Experimental philosophy is the name for a recent movement whose participants use the methods of experimental psychology to probe the way people think about philosophical issues and then examine how the results of such studies bear on traditional philosophical debates. Given both the breadth of the research being carried out by experimental philosophers and the controversial nature of some of their central methodological assumptions, it is of no surprise that their work has recently come under attack. In this paper we (...) respond to some criticisms of experimental philosophy that have recently been put forward by Antti Kauppinen. Unlike the critics of experimental philosophy, we do not think the fledgling movement either will or should fall before it has even had a chance to rise up to explain what it is, what it seeks to do (and not to do), and exactly how it plans to do it. Filling in some of the salient details is the main goal of the present paper. (shrink)

Folk theories—untutored people’s (often implicit) theories about various features of the world—have been fashionable objects of inquiry in psychology for almost two decades now (e.g., Hirschfeld and Gelman 1994), and more recently they have been of interest in experimental philosophy (Nichols 2004). Folk theories of psy- chology, physics, biology, and ethics have all come under investigation. Folk meta- physics, however, has not been as extensively studied. That so little is known about folk metaphysics is unfortunate for (at least) two reasons. (...) First, folk metaphysics is almost certainly implicit, and it is likely to be our default way of thinking about metaphysical problems. Moreover, one’s metaphysical commitments can have pro- found consequences—in scientific, religious, and ethical contexts, for example. Thus, folk metaphysics ought to be dragged out into the open and exposed to criticism. As Peirce eloquently remarked (1994, 1.129; see also 1994, 7.579). (shrink)

Several recent articles on the concept of intentional action center on experimental findings suggesting that intentionality ascription can be affected by moral factors. I argue that the explanation for these phenomena lies in the workings of a tacit moral judgment mechanism, capable under certain circumstances of altering normal intentionality ascriptions. This view contrasts with that of Knobe ([2006]), who argues that the findings show that the concept of intentional action invokes evaluative notions. I discuss and reject possible objections to the (...) moral mechanism view, and offer arguments supporting the model over Knobe's account on grounds of simplicity and plausibility. (shrink)

It is a commonplace that in philosophy, intuitions supply evidence for and against philosophical theories. Recent work in experimental philosophy has brought to bear the intuitions of philosophically naïve subjects in a number of different ways. One line of response to this work has been to claim that philosophers have expertise that privileges their intuitive judgments, and allows them to disregard the judgments of non-experts. This expertise is supposed to be analogous to the expertise of the mathematician or the physicist. (...) This paper critically evaluates this appeal to philosophical expertise. (shrink)

Recent evidence suggests that if a deterministic description of the events leading up to a morally questionable action is couched in mechanistic, reductionistic, concrete and/or emotionally salient terms, people are more inclined toward compatibilism than when those descriptions use non-mechanistic, non-reductionistic, abstract and/or emotionally neutral terms. To explain these results, it has been suggested that descriptions of the first kind are processed by a concrete cognitive system, while those of the second kind are processed by an abstract cognitive system. The (...) current paper reports the results of three studies exploring whether or not considerations about possible future consequences of holding an agent responsible at a present time affect people’s judgments of responsibility. The results obtained suggest first that the concrete system does not produce compatibilist judgments of responsibility unconditionally, even when facing appropriately mechanistic, reductionistic, emotionally loaded and concretely worded deterministic scenarios. Second, these results suggest that considerations about possible future consequences for innocent third parties that may follow as a result of holding an agent responsible affect people’s judgment as to whether or not the agent is responsible for what she did. Finally, it is proposed that these results compliment extant evidence on the so-called “Side-effect effect”, as they suggest that emotional reactions toward possible future side effects influence people’s judgment of responsibility. The impact of these results for philosophy and moral psychology is discussed. (shrink)