it), while in another version the effect on the environment will be positive (it will "help" it). In both cases, the CEO opts to pursue the policy and the effect does occur (the environment is harmed or helped by the policy). However, the CEO only adopts the program because he wants to raise profits; he does not care about the effect that the action will have on the environment. Although all features of the scenarios are held constant—except for whether the side effect on the environment will be positive or negative—a majority of people judge that the CEO intentionally hurt the environment in the one case, but did not intentionally help it in the other. Knobe ultimately argues that the effect is a reflection of a feature of the speakers' underlying concept of intentional action: broadly moral considerations affect whether we judge that an action is performed intentionally. However, his exact views have changed in response to further research.

[edit] Criticisms

Antti Kauppinen (2007) has argued that intuitions will not reflect the content of folk concepts unless they are intuitions of competent concept users who reflect in ideal circumstances and whose judgments reflect the semantics of their concepts rather than pragmatic considerations. Experimental philosophers are aware of these concerns,^[9] and have in some cases explicitly argued against pragmatic explanations of the phenomena they study.^{[citation needed]} In turn, Kauppinen has argued^{[citation needed]} that any satisfactory way of ensuring his three conditions are met would involve dialogue with the subject that would be engaging in traditional philosophy.

Timothy Williamson (2008) has argued that we should not construe philosophical evidence as consisting of intuitions, and that such a conception rests on the "dialectical conception of evidence".

[edit] References and further reading

• Bengson, J., Moffett, M., & Wright, J.C. (2009). "The Folk on Knowing How". Philosophical Studies, 142(3): 387-401. (link)
• Buckwalter, Wesley. forthcoming. "Knowledge Isn’t Closed on Saturday: A Study in Ordinary Language". Review of Philosophy and Psychology (formerly European Review of Philosophy), special issue on Psychology and Experimental Philosophy ed. by Edouard Machery, Tania Lombrozo, & Joshua Knobe.
• Feltz, Adam & Zarpentine, Chris. forthcoming. "Do You Know More When It Matters Less?" Philosophical Psychology. (link)
• Kauppinen, A. (2007). "The Rise and Fall of Experimental Philosophy". Philosophical Explorations 10 (2), pp. 95-118. (link)
• Knobe, J. (2003a). "Intentional action and side effects in ordinary language". Analysis 63, pp. 190-193. (link)
• Knobe, J. (2003b). "Intentional action in folk psychology: An experimental investigation". Philosophical Psychology 16, pp. 309-324. (link)
• Knobe, J. (2004a). "Intention, Intentional Action and Moral Considerations". Analysis 64, pp. 181-187.
• Knobe, J. (2004b). "What is Experimental Philosophy?" The Philosophers' Magazine, 28. (link)
• Knobe, J. (2007). "Experimental Philosophy and Philosophical Significance". Philosophical Explorations, 10: 119-122. (link)
• Knobe, J. & Nichols, S. (eds.) (2008). Experimental Philosophy. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195323262 (link)
• Knobe, J. and Jesse Prinz. (2008). "Intuitions about Consciousness: Experimental Studies". Phenomenology and Cognitive Science.(link)
• Kripke, S. ( 1980). Naming and Necessity. Harvard University Press.
• Machery, E., Mallon, R., Nichols, S., & Stich, S. (2004). "Semantics, Cross-Cultural Style". Cognition 92, pp. B1-B12.
• May, Joshua, Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter, Hull, Jay G. & Zimmerman, Aaron. forthcoming. "Practical Interests, Relevant Alternatives, and Knowledge Attributions: An Empirical Study", Review of Philosophy and Psychology (formerly European Review of Philosophy), special issue on Psychology and Experimental Philosophy ed. by Edouard Machery, Tania Lombrozo, & Joshua Knobe. (link)
• Nichols, S. (2002). "How Psychopaths Threaten Moral Rationalism: Is It Irrational to Be Amoral?" The Monist 85, pp. 285-304.
• Nichols, S. (2004). "After Objectivity: An Empirical Study of Moral Judgment". Philosophical Psychology 17, pp. 5-28.
• Nichols, S. and Folds-Bennett, T. (2003). "Are Children Moral Objectivists? Childrens Judgments about Moral and Response-Dependent Properties". Cognition 90, pp. B23-32.
• Nichols, S. & Knobe, J. (2007). Moral Responsibility and Determinism: The Cognitive Science of Folk Intuitions. Nous, 41, 663-685. (link)
• Schaffer, Jonathan & Knobe, Joshua. manuscript. "Contrastive Knowledge Surveyed". (link)
• Sytsma, Justin & Edouard Machery. (2009). "How to Study Folk Intuitions about Consciousness". Philosophical Psychology. (link)
• Weinberg, J., Nichols, S., & Stich, S. (2001). "Normativity and Epistemic Intuitions". Philosophical Topics 29, pp. 429-460.
• Williamson, Timothy. (2008). The Philosophy of Philosophy. Wiley-Blackwell.
• Spicer, Finn (2009). "The X-philes: Review of Experimental Philosophy, edited by Knobbe and Nichols". The Philosophers' Magazine (44): 107. Retrieved 2009-01-08. (link)

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

• The Experimental Philosophy Page
• The Experimental Philosophy Blog - with several prominent contemporary philosophers as contributors.
  • (As of July 2009, The Experimental Philosophy Page and Blog list around 120 different contributors who are actively involved with research in experimental philosophy.)
• The X-Philes: Philosophy Meets the Real World - an article in Slate on experimental philosophy by Jon Lackman.
• The New New Philosophy - an article by Kwame Anthony Appiah in The New York Times about experimental philosophy.
• The 'Next Big Thing' in Ideas - an installment of Talk of the Nation on NPR about experimental philosophy in which Appiah is interviewed.
• Experimental Philosophy - an entry by Knobe in the Online Dictionary of Philosophy of Mind.
• Kwame Anthony Appiah interviewed about Experiments in Ethics an episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast.