Experimental Philosophy

Exciting News!

I am very excited to share the following announcement:

We’re pleased to announce that a new experimental philosophy blog will be open from Monday, December 10, 2018 at: https://www.xphiblog.com.  The New Experimental Philosophy blog has been organized by Justin Sytsma, Joe Ulatowski, and Dan Weijers.  Please visit the new blog whenever you have the opportunity and feel free to join in on the discussion.

Please help make this new blog a success. Group blogs require input and support from the intellectual community it serves. Please do your part to help Justin, Joe, and Dan build a new community for people interested in experimental philosophy.

Experimental Philosophy Closing Shop (Effective Immediately)

As many of you know, I have flirted on an off with shuddering the doors here at Experimental Philosophy for some time now. Each time I float the idea, there is a much-appreciated stream of support and outpouring from readers that slowly fades into the distance as the weeks and months creep by and inertia runs its inevitable course. Now, I once again find myself wanting to step away from philosophical blogging. Rather than trying to arrange for others to take the editorial reigns here at Experimental Philosophy—which is complicated both by the clunky Typepad platform and by how many blogs and webpages I run from a single Typepad account—I have decided it makes more sense to simply close the cyber doors. I will keep the url active and the content archived, but there will not be any new posts moving forward.

Obviously, I appreciate everyone’s time, energy, and support over the years. Since starting Experimental Philosophy in 2004, there have been 400,000+ visits, 1,100+ posts, and 4,000+ comments. During this time, I humbly think we’ve done a good job entertaining and educating those interested in the growing movement of experimental philosophy. But now it’s time for the next generation of researchers to take the cyber-reigns and create a new home for our community. If and when a new blog is up and running, I will post a link here in this discussion thread. In the meantime, thanks again for your time and consideration over the years!

The Impact of Moral Judgment on Weakness of Will Attributions

Guest post by Mario Attie highlighting new research by Attie and Knobe as part of the x-phi replicability project

Consider the following case:

Phil has recently joined a French class. He is deeply committed to the class and to what they are trying to achieve, though he tends to put off reading the classic French texts that the teacher insists they all study. He finds them a bit of a drag.

This evening he has resolved to stay home and read some of the texts. But some friends call up and try to persuade him to come out with them. If things go as normal they’ll have a pizza and watch a movie. He thinks it would be better to stay home and read as planned, but he gives in and goes with them.

Would you say that Phil displays weakness of will in going with his friends? Now consider the following variation of the story:

This evening he has resolved to stay home and read some of the texts. But some friends call up and try to persuade him to come out with them. If things go as normal they’ll hang out at the mall, have rather too many beers, and pick fights with some of the local immigrant kids. He thinks it would be better to stay home and read as planned, but he gives in and goes with them.

If you are like the participants in May and Holton study, you feel somewhat more inclined to attribute weakness of will in the latter case. This is evidence that factors other than acting against one’s judgments (or resolutions) of what is best for one to do can have an influence on attributions of weakness of will. 

May and Holton showed that moral judgment has such an impact. They found that the moral valence of the action has an effect on whether people think it counted as weak-willed. When the agent decided to forgo his original intention to perform a morally bad action (pick a fight with the local immigrant kids) participants were more willing to attribute weakness of will than in morally permissible actions (watch a movie with his friends). Surprisingly, the moral valence of the intention had no effect, a finding that it is somehow inconsistent with the idea that moral judgment has a direct influence on weakness of will attributions.

As part of the Xphi Replicability Project, Josh Knobe and I conducted a direct replication of May and Holton original study. The results not only replicated the original effect of action valence, but also showed a corresponding effect of intention valence. Participants were less inclined to attribute weakness of will when the intention that agents didn’t act on was morally wrong (stay home to study Nazi texts) than when it was morally permissible (stay home to study French texts).

The results show a more consistent picture of the impact of morality on weakness of will attributions. They also show the value of conducting adequately powered replications of influential findings. We sometimes give way to our theorizing before stopping to ask whether the effect (or lack thereof) is not merely a result of small sample sizes. This was the case here: intention valence does have the effect we would expect to find if moral judgment influences weakness of will attributions.

Help!

 

 

First, I want to wish everyone a happy holiday season--which I hope has been safe and relaxing for the members of our community. Second, I wanted to thank all of the readers who come to this blog for the latest posts and information about experimental philosophy. I started this blog 12 years ago as a graduate student. At the time, experimental philosophy was still a fledgling movement. While we had some senior philosophers and psychologists on our side, our work was often openly met with ridicule and consternation. We invited some of this with our "branding"--e.g., theme songs and tee shirts involving burning armchairs! But some of the objections to our work made it clear that people were criticizing what we were doing without actually reading what we were doing.

So, this blog was an attempt to provide a forum for like-minded researchers to share their thoughts and ideas about meta-philosophy, the philosophy of psychology, the psychology of philosophy, and experimental philosophy more generally. Over the years, the blog has waxed and waned when it comes to activity. Sometimes, there are lots of posts and comments. Other times, the blog is moribund for weeks (or even months) at a time. So, for 2017, I have decided it is time to make some changes here in the hopes they will improve the blog and continue to grow the community.

The first change is that I am going to take a step down/back from being the coordinator of the blog to merely being the founder. My hope is that the current and next generation of experimental philosophers will want to step up to help me fashion the blog in their image. I am grateful that Jason Shepard has already agreed to be an editor. Hopefully, others will similarly volunteer some of their time. I would like Jason and other junior philosophers and psychologists to pick up the reigns and move us towards the models adopted by what I take to be the two most successful philosophy blogs on the web: (a) The Brains Blog, and (b) PEA Soup. I am happy to do my part, but Jason and I could really use some help! If you're interested in playing a formal role, please shoot me an email! Either way, stay tuned. Hopefully, 2017 will see some changes and improvements here at Experimental Philosophy!

 

 

 

 

 

Omissions and expectations: a new approach to the things we failed to do

Pascale Willemsen article "Omissions and expectations: a new approach to the things we failed to do" has been published in Synthese just in time for Christmas, and a Christmas treat it is! Pascale presents a new view of causation by omission in which a key ingredient for judging causation by omissions are (normative) expectations.

One of the things I found particularly illuminating about Pascale's work is her cross-linguistic approach. Philosophers are typically interested in concepts, not words. Most words are polysemic, often in very subtle ways. When exploring concepts using words, it is often difficult to tell whether people are using a word in one way or another.  It often takes careful philosophical thought, careful linguistic analysis, and/or ingenious psychological experiments to uncover the different ways in which a single word is used, or in other words, the different concepts that are being expressed by the same word. The English word 'because' is a good example of this. There is converging evidence from philosophy, linguistics, and psychology that 'because' is used to express both causal relations and explanations.

One way to try to get at concepts is to determine the components that people associate with a word in different contexts. When people associate components X, Y, & Z in one context C1 with a word W1  but associate components X, Y, & V with W1 in a different context C2, this might reasonable be taken as evidence that the word is polysemic. The recognition of this polysemy takes us one step closer to concepts. Cushman and Mele's work and Lanteri's work on intentional action provides a good example of this kind of approach.

Another way to help us better understand concepts is to look cross-linguistically. The words of different languages carve up conceptual space differently. By comparing the different ways in which words of various languages carve up conceptual space, we can get a better understanding for that conceptual space and perhaps move a step closer to discovering concepts. This is Willemsen's approach. In her research, she finds that English often conflates omissions from mere nothings, while languages such as German, French, Italian, and Polish explicitly mark this distinction in language. This work provides evidence for an important conceptual distinction in our folk metaphysics between omissions and mere nothings--a conceptual distinction that we may have overlooked if our focus was only on word usage in English.

Please give Willemsen's paper a close read. We highly encourage you to share your thoughts about her research--whether positive or critical--in the comments section.

Omissions and expectations: a new approach to the things we failed to do

Abstract Imagine you and your friend Pierre agreed on meeting each other at a café, but he does not show up. What is the difference between a friend’s not showing up for a meeting and any other person not coming? In some sense, all people who did not come show the same kind of behaviour, but most people would be willing to say that the absence of a friend who you expected to see is different in kind. In this paper, I will spell out this difference by investigating laypeople’s conceptualisation of absences of actions in four experiments. In languages such as German, French, Italian, or Polish, people consider a friend’s not coming an omission. Any other person’s not coming, in contrast, is not considered an omission at all, but just a mere nothing. This use of the term omission differs from the usage in English, where ‘omission’ refers to all kinds of absences. In addition, ‘omission’ is not even an everyday term, but invented by philosophers for the sake of philosophical investigation. In other languages, ‘omission’ (and its synonyms) is part of an everyday vocabulary. Finally, I will discuss how this folk concept of omission could be made fruitful for philosophical questions.

Deterministic beliefs promote endorsement of paternalism

Whether the state is justified in reducing self-inflicted harm by limiting people's freedom is subject to sustained philosophical debate and disagreement among the public. On one side, proponents of paternalistic regulation emphasize its net benefits for social welfare. On the other, its critics denounce, as a matter of principle, the idea that the state could interfere in citizens’ personal choices:

Photo credit: @TheResident

My favorite depiction of this sentiment (a remnant of the soda ban controversy) is a Statue of Liberty-styled silhouette raising the allegorical soda cup, next to the motto “Don’t let bureaucrats tell you what size beverage to buy.”

What underlies the conviction that personal autonomy should be protected even at substantial costs to one's health? Perhaps, we reasoned, it is sustained in part by the assumption that, barring bureaucrats' overreach, we'd be choosing freely. 

Indeed, data from 3184 US adults who took part in a survey by the Pew Research Center showed that an internal locus of control was linked to a libertarian view of government (“It’s not the government’s job to protect people from themselves”) while an external locus predicted endorsement of a paternalistic state (“Sometimes laws to protect people from themselves are necessary”), and this association was independent of political ideology.

The influence of a deterministic worldview

To hone in on the role of free will and determinism beliefs, we asked students to complete the FAD Plus Scale and rate a variety of proposed policies, ranging from strong paternalistic restrictions (e.g., banning cigarettes) to libertarian deregulation (e.g., eliminating public pension). The belief in scientific determinism was associated with a stronger preference for paternalistic legislation, particularly in the form of nudges and opt-out programs. (No relationship was found with the Free Will subscale, unexpectedly.)

In another study, participants were asked to imagine living in a hypothetical nation within either a deterministic or indeterministic world, and evaluated one of two sets of policy proposals, paternalistic or libertarian in kind. As shown below, paternalistic policies were rated more favorably in a deterministic universe, while libertarian policies revealed the opposite pattern:

Median and IQR of policy ratings.

In light of recent interest on behalf of government in nudging people toward better decisions, our study underscores the value of philosophical reflection on behavioral science. Adopting a deterministic worldview renders paternalistic regulation more agreeable, perhaps by challenging the folk notion of personal autonomy.

We look forward to your comments and reactions. The article is available online at the link below:

Hannikainen, I., Cabral, G., Machery, E., & Struchiner, N. A deterministic worldview promotes approval of state paternalism, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, in press. [preprint]

The Folk Concept(s) of Choice

Aneyn O'Grady and I have new research on the folk concept of choice that was recently published in Consciousness and Cognition, What kinds of alternatives are required for the folk concept(s) of choice. I thought that the research may be of interest to readers here. We would love to hear your thoughts.

Abstract

Our concept of choice is integral to the way we understand others and ourselves, especially when considering ourselves as free and responsible agents. Despite the importance of this concept, there has been little empirical work on it. In this paper we report four experiments that provide evidence for two concepts of choice—namely, a concept of choice that is operative in the phrase having a choice and another that is operative in the phrase making a choice. The experiments indicate that the two concepts of choice can be differentiated from each other on the basis of the kind of alternatives to which each is sensitive. The results indicate that the folk concept of choice is more nuanced than has been assumed. This new, empirically informed understanding of the folk concept of choice has important implications for debates concerning free will, responsibility, and other debates spanning psychology and philosophy.

Specifically, 'having a choice' appears to require genuinely open alternatives, or alternative possibilities that are actually realizable, while 'making a choice' appears to only require psychological open alternatives, or the ability to consider alternatives independent of whether these alternatives are actually realizable. We argue that these findings are relevant to the free will debate because choice is central to the folk concept of free will and many philosophical analysis of free will. The kinds of alternatives required for having a choice appear to be incompatibilist in nature, while the kinds of alternatives required for making a choice appear to be compatibilist in nature. If free will requires having choices, then this is perhaps evidence against compatibilism. If free will requires making choices, then this is perhaps evidence in favor of--or at least consistent with--compatibilism. 

 

Intuitive Expertise and Irrelevant Options

Some time ago we asked you for participation in a study (here or here) that presented professional philosophers and lay people with two moral scenarios. One of them included two options, the other included these two options and four additional options, i.e., six options. Our aim was to investigate whether the additional options would affect people’s choices concerning the two options that were available in both scenarios – despite the fact that the additional options are irrelevant for that choice. In particular, we wanted to test whether the intuitive responses of professional philosophers were less susceptible to the influence of irrelevant options than those of lay people. However, we found that professional philosophers’ intuitions were even more susceptible to the presence of irrelevant options than lay people. This is no good news for the so called “expertise defense”, which holds that professional philosophers are experts concerning the intuitive evaluation of thought experiment cases.

Here are some more details concerning our study.

One scenario, Two Options, was the classical “push”-dilemma with two available options (see Figure 1 below):

Option 1: Carl could run to a nearby bridge on which a heavy worker is standing and push this worker from the bridge. Thereby this worker would fall on the tracks and collide with the speed-train. Due to the collision with the heavy worker (Carl himself would not be heavy enough to stop the train) the speed-train would stop before it reaches the nine workers. The heavy worker would lose his life due to the collision.
Option 2: Carl could do nothing. In this case the nine workers would be run over by the speed-train and lose their lives in this accident.

 

In the other scenario, Six Options, four additional “intermediate” options were available (see Figure 2 below):

Option 1: Carl could run to a nearby bridge on which a heavy worker is standing and push this worker from the bridge. Thereby this worker would fall on the tracks and collide with the speed-train. Due to the collision with the heavy worker (Carl himself would not be heavy enough to stop the train) the speed-train would stop before it reaches the nine workers. The heavy worker would lose his life due to the collision.
Option 2: Carl could push a button that would open a trap door and thereby causing two workers on top of the right bridge to fall on the tracks. The speed-train would collide with the two workers and be stopped before it reaches the nine workers. The two workers would lose their lives due to the collision.
Option 3: Carl could throw Switch 3 and thereby redirect a train carrying three workers from the lower parallel track onto the main track. The speed-train would collide with this train and be stopped before it reaches the nine workers. The three workers on the train would lose their lives due to the collision.
Option 4: Carl could throw Switch 2 and thereby redirect an empty train from the upper parallel track onto the main track. The speed-train would collide with this train and be stopped before it reaches the nine workers. On its way to the main track the empty train would run over four workers (wearing the novel hearing protection). The four workers would lose their lives due to the collision.
Option 5: Carl could throw Switch 1 and thereby redirect the speed-train from the main track onto a parallel track before it reaches the nine workers. On the parallel track the speed train would run over five workers (wearing the novel hearing protection). The five workers would lose their lives due to the collision.
Option 6: Carl could do nothing. In this case the nine workers would be run over by the speed-train and lose their lives in this accident.

 

Each participant saw both scenarios in randomized order of presentation. To qualify as expert subjects, participants had to indicate, first, that they have a PhD (64%) or MA (36%) in philosophy, and second, that moral philosophy or ethics is one of their areas of specialization (62%) or competence (38%).

The results are shown below. “First” and “Second” refer to the order in which the cases were presented. For Six Options, only the two “extreme” options that are also available in Two Options (doing nothing and push) are considered (the intermediate options were chosen by ~20% of experts and 10% of lay people).

We are interested to learn what readers of this blog think about our findings. And please contact us if you want to see some of the details of our study.

Alex Wiegmann (U Goettingen, [email protected]), Joachim Horvath (U Cologne, [email protected]), & Karina Meyer (U Goettingen, [email protected])

 

Loeb on Deutsch on Intuitions!

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews has just published an excellent review by Don Loeb of Max Deutsch's, The Myth of the Intuitive: Experimental Philosophy and Philosophical Method (MIT Press, 2015). Both the review and the book itself should be of interest to our readers! So, go check out what Loeb and Deutsch have to say about some of the meta-philosophical issues that have animated both advocates and opponents of experimental philosophy!

 

What does the experimental evidence actually say about the stability of moral intuitions?

Suppose you are sitting at your desk, reflecting on a moral question. Now suppose that as you are reflecting on this question, you happen to be looking around at a somewhat disgusting scene. Perhaps there is a half-eaten apple on the desk, or a bad smell in the room, or maybe you just didn't have an opportunity to wash your hands. 

I sometimes encounter the claim that experimental studies have shown that people's moral intuitions can be pushed around in surprising ways by subtle situational factors like these. It is then sometimes suggested that philosophers need to think more about the deeper philosophical implications of this kind of 'instability' in our moral intuitions.

 

This claim strikes me as a serious misrepresentation of the present state of the empirical literature. In fact, it might be more accurate to say that existing studies provide evidence that these factors do not influence people's moral intuitions. At the very least, it would be hard to deny that a whole bunch of recent studies suggest that people's moral intuitions are surprisingly stable.