Experimental Philosophy

Blackwell Companion to Experimental Philosophy

I am happy to announce a forthcoming new volume from the Blackwell Companions to Philosophy Series: A Companion to Experimental Philosophy. It is edited by Justin Sytsma and myself and features over forty chapters from leading philosophers, psychologists and cognitive scientists from several countries across three continents. These chapters detail the application of empirical methods to philosophical questions across major sub-disciplines including the philosophy of action, moral and political philosophy, philosophy of mind, epistemology, philosophy of language, metaphysics, logic, and metaphilosophy.

The general introduction to the volume is available online here, offering a summary of the goals of the volume and a brief introduction to experimental philosophy for a general audience. The table of contents and list of contributors can be found below:

A New Theory of Free Will

Just a quick note that I've published an article in The Philosophical Forum , "A New Theory of Free Will", that may be of interest to experimental philosophers (a free PDF of its penultimate draft is available here).  Here's the abstract: 

This paper shows that several live philosophical and scientific hypotheses – including the holographic principle and multiverse theory in quantum physics, and eternalism and mind-body dualism in philosophy – jointly imply an audacious new theory of free will. This new theory, "Libertarian Compatibilism", holds that the physical world is an eternally existing array of two-dimensional information – a vast number of possible pasts, presents, and futures – and the mind a nonphysical entity or set of properties that "read" that physical information off to subjective conscious awareness (in much the same way that a song written on an ordinary compact-disc is only played when read by an outside medium, i.e. a CD-player). According to this theory, every possible physical “timeline” in the multiverse may be fully physically deterministic or physically-causally closed but each person’s consciousness still entirely free to choose, ex nihilo, outside of the physical order, which physically-closed timeline is experienced by conscious observers. Although Libertarian Compatibilism is admittedly fantastic, I show that it not only follows from several live scientific and philosophical hypotheses, I also show that it (A) is a far more explanatorily powerful model of quantum mechanics than more traditional interpretations (e.g. the Copenhagen, Everett, and Bohmian interpretations), (B) makes determinate, testable empirical predictions in quantum theory, and finally, (C) predicts and explains the very existence of a number of philosophical debates and positions in the philosophy of mind, time, personal identity, and free will. First, I show that whereas traditional interpretations of quantum mechanics are all philosophically problematic and roughly as ontologically “extravagant” as Libertarian Compatibilism – in that they all posit “unseen” processes – Libertarian Compatibilism is nearly identical in structure to the only working simulation that human beings have ever constructed capable of reproducing (and so explaining) every general feature of quantum mechanics we perceive: namely, massive-multiplayer-online-roleplaying videogames (or MMORPGs). Although I am not the first to suggest that our world is akin to a computer simulation, I show that existing MMORPGs (online simulations we have already created) actually reproduce every general feature of quantum mechanics within their simulated-world reference-frames. Second, I show that existing MMORPGs also replicate (and so explain) many philosophical problems we face in the philosophy of mind, time, personal identity, and free will – all while conforming to the Libertarian Compatibilist model of reality. I conclude, as such, that as fantastic and metaphysically extravagant as Libertarian Compatibilism may initially seem, it may well be true. It explains a number of features of our reality that no other physical or metaphysical theory does.

I suspect that if anyone reading knows how to program simple peer-to-peer (P2P) network simulations, there are probably some of cool experiments one could run to examine the quantum phenomena that I argue inevitably emerge from the structure of any such simulation. The paper may also be of interest to those who do X-phi survey studies on free will.

Intuitions about Innateness

Imagine that scientists are trying to understand how people develop a particular trait, which they have come to call Trait X. The scientists have discovered a surprising fact about people’s genes. They have discovered that people’s genes work in such a way that almost everyone will end up developing Trait X. In fact, it turns out that children develop Trait X as long as their parents sometimes offer them at least a decent level of treatment.

Now, just about everyone’s parents offer them at least a decent level of treatment at least sometimes. So, given the way people’s genes work, just about everyone actually does develop Trait X.

Ok, now that you've read through this story, ask yourself whether you agree with the following statement:

• Trait X is innate.

Online Consciousness Conference 2012

Readers of the blog may be interested in a number of papers from this year's Online Consciousness Conference. 

In addition to this year's keynote on the The Biological Cost of Consciousness by Bernard Baars, also check Peter Carruthers, Logan Fletcher, and J. Brendan Ritch's work in Evolving Self-Consciousness, arguing that evolutionary origins of  self-consciousness depend on the prior evolution of a mindreading system.

And also, in Does the S&M Robot Feel Guilty? Mark Phelan, Justin Sytsma and I, continue our earlier discussion (from this blog) on valence, function, and the folk dichotomy of phenomenal states.  Justin has provided some new experimental data on this topic since then that people interested in this question will want to check out.

Comments are open Feb 17-March 2, so be sure to head on over to OC4 and join in!

Experiment Month Results: Intuitions about Scientific Progress (Mizrahi)

*Original post by Moti Mizrahi

People typically talk about scientific progress. But what does scientific progress amount to? In the philosophy of science literature, one can find three major accounts (See Darrell Rowbottom and Alexander Bird). The Epistemic (knowledge) view holds that people’s concept of scientific progress involves the accumulation of scientific knowledge. The Semantic (truth) view says that scientific progress involves the accumulation of true scientific beliefs, though not necessarily scientific knowledge. The Functional-Internalist (goal) view states that scientific progress primarily involves achieving either theoretical or technological scientific goals. When arguing for or against these three views, philosophers often rely on intuitions about how much progress people think scientists have made in hypothetical cases relative to the amount of knowledge, truth, or problem-solving outcomes that are generated. Typically, these philosophers assume that ordinary intuitions regarding these factors count as some of the best evidence for their particular approaches. But we might wonder: do actual ordinary intuitions best support the epistemic, semantic, or functional-internalist views?

To find out, Wesley Buckwalter and I ran the following 2x2x2 between-subjects experiment.

experimental philosophy & philosophy of science at Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science

Karola Stotz organized a panel at the PSA a couple of years ago, on the connections between x-phi and the philosophy of science, and she has more recently gotten most of the papers from it placed in Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science.  They are now available online:

Stotz, "Philosophy in the trenches: from naturalized to experimental philosophy (of science)" [this is an introduction to the other three articles]

Weinberg and Crowley, "The x-phi(les): unusual insights into the nature of inquiry"

Stotz, "Experimental philosophy of biology: notes from the field"

Knobe, "Folk judgments about causation"