It is a natural assumption in mainstream epistemological theory that ascriptions of knowledge of a proposition p track strength of epistemic position vis-à-vis p. It is equally natural to assume that the strength of one’s epistemic position is maximally high in cases where p concerns a simple analytic truth. For instance, it seems reasonable to suppose that one’s epistemic position vis-à-vis “a cat is a cat” is harder to improve than one’s position vis-à-vis “a cat is on the mat”, and (...) consequently, that the former is at least as unambiguous a case of knowledge as the latter. The current paper, however, presents empirical evidence which challenges this intuitive line of reasoning. Our study on the epistemic intuitions of hundreds of academic philosophers supports the idea that simple and uncontroversial analytic propositions are less likely to qualify as knowledge than empirical ones. We show that our results, though at odds with orthodox theories of knowledge in mainstream epistemology, can be explained in a way consistent with Wittgenstein’s remarks on ‘hinge propositions’ or with Stalnaker’s pragmatics of assertion. We then present and evaluate a number of lines of response mainstream theories of knowledge could appeal to in accommodating our results. Finally, we show how each line of response runs into some prima facie difficulties. Thus, our observed asymmetry between knowing “a cat is a cat” and knowing “a cat is on the mat” presents a puzzle which mainstream epistemology needs to resolve. (shrink)

In this paper I propose a future direction for comparative philosophy on which it enters the space of public philosophy by capitalizing on the fact that it is already cross-cultural, and adding multi-disciplinary research to its proper foundation. This is not a new thesis. Rather, it is an ideological articulation of thought that is already underway in what is sometimes called fusion philosophy, as found in the work of Evan Thompson, Jay Garfield, or Christian Coseru. My articulation begins with a (...) non-exhaustive delineation of distinct types of public-philosophy that are already well known in the public space. One core distinction I draw concerns how the very notion of ‘public philosophy’ can be understood. I distinguish between the philosophy-to-public direction of fit, on which philosophers enter the public space for some public benefit, and the public-to-philosophy direction of fit, on which the public plays a constructive role in guiding philosophers in some important epistemic manner. Because my position engages the issue of whether “philosophy” can truly be found outside of the west, I offer an account of the relation between science, religion, and philosophy with respect to inquiry into the human condition. In doing so I offer an argument against the view that philosophy can only be found in the west based on the difference between a term in a language and what the term picks out. I close with a discussion of how analytic philosophy, comparative philosophy, and experimental philosophy can come together to form one kind of bidirectional public philosophy. (shrink)

A semantic theory aims to make predictions that are accurate and comprehensive. Sometimes, though, a semantic theory falls short of this aim, and there is a mismatch between prediction and data. In such cases, defenders of the semantic theory often attempt to rescue it by appealing to Gricean pragmatics. The hope is that we can rescue the theory as long as we can use pragmatics to explain away its predictive failures. This pragmatic rescue strategy is one of the most popular (...) moves in philosophy of language, philosophical logic, and formal semantics. In this paper I argue that this strategy fails whenever the predictive failures at issue can be recast in epistemological or metaphysical terms. This general “reformulation argument” undermines a wide variety of pragmatic rescue attempts. (shrink)

Descriptions of Gettier cases can be interpreted in ways that are incompatible with the standard judgment that they are cases of justified true belief without knowledge. Timothy Williamson claims that this problem cannot be avoided by adding further stipulations to the case descriptions. To the contrary, we argue that there is a fairly simple way to amend the Ford case, a standard description of a Gettier case, in such a manner that all deviant interpretations are ruled out. This removes one (...) major objection to interpreting our judgments about Gettier cases as strict conditionals. (shrink)

Epistemic contextualists like David Lewis allow that we have substantially infallibilist reflective intuitions about knowledge even though our everyday talk accepts fallibilist attributions of knowledge. They give serious weight to both our everyday talk and our propensity to assent to the skeptic's conclusions, and give us a concept of knowledge that accommodates both. The skeptic would, of course, leverage such infallibilist intuitions in order to undermine the legitimacy of our everyday attributions. Most contemporary epistemologists would simply argue that our concept (...) of knowledge is fallibilist, but this doesn't give them a particularly convincing reply to intuitively compelling skeptical arguments. ;This essay, most generally, takes up the question of how best to argue about skepticism. I claim that a philosophical account of knowledge that responds to skepticism should be able to clearly accommodate our epistemic agency. In chapter 1 I explain how skepticism challenges our naIve conception of agency and introduce two criteria for an adequate response to skepticism. In chapter 2, I discuss contextualist solutions; I argue they fail to satisfy our criteria and fail on their own terms; I explain how both failures relate to a failure to adequately treat epistemic agency. In chapter 3 I develop a conception of epistemic agency that describes what it is to be an active, reasoning source of belief. This picture is at odds with a dominant strain of epistemology that has it that one is substantially subject to belief, not effectively responsible for it; I criticize an influential argument by Bernard Williams that claims belief is not an attitude we control. This discussion in chapter 3 gives support to, a rationale for, the anti-insulationism requirement set out in chapter 1. Finally, in chapter 4 I return to the methodological issues of how to argue about skepticism. I first defend the idea that a knowledge-based skepticism is worth philosophical attention. I then offer an interpretation of what the skeptic is up to, and discuss what an effective counterstrategy might look like; I suggest that a particular sort of normative argument is the best way with the skeptic. (shrink)

Immediate striking feelings without any conscious inference are viewed as one of the sources of truth by many philosophers. It is often claimed that there is a long tradition in philosophy of viewing intuitive propositions as true without need for further justification, since the intuitiveness, for traditional philosophy, suggests that the proposition is self-evident. In philosophical discussions, it was extremely common for philosophers to argue for the intuitiveness of their theories. Contemporary philosophers have put increasing attention and effort into the (...) study of this methodology in philosophy. They explicitly use the term ‘intuition’ and ‘appealing to intuition’ to refer to such common practice in philosophy. Recently there are numerous papers discussing the topic of intuition, its reliability, evidential status, and what philosophy ought to be. These disputes have lasted for several decades and it seems the disputes may even continue for several more decades. Despite the excessive usage of the term ‘intuition’, there are still polarized attitudes towards intuition: not only on the question of whether we should appeal to intuition in doing philosophy, but also on what ‘intuition’ means. The latter problem, the divergence of understanding on ‘intuition’, seems to be the main factor causing endless disputes of this topic and it should be the problem primarily solved. There are philosophers who notice the problem that there is no general agreement on the accounts of intuition. However, surprisingly, most of them have not attempted to solve the problem, but just simply give their own accounts of intuition, or claim that it is improbable to have general agreement on the definition of ‘intuition’ instead. In fact, it is possible to have a general acceptable theory of intuition. The main aims of the thesis are to provide the method of seeking the good candidates for a general acceptable theory of intuition and to use the method in seeking one of the good theories. In order to achieve the goals, the thesis will provide the ground for the discussion, by specifying several features of intuition as the desiderata of a good theory; and examine several theories of intuition that have been offered in recent literature as example. We will find that, unfortunately, among the theories selected in philosophy, there still seems to be no satisfactory account of intuition. Nevertheless, there seems a promising account of intuition offered in psychology. The thesis will argue the psychological account is one of the good candidates of general acceptable theory of intuition. If not, we at least have a method of seeking the good theories of intuition. (shrink)

The field of experimental philosophy has received considerable attention, essentially for producing results that seem highly counter-intuitive and at the same time question some of the fundamental methods used in philosophy. A substantial part of this attention has focused on the role of intuitions in philosophical methodology. One of the major contributions of experimental philosophy on this topic has been concrete evidence in support of intuitional diversity; the idea that intuitions vary systematically depending on variables such as ethnicity, socioeconomic background, (...) or gender. Because of the important implications, these findings have been the subject of extensive debate. Despite the seeming significance of the findings and despite all the debates that the experimental philosophy movement has prompted, what has not been examined systematically is the reproducibility of the results. Instead, the reported findings have been simply accepted as established facts. We set out to replicate a wide range of experiments and surprisingly failed to reproduce many of the reported findings, some of which are from the most cited and attention grabbing papers of the field. We draw two conclusions from our findings. The first is that the instability of intuitions has been exaggerated by experimental philosophers. Intuitions appear to be more uniform across different demographic groups. The argument that intuitions need to be discarded because they depend on arbitrary factors such as ethnicity, socioeconomic background, or gender does not seem tenable anymore. The second conclusion is that experimental philosophy needs a better system to ensure the reproducibility of published findings. The current research-publication system of various empirical fields, especially those employing statistical methods, leads to an overproduction of false-positive findings in the published literature. Unless changes are made to the current research-publication system, this overproduction is likely to continue, in experimental philosophy as well as other disciplines. (shrink)

The “expertise defense” is the claim that philosophers have special expertise that allows them to resist the biases suggested by the findings of experimental philosophers. Typically, this defense is backed up by an analogy with expertise in science or other academic fields. Recently, however, studies have begun to suggest that philosophers' intuitions may be just as subject to inappropriate variation as those of the folk. Should we conclude that the expertise defense has been debunked? I'll argue that the analogy with (...) science still motivates a default assumption of philosophical expertise; however, the expertise so motivated is not expertise in intuition, and its existence would not suffice to answer the experimentalist challenge. I'll also suggest that there are deep parallels between the current methodological crisis in philosophy and the decline of introspection-based methods in psychology in the early twentieth century. The comparison can give us insight into the possible future evolution of philosoph.. (shrink)

Edmund Gettier’s paper “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?” first appeared in an issue of Analysis , dated June of 1963, and although it’s tempting to wax hyperbolic when discussing the paper’s importance and influence, it is fair to say that its impact on contemporary philosophy has been substantial and wide-ranging. Epistemology has benefited from 50 years of sincere and rigorous discussion of issues arising from the paper, and Gettier’s conclusion that knowledge is not justified true belief is sometimes offered as (...) an example of the reality of philosophical progress. However, what can be called the Gettier problem has little to do with the text of the famous paper itself. The importance of the Gettier problem does not depend on the attribution of the tripartite theory of knowledge to Plato, Chisholm, and Ayer, nor on the psychological plausibility of the par .. (shrink)

Despite the swirling tide of controversy surrounding the work of Machery et al. , the cross-cultural differences they observed in semantic intuitions about the reference of proper names have proven to be robust. In the present article, we report cross-cultural and individual differences in semantic intuitions obtained using new experimental materials. In light of the pervasiveness of the Knobe effect and the fact that Machery et al.’s original materials incorporated elements of wrongdoing but did not control for their influence, we (...) also examined the question of whether the moral valence of actions described in experimental materials might affect participants’ responses. Our results suggest that uncontrolled moral valence did not distort participants’ judgments in previous research. Our findings provide further confirmation of the robustness of cross-cultural and intra-cultural differences in semantic intuitions and strengthen the philosophical challenge that they pose. (shrink)

Many philosophers would, in theory, agree that the methods and tools of philosophy ought to be supplemented by those of other academic disciplines. In practice, however, the sociological data suggest that most philosophers fail to engage or collaborate with other academics, and this article argues that this is problematic for philosophy as a discipline. In relation to the value of interdisciplinary collaboration, the article highlights how experimental philosophers can benefit the field, but only insofar as they draw from the distinctive (...) methods of philosophy and overcome the charge of “amateur psychology” by more consistently collaborating with the scientists they seek to emulate. It concludes that philosophers ought to collaborate with other academics in order to gain an experience-based understanding of the methods of other disciplines in addition to an understanding of the content of these disciplines. (shrink)

According to orthodox views of philosophical methodology, when philosophers appeal to intuitions, they treat them as evidence for their contents. Call this “descriptive evidentialism.” Descriptive evidentialism is assumed both by those who defend the epistemic status of intuitions and by those, including many experimental philosophers, who criticize it. This article shows, however, that the idea that philosophers treat intuitions as evidence struggles to account for the way philosophers treat intuitions in a variety of philosophical contexts. In particular, it cannot account (...) for philosophers' treatment of a priori intuitions, for nonpropositional uses of intuition, and for philosophers' failure to use intuition to exclude the counterintuitive. The article concludes that alternatives to descriptive evidentialism (some of which are sketched) must be developed, and that much of the recent debate between traditionalists and skeptics from, for example, experimental philosophy is probably based on a false presupposition. (shrink)

This paper responds to criticism presented by Steven Bland of my naturalistic approach to epistemic relativism. In my view, the central argument for epistemic relativism derives from the Pyrrhonian problem of the criterion. This opens relativism to an anti-sceptical response. I combine Roderick Chisholm’s particularist response to the problem of the criterion with a reliabilist conception of epistemic warrant. A distinction is made between epistemic norms which provide genuine warrant and those which do not. On the basis of this distinction, (...) we may reject the relativist claim that all epistemic norms have equal standing. I consider three points made by Bland against my position. These relate to epistemic pluralism, the relevance of evolution to epistemic pluralism, and empirical evidence as a basic source of knowledge. (shrink)

This essay takes a hard look at the current state of much academic (mainly analytic) philosophy and sets out to diagnose where things have gone wrong. It offers a sharply critical assessment of the prevailing narrowness, cliquishness, linguistic inertness, like-mindedness, intellectual caution, misplaced scientism, over-specialisation, guild mentality, lack of creative or inventive flair, and above all the self-perpetuating structures of privilege and patronage that have worked to produce this depressing situation. On the constructive side I suggest how a belated encounter (...) with developments beyond its cultural-professional horizons continental might bring large (and reciprocal) benefits. I also offer some tentative ideas as to what could or should mean as applied to philosophical thinking and writing. (shrink)

Erratum to: Philos Stud DOI 10.1007/s11098-013-0226-3Dear Reader, due to production systems the following changes could not be made to this article:In the paragraph immediately preceding the case description (ford-iii), the sentenceHere we explicitly state that Smith’s inference is based only on his belief that Jones owns a Ford, and that this logical inference provides Smith’s only justification for believing that someone in his office owns a Ford (to make things fully precise, we also add a time index).should be replaced withHere (...) we explicitly state that Smith’s inference is based only on his belief that Jones owns a Ford (plus the justified background belief that Jones is in his office), and that this logical inference provides Smith’s only justification for believing that someone in his office owns a Ford (to make things fully precise, we also add a time index).The added part is highlighted in boldface.And within the case description (ford-iii), the sentenceFrom this belief alone. (shrink)

Although radical forms of relativism are perhaps beyond the epistemological pale, I argue here that a more moderate form may be plausible, and articulate the conditions under which moderate epistemic relativism could well serve our epistemic goals. In particular, as a result of our limitations as human cognizers, we find ourselves needing to investigate the dappled and difficult world by means of competing communities of highly specialized researchers. We would do well, I argue, to admit of the existence of unresolvable (...) disputes between such communities, but only so long as there is a sufficient amount of fruitful exchange between them as well. I close with some speculation about when it is or is not legitimate to make an “appeal to discipline”: responding to another’s argument by saying something like, “we should do it this way, because we are philosophers (/linguists/psychologists/…), and that’s just what we do”. (shrink)

n the analytic tradition, the appeal to intuition has been a common philosophical practice that supposedly provides us with epistemic standards. The authoress argues that the high epistemological standards of traditional analytic philosophy cannot be pursued by this method. Perhaps within a naturalistic, reliable frame intuitions can be evoked more coherently. Philosophers can use intuition as scientists do, in hypothesis- construction or data- collection. This is an ironic conclusion: Traditional analytic epistemologists rely on the appeal to intuition, but cannot justify (...) it. Naturalists, on the other hand, are not those who need such a method; yet they can better accommodate it within their view. (shrink)

Empirical examinations about cross-cultural variability of intuitions, the well-known publication of Stich and his colleagues criticiz-ing thought-experiments and intuitions in philosophical debates, is still a challenge that faces analytical philosophers, as any systematic investigation of the methodology of philosophy must give answers to these basic questions: What is intuition? What role should intuitions play in philosophy? I present and examine the sceptical argument of experimental philosophers, and claim that experimental philosophers misunderstand the role of evidence in philosophy. My argument will (...) utilize Goldman’s view, according to which intuitions give reliable evidence about a person’s concepts, and this knowledge is valuable for further philosophical research as well. I will argue that the sceptical conclusions of experimental philosophers are harmless against this conception of philosophy, because even from a naturalist perspective certain kind of intuitive judgments about our concepts can be warranted, and this grants the specific epistemic status of intuitions. Of course, the reliability of introspection can be challenged. However, denying self-knowledge about my internal mental states is disputable – as I will show – both from a philosophical and a scientific point of view. (shrink)

Nagel, San Juan, and Mar report an experiment investigating lay attributions of knowledge, belief, and justification. They suggest that, in keeping with the expectations of philosophers, but contra recent empirical findings [Starmans, C. & Friedman, O. (2012). The folk conception of knowledge. Cognition, 124, 272–283], laypeople consistently deny knowledge in Gettier cases, regardless of whether the beliefs are based on ‘apparent’ or ‘authentic’ evidence. In this reply, we point out that Nagel et al. employed a questioning method that biased participants (...) to deny knowledge. Moreover, careful examination of participants’ responses reveals that they attributed knowledge in Gettier cases. We also note that Nagel et al. misconstrue the distinction between ‘apparent’ and ‘authentic’ evidence, and use scenarios that do not feature the structure that characterizes most Gettier cases. We conclude that NS&M’s findings are fully compatible with the claim that laypeople attribute knowledge in Gettier cases in general, but are significantly less likely to attribute knowledge when a belief is generated based on apparent evidence. (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)

The linguistic and cognitive sciences have severely underestimated the degree of linguistic diversity in the world. Part of the reason for this is that we have projected assumptions based on English and familiar languages onto the rest. We focus on some distortions this has introduced, especially in the study of semantics.

Traditional philosophy has been under attack from several quarters in recent years. The traditional philosopher views philosophy as an armchair discipline relying, for the most part, on reason and reflection. Some philosophers doubt the legitimacy of this type of inquiry. Their arguments usually occur along two dimensions. Some argue that the primary data source for the armchair philosopher--intuition--does not provide evidence for philosophical theories. Others argue that conceptual analysis, which is the preferred method of inquiry for armchair philosophers, can't yield (...) the results the philosopher is looking for, since concepts like 'knowledge' or 'free-will' vary from culture to culture or even between persons within a culture. Finally, some philosophers argue that we should abandon the armchair program because philosophy should be an empirical enterprise continuous with the sciences. I argue that attempts to undermine intuition fail and that one can justify the evidential status of intuition in a non-question begging way. I then argue that attacks on the belief in shared concepts do not succeed because they often conflate the nature of scientific objects with those of interest to the philosopher. However, if concepts do vary from culture to culture, I show that the philosopher need not abandon the armchair. She can still do conceptual analysis but it will be only the entry point into the philosophical dialogue. I apply this approach to epistemology arguing that the central epistemic questions ought to be the existential and the normative. This approach helps to vindicate epistemic internalism. (shrink)

How do agents with limited cognitive capacities flourish in informationally impoverished or unexpected circumstances? Aristotle argued that human flourishing emerged from knowing about the world and our place within it. If he is right, then the virtuous processes that produce knowledge, best explain flourishing. Influenced by Aristotle, virtue epistemology defends an analysis of knowledge where beliefs are evaluated for their truth and the intellectual virtue or competences relied on in their creation. However, human flourishing may emerge from how degrees of (...) ignorance are managed in an uncertain world. Perhaps decision-making in the shadow of knowledge best explains human wellbeing—a Bayesian approach? In this dissertation I argue that a hybrid of virtue and Bayesian epistemologies explains human flourishing—what I term homeostatic epistemology. Homeostatic epistemology supposes that an agent has a rational credence p when p is the product of reliable processes aligned with the norms of probability theory; whereas an agent knows that p when a rational credence p is the product of reliable processes such that: 1) p meets some relevant threshold for belief, 2) p coheres with a satisficing set of relevant beliefs and, 3) the relevant set of beliefs is coordinated appropriately to meet the integrated aims of the agent. Homeostatic epistemology recognizes that justificatory relationships between beliefs are constantly changing to combat uncertainties and to take advantage of predictable circumstances. Contrary to holism, justification is built up and broken down across limited sets like the anabolic and catabolic processes that maintain homeostasis in the cells, organs and systems of the body. It is the coordination of choristic sets of reliably produced beliefs that create the greatest flourishing given the limitations inherent in the situated agent. (shrink)

One aim of this article is to explore the connection between the Knobe effect and the epistemic side-effect effect (ESEE). Additionally, we report evidence about a further generalization regarding probability judgments. We demonstrate that all effects can be found within German material, using ‘absichtlich’ [intentionally], ‘wissen’ [know] and ‘wahrscheinlich’ [likely]. As the explanations discussed with regard to the Knobe effect do not suffice to explicate the ESEE, we survey whether the characteristic asymmetry in knowledge judgments is caused by a differing (...) perception of probabilities concerning the occurrence of the side-effects. Our findings show that a negative side-effect is judged more probable, even if the objective probabilities would suggest otherwise. We argue that the best explanation for these results is that the Knobe effect applies to the perception of probabilities as well: a probabilistic side-effect effect. (shrink)

One central purpose of Experimental Philosophy (hereafter, x-phi) is to criticize the alleged reliance on intuitions in contemporary philosophy. In my book Philosophy without Intuitions (hereafter, PWI), I argue that philosophers don’t rely on intuitions. If those arguments are good, experimental philosophy has been engaged in an attack on a strawman. The goal of this paper is to bolster the criticism of x-phi in the light of responses.

Philosophical theorizing about truth manifests a desire to conform to the ordinary or folk notion of truth. This practice often involves attempts to accommodate some form of correspondence. We discuss this accommodation project in light of two empirical projects intended to describe the content of the ordinary conception of truth. One, due to Arne Naess, claims that the ordinary conception of truth is not correspondence. Our more recent study is consistent with Naess’ result. Our findings suggest that contextual factors and (...) respondent gender affect whether the folk accept that correspondence is sufficient for truth. These findings seem to show that the project of accommodating the ordinary notion of truth is more difficult than philosophers had anticipated because it is fragmentary. (shrink)

According to a traditional argument against moral realism, the existence of objective moral facts is hard to reconcile with the existence of radical disagreement over moral issues. An increasingly popular response to this argument is to insist that it generalizes too easily. Thus, it has been argued that if one rejects moral realism on the basis of disagreement then one is committed to similar views about epistemology and meta-ethics itself, since the disagreements that arise in those areas are just as (...) deep as the moral ones. This in turn is taken to show that a moral anti-realist should seek another basis for her position. For, if she extends her anti-realism also to epistemology and meta-ethics, then she is no longer in a position to say that her meta-ethical position is (objectively) true or that it is a fact that we have reason to accept it. She therefore seems left with a position that hardly even seems to be a position. The purpose of the paper is to challenge this response and in particular the claim that the argument from disagreement applies equally well to epistemology and meta-ethics as it does to ethics. It is argued that, despite contrary appearances, there are crucial differences between the disagreements that occur in ethics compared to those that arise in the other areas. Moreover, even granted that the disagreements are just as deep, there are other differences between the areas that nevertheless justify drawing different conclusions about their status from the existence of those disagreements. (shrink)

We report experimental results showing that participants are more likely to attribute knowledge in familiar Gettier cases when the would-be knowers are performing actions that are negative in some way (e.g. harmful, blameworthy, norm-violating) than when they are performing positive or neutral actions. Our experiments bring together important elements from the Gettier case literature in epistemology and the Knobe effect literature in experimental philosophy and reveal new insights into folk patterns of knowledge attribution.

Philosophical theorizing is often, either tacitly or explicitly, guided by intuitions about cases. Theories that accord with our intuitions are generally considered to be prima facie better than those that do not. However, recent empirical work has suggested that philosophically significant intuitions are variable and unstable in a number of ways. This variability of intuitions has led naturalistically inclined philosophers to disparage the practice of relying on intuitions for doing philosophy in general (e.g. Stich & Weinberg 2001) and for doing (...) moral philosophy in particular (Appiah 2008; Doris & Stich 2005; Horowitz 1998; Nadelhoffer & Feltz 2008; Sinnott Armstrong 2008). In this paper, we will draw on naturalistic considerations to offer some solace to philosophers who rely on intuitions. We wouldn’t call this a defense of intuitions, exactly, since we are sympathetic with much of the naturalists’ critique. But we want to introduce into the debate some neglected naturalistic reasons to be optimistic about intuitions, focusing especially on ethical intuitions. (shrink)

In their widely discussed paper, “Semantics, Cross-Cultural Style”, Machery et al. argue that Kripke’s Gödel–Schmidt case, generally thought to undermine the description theory of names, rests on culturally variable intuitions: while Western subjects’ intuitions conflict with the description theory of names, those of East Asian subjects do not. Machery et al. attempt to explain this discrepancy by appealing to differences between Western and East Asian modes of categorization, as identified in an influential study by Nisbett et al. I claim that (...) these differences fail to explain the conflicting intuitions. Moreover, Machery et al.’s initial conjecture—that the relevant cultural differences would manifest themselves in differing semantic intuitions—is legitimate only if we assume that the Gödel–Schmidt case is used both to undermine descriptivism and establish the causal theory. But, as I argue, this is not Kripke’s intention. This misunderstanding persists in the recent clarification of their views in “If Folk Intuitions Vary, Then What?” (Machery et al., Philos Phenomenol Res, 2012). (shrink)

A number of philosophers have recently become increasingly interested in the potential usefulness of fictitious and illusory beliefs.As a result, a wide variety of fictionalisms and illusionisms have sprung up in areas ranging anywhere from mathematics and modality to morality.1 In this paper, we focus on the view that Saul Smilansky has dubbed “free will illusionism”—for example, the purportedly descriptive claim that the majority of people have illusory beliefs concerning the existence of libertarian free will, coupled with the normative claim (...) that because dispelling these illusions would produce negative personal and societal consequences, those of us who are unfortunate enough to know the dangerous and gloomy truth about the nonexistence of libertarian free will should simply keep quiet in the name of the common good. (shrink)

The debate between compatibilists and incompatibilists depends in large part on what ordinary people mean by ‘free will’, a matter on which previous experimental philosophy studies have yielded conflicting results. In Nahmias, Morris, Nadelhoffer, and Turner (2005, 2006), most participants judged that agents in deterministic scenarios could have free will and be morally responsible. Nichols and Knobe (2007), though, suggest that these apparent compatibilist responses are performance errors produced by using concrete scenarios, and that their abstract scenarios reveal the folk (...) theory of free will for what it actually is—incompatibilist. Here, we argue that the results of two new studies suggest just the opposite. Most participants only give apparent incompatibilist judgments when they mistakenly interpret determinism to imply that agents’ mental states are bypassed in the causal chains that lead to their behavior. Determinism does not entail bypassing, so these responses do not reflect genuine incompatibilist intuitions. When participants understand what determinism does mean, the vast majority take it to be compatible with free will. Further results indicate that most people’s concepts of choice and the ability to do otherwise do not commit them to incompatibilism, either, putting pressure on incompatibilist arguments that rely on transfer principles, such as the Consequence Argument. We discuss the implications of these findings for philosophical debates about free will, and suggest that incompatibilism appears to be either false, or else a thesis about something other than what most people mean by ‘free will’. (shrink)

One mainstream approach to philosophy involves trying to learn about philosophically interesting, non-mental phenomena—ethical properties, for example, or causation—by gathering data from human beings. I call this approach “wide tent traditionalism.” It is associated with the use of philosophers’ intuitions as data, the making of deductive arguments from this data, and the gathering of intuitions by eliciting reactions to often quite bizarre thought experiments. These methods have been criticized—I consider experimental philosophy’s call for a move away from the use of (...) philosophers’ intuitions as evidence, and recent suggestions about the use of inductive arguments in philosophy—and these criticisms point out important areas for improvement. However, embracing these reforms in turn gives wide-tent traditionalists strong reasons to maintain other traditional approaches to philosophy. Specifically, traditionalists’ commitment to using intuitions and to gathering them with bizarre thought experiments is well founded, both philosophically and empirically. I end by considering some problems with gathering trustworthy intuitions, and give suggestions about how best to solve them. (shrink)

Skepticism about the epistemic value of intuition in theoretical and philosophical inquiry fueled by the empirical discovery of irrational bias (e.g., the order effect) in people's judgments has recently been challenged by research suggesting that people can introspectively track intuitional instability. The two studies reported here build upon this, the first by demonstrating that people are able to introspectively track instability that was experimentally induced by introducing conflicting expert opinion about certain cases, and the second by demonstrating that it was (...) the presence of instability?not merely the presence of conflicting information?that resulted in changes in the relevant attitudinal states (i.e., confidence and belief strength). The paper closes with the suggestion that perhaps the best explanation for these (and other) findings may be that intuitional instability is not actually ?intuitional.? (shrink)

Some recent researches in experimental philosophy have posed a problem for philosophers’ appeal to intuition (hereinafter referred to as PAI); the aim of this paper is to offer an answer to this challenge. The thesis against PAI implies that, given some experimental results, intuition does not seem to be a reliable epistemic source, and —more importantly— given the actual state of knowledge about its operation, we do not have sufficient resources to mitigate its errors and thus establish its reliability. That (...) is why PAI is hopeless. Throughout this paper I will defend my own conception of PAI, which I have called the Deliberative Conception, and consequently, I will defend intersubjective agreement as a means to mitigate PAI errors, offering empirical evidence from recent studies on the Argumentative Theory of Reason that favor the conception I defend here. Finally, I will reply to some objections that might arise against the Deliberative Conception, which will lead me to discuss some metaphilosophical issues that are significantly relevant for the future of the dispute about the appeal to intuition. (shrink)

This paper considers three package deals combining views in philosophy of mind, meta-philosophy, and experimental philosophy. The most familiar of these packages gives center-stage to pumping intuitions about fanciful cases, but that package involves problematic commitments both to a controversial descriptivist theory of reference and to intuitions that “negative” experimental philosophers have shown to be suspiciously variable and context-sensitive. In light of these difficulties, it would be good for future-minded experimental philosophers to align themselves with a different package deal. This (...) paper suggests two alternatives. Experimentalists might help fans of “naturalized” approaches discover what natural kinds have been playing an appropriate role in causing us to use concepts as we do. Or, better still, experimentalists might instead help pragmatists and teleo-semanticists discover how our concept usage regularly yields beneficial outcomes, so that we can then craft philosophical analyses that will.. (shrink)

In epistemology, fake-barn thought experiments are often taken to be intuitively clear cases in which a justified true belief does not qualify as knowledge. We report a study designed to determine whether non-philosophers share this intuition. The data suggest that while participants are less inclined to attribute knowledge in fake-barn cases than in unproblematic cases of knowledge, they nonetheless do attribute knowledge to protagonists in fake-barn cases. Moreover, the intuition that fake-barn cases do count as knowledge is negatively correlated with (...) age; older participants are less likely than younger participants to attribute knowledge in fake-barn cases. We also found that increasing the number of defeaters (fakes) does not decrease the inclination to attribute knowledge. (shrink)

This paper argues that for someone to know proposition p inferentially it is not enough that his belief in p and his justification for believing p covary with the truth of p through a sphere of possibilities. A further condition on inferential knowledge is that p's truth-maker is identical with, or causally related to, the state of affairs the justification is grounded in. This position is dubbed ‘identificationism.’.

We divide analytic metaphysics into naturalistic and non-naturalistic metaphysics. The latter we define as any philosophical theory that makes some ontological (as opposed to conceptual) claim, where that ontological claim has no observable consequences. We discuss further features of non-naturalistic metaphysics, including its methodology of appealing to intuition, and we explain the way in which we take it to be discontinuous with science. We outline and criticize Ladyman and Ross's 2007 epistemic argument against non-naturalistic metaphysics. We then present our own (...) argument against it. We set out various ways in which intellectual endeavours can be of value, and we argue that, in so far as it claims to be an ontological enterprise, non-naturalistic metaphysics cannot be justified according to the same standards as science or naturalistic metaphysics. The lack of observable consequences explains why non-naturalistic metaphysics has, in general, failed to make progress, beyond increasing the standards of clarity and precision in expressing its theories. We end with a series of objections and replies. (shrink)

Perhaps personality traits substantially influence one’s philosophically relevant intuitions. This suggestion is not only possible, it is consistent with a growing body of empirical research: Personality traits have been shown to be systematically related to diverse intuitions concerning some fundamental philosophical debates. We argue that this fact, in conjunction with the plausible principle that almost all adequate philosophical views should take into account all available and relevant evidence, calls into question some prominent approaches to traditional philosophical projects. To this end, (...) we present the Philosophical Personality Argument (PPA). We explain how it supports the growing body of evidence challenging some of the uses of intuitions in philosophy, and we defend it from some criticisms of empirically based worries about intuitions in philosophy. We conclude that the current evidence indicates that the PPA is sound, and thus many traditional philosophical projects that use intuitions must become substantially more empirically oriented. (shrink)

Abstract: Some proponents of “experimental philosophy” criticize philosophers' use of thought experiments on the basis of evidence that the verdicts vary with truth-independent factors. However, their data concern the verdicts of philosophically untrained subjects. According to the expertise defence, what matters are the verdicts of trained philosophers, who are more likely to pay careful attention to the details of the scenario and track their relevance. In a recent article, Jonathan M. Weinberg and others reply to the expertise defence that there (...) is no evidence for such expertise. They now receive a reply in this article, which argues that they have misconstrued the dialectical situation. Since they have produced no evidence that philosophical training is less efficacious for thought experimentation than for other cognitive tasks for which they acknowledge that it produces genuine expertise, such as informal argumentation, they have produced no evidence for treating the former more sceptically than the latter. (shrink)

We explore and provide an account for a recently identified judgment anomaly, i.e., an order effect that changes the strength of intentionality ascriptions for some side effects (e.g., when a chairman's pursuit of profits has the foreseen but unintended consequence of harming the environment). Experiment 1 replicated the previously unanticipated order effect anomaly controlling for general individual differences. Experiment 2 revealed that the order effect was multiply determined and influenced by factors such as beliefs (i.e., that the same actor was (...) involved in bringing about both good and bad side effects) and philosophical training (i.e., more training was associated with smaller differences in judgment when harm followed help). Results provide more evidence that the folk's philosophically relevant intuitions are predictably fragmented and depend on the dynamic interplay between persons, process, and environments. Methodological and theoretical implications are discussed. (shrink)

This paper addresses the definition and the operational use of intuitions in philosophical methods in the form of a research study encompassing several regions of the globe, involving 282 philosophers from a wide array of academic backgrounds and areas of specialisation. The authors tested whether philosophers agree on the conceptual definition and the operational use of intuitions, and investigated whether specific demographic variables and philosophical specialisation influence how philosophers define and use intuitions. The results obtained point to a number of (...) significant findings, including that philosophers distinguish between intuitions used to formulate (discovery) and to test (justification) philosophical theory. The survey results suggest that strategies implemented to characterise philosophical intuition are not well motivated since, even though philosophers do not agree on a single account of intuition, they fail to capture a preferred usage of intuitions as aspects of discovery. The quantitative summary of survey findings informs the debate on this topic, and advances more defined routes for subsequent approaches to the study of intuitions. (shrink)

Williams (1970) argues that our intuitions about personal identity vary depending on how a given thought experiment is framed. Some frames lead us to think that persistence of self requires persistence of one's psychological characteristics; other frames lead us to think that the self persists even after the loss of one's distinctive psychological characteristics. The current paper takes an empirical approach to these issues. We find that framing does affect whether or not people judge that persistence of psychological characteristics is (...) required for persistence of self. Open-ended, abstract questions about what is required for survival tend to elicit responses that appeal to the importance of psychological characteristics. This emphasis on psychological characteristics is largely preserved even when participants are exposed to a concrete case that yields conflicting intuitions over whether memory must be preserved in order for a person to persist. Insofar as our philosophical theory of personal identity should be based on our intuitions, the results provide some support for the view that psychological characteristics really are critical for persistence of self. (shrink)

In the essay, I compare the aims and especially the methods of philosophers and grammarians. It transpires that there are several interesting similarities to be found with the method and aim in particular of traditional 'armchair philosophers'. I argue that these similarities go far enough to suggest that if armchair philosophers' method is in a state of challenge, as is claimed by a number of experimental philosophers, then the same can be said about the method of grammarians. However, I also (...) try to show that it is not easy for experimental philosophers to frame their critique in a way that avoids construing its target too broadly, which would lead to unacceptable consequences. I conclude with some brief remarks on the extent to which a properly targeted critique can provide a challenge for traditional philosophical method. (shrink)