Experimental Philosophy

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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]