Experimental philosophy is an emerging field of philosophical inquiry
[1][2][3][4][5] 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.[6][7] This use of empirical data is widely seen as opposed to a
philosophical methodology that relies mainly on
a priori justification, sometimes called "armchair" philosophy by experimental philosophers.
[8][9][10] 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.
[11] However, experimental philosophy has continued to expand to new areas of
research.
Disagreement about what experimental philosophy can accomplish is
widespread. 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.
[12] Others claim that experimental philosophers are engaged in
conceptual analysis, but taking advantage of the rigor of quantitative research to aid in that project.
[13][14] Finally, some work in experimental philosophy can be seen as undercutting the traditional methods and presuppositions of
analytic philosophy.
[15] Several philosophers have offered
criticisms of experimental philosophy.
History
Though in early modern philosophy,
natural philosophy was sometimes referred to as "experimental philosophy",
[16]
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.
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.
[10][12] 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][16]
Areas of Research
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. Bryce Huebner, Michael Bruno, and Hagop Sarkissian (2010)
[17]
have further argued that the way Westerners understand consciousness
differs systematically from the way that East Asians understand
consciousness, while Adam Arico (2010)
[18]
has offered some evidence for thinking that ordinary ascriptions of
consciousness are sensitive to framing effects (such as the presence or
absence of contextual information). Some of this work has been featured
in the
Online Consciousness Conference.
Other experimental philosophers have approached the topic of
consciousness by trying to uncover the cognitive processes that guide
everyday attributions of conscious states. Adam Arico, Brian Fiala, Rob
Goldberg, and
Shaun Nichols,
[19]
for instance, propose a cognitive model of mental state attribution
(the AGENCY model), whereby an entity's displaying certain relatively
simple features (e.g., eyes, distinctive motions, interactive behavior)
triggers a disposition to attribute conscious states to that entity.
Additionally, Bryce Huebner
[20]
has argued that ascriptions of mental states rely on two divergent
strategies: one sensitive to considerations of an entity's behavior
being goal-directed; the other sensitive to considerations of
personhood.
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.
[21]
Later 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.
[22]
However, subsequent studies were unable to replicate Weinberg et al.'s
(2001) results for other Gettier cases, with cross-cultural difference
appearing only when the Gettier case involved different models of
American cars.
[23]
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
Newtonian 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,
[24]
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) found that
"people's responses to questions about moral responsibility can vary
dramatically depending on the way in which the question is formulated"
[25]
and argue that "people tend to have compatiblist intuitions when they
think about the problem in a more concrete, emotional way but that they
tend to have incompatiblist intuitions when they think about the problem
in a more abstract, cognitive way".
[26]
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 that involve a knowledge ascription.
[27][28][29]
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".
[27][28][29]
Other work in experimental epistemology includes, among other things,
the examination of moral valence on knowledge attributions (the
so-called "epistemic side-effect effect")
[30] and judgments about so-called "know-how" as opposed to propositional knowledge.
[31]
Intentional action
A prominent topic in experimental philosophy is
intentional action. Work by
Joshua Knobe has especially been influential.
[citation needed] "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.
[citation needed]
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.
[citation needed]
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.
[citation needed] Experimental philosophers are aware of these concerns,
[32] 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".
[citation needed]
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, W. (2010). "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, 1 (3):395-406. (link)
- Feltz, A. & Zarpentine, C. (2010). "Do You Know More When It Matters Less?" Philosophical Psychology, 23 (5):683–706. (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)
- Joshua Michael Knobe; Shaun Nichols (2008). Experimental philosophy. Oxford University Press, USA. ISBN 978-0-19-532326-9.
- 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, J., Sinnott-Armstrong, W., Hull, J.G. & Zimmerman, A.
(2010). "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, Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 265–273.
(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? Children's 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)
- Sandis, C. (2010). "The Experimental Turn and Ordinary Language". Essays in Philosophy Vol. 11: Iss. 2, 181-196. (link)
- Schaffer, J. & Knobe, J. (forthcoming). "Contrastive Knowledge Surveyed". Nous. (link)
- Sytsma, J. & Machery, E. (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, T. (2008). The Philosophy of Philosophy. Wiley-Blackwell.
- Spicer, F. (2009). "The X-philes: Review of Experimental Philosophy, edited by Knobe and Nichols". The Philosophers' Magazine (44): 107. Retrieved 2009-01-08. (link)
References
- ^ Lackman, Jon. The X-Philes Philosophy meets the real world, Slate, March 2, 2006.
- ^ Appiah, Anthony. The New New Philosophy, New York Times, December 9, 2007.
- ^ Appiah, Anthony. The 'Next Big Thing' in Ideas, National Public Radio, January 3, 2008.
- ^ Shea, Christopher. Against Intuition, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 3, 2008.
- ^ a b Edmonds, David and Warburton, Nigel. Philosophy’s great experiment, Prospect, March 1, 2009
- ^ The Experimental Philosophy Page.
- ^ Prinz, J. Experimental Philosophy, YouTube September 17, 2007.
- ^ Knobe, Joshua. What is Experimental Philosophy?. The Philosophers' Magazine, (28) 2004.
- ^ Knobe, Joshua. Experimental Philosophy, Philosophy Compass (2) 2007.
- ^ a b Knobe, Joshua. Experimental Philosophy and Philosophical Significance, Philosophical Explorations (10) 2007.
- ^ Knobe, Joshua. What is Experimental Philosophy? The Philosophers' Magazine (28) 2004.
- ^ a b Knobe, Joshua and Nichols, Shaun. An Experimental Philosophy Manifesto, in Knobe & Nichols (eds.) Experimental Philosophy, §2.1. 2008.
- ^ Lutz, Sebastian. Ideal Language Philosophy and Experiments on Intuitions. Studia Philosophica Estonica 2.2. Special issue: S. Häggqvist and D. Cohnitz (eds.), The Role of Intuitions in Philosophical Methodology, pp. 117–139. 2009
- ^ Sytsma, Justin. The proper province of philosophy: Conceptual analysis and empirical investigation.
Review of Philosophy and Psychology 1(3). Special issue: E. Machery, T.
Lombrozo, and J. Knobe (eds.), Psychology and Experimental Philosophy
(Part II), pp. 427–445. 2010.
- ^ Machery, Edouard. What are Experimental Philosophers Doing?. Experimental Philosophy (blog), July 30, 2007.
- ^ a b Peter Anstey, "Is x-phi old hat?", Early Modern Experimental Philosophy Blog, 30 August 2010.
- ^ Huebner, B., Bruno, M., and Sarkissian, H. 2010. "What Does the Nation of China Think about Phenomenal States?", Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 1(2): 225-243.
- ^ Arico, A. 2010. "Folk Psychology, Consciousness, and Context Effects", Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 1(3): 371-393.
- ^ Arico, A., Fiala, B., Goldberg, R., and Nichols, S. forthcoming. Mind & Language.
- ^ Huebner, B. 2010. "Commonsense Concepts of Phenomenal Consciousness: Does Anyone Care about Functional Zombies?" Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 9 (1): 133-155.
- ^ Weinberg, J., Nichols, S., & Stich, S. (2001). Normativity and Epistemic Intuitions. Philosophical Topics 29, pp. 429–460.
- ^ Machery, E., Mallon, R., Nichols, S., & Stich, S. (2004). Semantics, Cross-Cultural Style. Cognition 92, pp. B1-B12.
- ^ Nagel, J. (forthcoming). "Intuitions and Experiments: A Defense of the Case Method in Epistemology". Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.
- ^ Nahmias,E., Morris, S., Nadelhoffer, T. & Turner, J. Surveying Freedom: Folk Intuitions about Free Will and Moral Responsibility. Philosophical Psychology (18) 2005 p.563
- ^ Nichols, Shaun; Knobe, Joshua (2007). "Moral Responsibility and Determinism: The Cognitive Science of Folk Intuitions". NoĂ»s 41 (4): 663–685. (PDF p.2)
- ^ Phillips, Jonathan, ed. (15 August 2010). "X-Phi Page". Yale. (§Papers on Experimental Philosophy and Metaphilosophy)
- ^ a b Phelan,M. Evidence that Stakes Don't Matter for Evidence
- ^ a b Feltz, A. & Zarpentine, C. Do You Know More When It Matters Less? Philosophical Psychology.
- ^ a b May, J., Sinnott-Armstrong, W., Hull, J. & Zimmerman, A. (2010) Practical Interests, Relevant Alternatives, and Knowledge Attributions: An Empirical Study. Review of Philosophy and Psychology[dead link]
- ^ Beebe, J. & Buckwalter,W. The Epistemic Side-Effect Effect Mind & Language.
- ^ Bengson, J., Moffett, M., & Wright, J.C. The Folk on Knowing How, Philosophical Studies, 142(3): 387-401.
- ^ Sinnott-Armstrong, W. Abstract + Concrete = Paradox, 'in Knobe & Nichols (eds.) Experimental Philosophy, (209-230), 2008.
External links