Recent empirical work on folk moral objectivism has attempted to examine the extent to which folk... more Recent empirical work on folk moral objectivism has attempted to examine the extent to which folk morality presumes that moral judgments are objectively true or false. Some researchers report findings that they take to indicate folk commitment to objectivism (Nichols & Folds-Bennett, 2003; Wainryb et al., 2004; Goodwin & Darley, 2008, 2010, 2012), while others report findings that may reveal a more variable commitment to objectivism (Sarkissian, et al., 2011; Wright, Grandjean, & McWhite, 2013; Wright, McWhite, & Grandjean, 2014; Beebe, 2014; Beebe et al., 2015; Beebe & Sackris, 2016; Wright, 2018). However, the various probes that have been used to examine folk moral objectivism almost always fail to be good direct measures of objectivism. Some critics (Beebe, 2015; Pölzler, 2017, 2018) have suggested that the problems with existing probes are serious enough that they should be viewed as largely incapable of shedding any light on folk metaethical commitments. Building upon the work of Justin Khoo and Joshua Knobe (2018), I argue that many of the existing probes can be seen as good measures of the extent to which people think that the truth of one moral judgment excludes the possibility that a judgment made by a disagreeing party is also true and that the best explanation of the findings obtained using these measures is significant folk support for indexical moral relativism—the view that the content of moral judgments is context-sensitive. If my thesis is correct, most contemporary moral philosophers are deeply mistaken about the metaethical contours of folk morality in one very important respect.
Within the cognitive science of religion, some scholars hypothesize (1) that minimally counterint... more Within the cognitive science of religion, some scholars hypothesize (1) that minimally counterintuitive (MCI) concepts enjoy a transmission advantage over both intuitive and highly counterintuitive concepts, (2) that religions concern counterintuitive agents, objects, or events, and
We report the results of a study that investigated the views of researchers working in seven scie... more We report the results of a study that investigated the views of researchers working in seven scientific disciplines (physics, chemistry, biology, economics, psychology, sociology, and anthropology) and in HPS (N = 1,798) in regard to four hypothesized dimensions of scientific realism. Among other things, we found (i) that natural scientists tended to express more strongly realist views than social scientists, (ii) that social scientists working in fields where quantitative methods predominate tended to express more strongly realist views than social scientists working in fields where qualitative methods are more common, (iii) that HPS scholars tended to express more anti-realist views than natural scientists, aligning themselves with social scientists working in fields where qualitative methods are more common, (iv) that van Fraassen's characterization of scientific realism failed to cluster with more standard characterizations, (v) that a van Fraassen-style anti-realism is significantly more popular among scientists and HPS scholars than more standard forms of anti-realism, and (vi) that while those who endorsed the No-Miracles Argument were more likely to endorse scientific realism, those who endorsed the Pessimistic Induction were no more or less likely to endorse anti-realism.
Confused terms appear to signify more than one entity. Carnap (1957) maintained that any putative... more Confused terms appear to signify more than one entity. Carnap (1957) maintained that any putative name that is associated with more than one object in a relevant universe of discourse fails to be a genuine name. Although many philosophers have agreed with Carnap, they have not always agreed among themselves about the truth-values of atomic sentences containing such terms. Some hold that such atomic sentences are always false, and others claim they are always truth-valueless. Field (1973) maintained that confused terms can still refer, albeit partially, and offered a supervaluational account of their semantic properties on which some atomic sentences with confused terms can be true. After outlining many of the most important theoretical considerations for and against various semantic theories for such terms, we report the results of a study designed to investigate which of these accounts best accords with the truth-value judgments of ordinary language users about sentences containing these terms. We found that naïve participants view confused names as capable of successfully referring to one or more objects. Thus, semantic theories that judge them to involve total reference failure do not comport well with patterns of ordinary usage.
We report the results of an exploratory study that examines the reactions of climate scientists, ... more We report the results of an exploratory study that examines the reactions of climate scientists, climate policy experts, astrophysicists, and non-experts (N = 3,367) to instances of disagreement within climate science and astrophysics. The study explores respondents' judgments about the factors that contribute to the creation and persistence of those disagreements and how one should respond to disagreements among experts. We found that, as compared to educated non-experts, climate experts believe (i) that there is less disagreement within climate science about climate change, (ii) that more of the disagreement that does exist concerns public policy questions rather than the science itself, (iii) that methodological factors play less of a role in generating existing disagreement among experts about climate science, (iv) that fewer personal and institutional biases influence the nature and direction of climate science research, (v) that there is more agreement among scientists about which methods or theoretical perspectives should be used to examine and explain the relevant phenomena, (vi) that disagreements about climate change should not lead people to conclude that the scientific methods being employed today are unreliable or incapable of revealing the truth, and (vii) that climate science is more settled than ideological pundits would have us believe and settled enough to base public policy on it. In addition, we observed that the uniquely American political context predicted participants' judgments about many of these factors. We also found that, commensurate with the greater inherent uncertainty and data lacunae in their field, astrophysicists working on cosmic rays were generally more willing to acknowledge expert disagreement, more open to the idea that a set of data can have multiple valid interpretations, and generally less quick to dismiss someone articulating a non-standard view as non-expert, than climate scientists.
We report the results of four empirical studies designed to investigate the extent to which an ep... more We report the results of four empirical studies designed to investigate the extent to which an epistemic closure principle for knowledge is reflected in folk epistemology. Previous work by Turri (2015a) suggested that our shared epistemic practices may only include a source-relative closure principle—one that applies to perceptual beliefs but not to inferential beliefs. We argue that the results of our studies provide reason for thinking that individuals are making a performance error when their knowledge attributions and denials conflict with the closure principle. When we used research materials that overcome what we think are difficulties with Turri's original materials, we found that participants did not reject closure. Furthermore, when we presented Turri's original materials to non-philosophers with expertise in deductive reasoning (viz., professional mathematicians), they endorsed closure for both perceptual and inferential beliefs. Our results suggest that an unrestricted closure principle—one that applies to all beliefs, regardless of their source—provides a better model of folk patterns of knowledge attribution than a source-relative closure principle.
In this paper, I review recent attempts by experimental philosophers and psychologists to study f... more In this paper, I review recent attempts by experimental philosophers and psychologists to study folk metaethics empirically and discuss some of the difficulties that researchers face when trying to construct the right kind of research materials and interpreting the results that they obtain. At first glance, the findings obtained so far do not look good for the thesis that people are everywhere moral realists about every moral issue. However, because of difficulties in interpreting these results, I argue that better research is needed to move the debate forward.
Recent work in experimental philosophy has shown that people are more likely to attribute intenti... more Recent work in experimental philosophy has shown that people are more likely to attribute intentionality, knowledge, and other psychological properties to someone who causes a bad side effect than to someone who causes a good one. We argue that all of these asymmetries can be explained in terms of a single underlying asymmetry involving belief attribution because the belief that one's action would result in a certain side effect is a necessary component of each of the psychological attitudes in question. We argue further that this belief-attribution asymmetry is rational because it mirrors a belief-formation asymmetry, and that the belief-formation asymmetry is also rational because it is more useful to form some beliefs than others.
Justifi cation has long been considered a necessary condition for knowledge, and theories that de... more Justifi cation has long been considered a necessary condition for knowledge, and theories that deny the necessity of justifi cation have been dismissed as nonstarters. In this paper, we challenge this longstanding view by showing that many of the arguments off ered in support of it fall short and by providing empirical evidence that individuals are oft en willing to attribute knowledge when epistemic justifi cation is lacking.
We report the results of two studies that examine folk metaethical judgments about the objectivit... more We report the results of two studies that examine folk metaethical judgments about the objectivity of morality. We found that participants attributed almost as much objectivity to ethical statements as they did to statements of physical fact and significantly more objectivity to ethical statements than to statements about preferences or tastes. In both studies, younger participants attributed less objectivity to ethical statements than older participants. Females were observed to attribute slightly less objectivity to ethical statements than males, and we found important interactions between attributions of objectivity and other factors, such as how strong participants’ moral opinions were and how much disagreement about the issue they perceived to exist within society. We believe our results have significant implications for debates about the nature of folk morality and about the nature of morality in general.
Justification has long been considered a necessary condition for knowledge, and theories that den... more Justification has long been considered a necessary condition for knowledge, and theories that deny the necessity of justification have been dismissed as non-starters. In this paper, we challenge this longstanding view by showing that many of the arguments offered in support of it fall short and by providing empirical evidence that individuals are often willing to attribute knowledge when epistemic justification is lacking.
Explanationist (or abductivist) responses to skepticism maintain that our commonsense beliefs abo... more Explanationist (or abductivist) responses to skepticism maintain that our commonsense beliefs about the external world can be rationally preferred to skeptical hypotheses on the grounds that the former provide better explanations of our sensory experiences than the latter. This kind of response to radical skepticism has never enjoyed widespread acceptance in the epistemological community due to concerns about the epistemic merits of inference to the best explanation and appeals to the explanatory virtues. Against this tide of skepticism about explanationism, I argue that traditional skeptical challenges rest upon central explanationist tenets and thus that one cannot harbor doubts about the general class of explanationist responses to skepticism while at the same time granting the force of the skeptical challenges they seek to answer. I also show how explanationist principles do a better job than epistemic closure and underdetermination principles in articulating the structure and force of skeptical challenges.
A central topic in experimental epistemology has been the ways that nonepistemic evaluations of a... more A central topic in experimental epistemology has been the ways that nonepistemic evaluations of an agent’s actions can affect whether the agent is taken to have certain kinds of knowledge. Several scholars have found that the positive or negative valence of an action can influence attributions of knowledge to the agent. These evaluative effects on knowledge attributions are commonly seen as performance errors, failing to reflect individuals’ genuine conceptual competence with knows. In the present article, I report the results of a series of studies designed to test the leading version of this view, which appeals to the allegedly distorting influence of individuals' motivation to blame. I argue that the data pose significant challenges to such a view.
We report and discuss the results of a series of experiments that address a contrast effect exhib... more We report and discuss the results of a series of experiments that address a contrast effect exhibited by folk judgments about knowledge ascriptions. The contrast effect, which was first reported by Schaffer and Knobe (2012), is an important aspect of our folk epistemology. However, there are competing theoretical accounts of it. We shed light on the various accounts by providing novel empirical data and theoretical considerations. Our key findings are, firstly, that belief ascriptions exhibit a similar contrast effect and, secondly, that the contrast effect is systematically sensitive to the content of what is in contrast. We argue that these data pose significant challenges to contrastivist accounts of the contrast effect. Furthermore, some of the data set provides, in conjunction with some non-empirical epistemological arguments, some limited evidence for what we call a focal bias account of the data (Gerken 2012, 2013). According to the focal bias account, the contrast effects arise at least in part because epistemically relevant facts are not always adequately processed when they are presented in certain ways.
Overview of the epistemic side-effect effect in the experimental philosophy literature for a refe... more Overview of the epistemic side-effect effect in the experimental philosophy literature for a reference work.
In a previous article, I argued against the widespread reluctance of philosophers to treat skepti... more In a previous article, I argued against the widespread reluctance of philosophers to treat skeptical challenges to our a priori knowledge of necessary truths with the same seriousness as skeptical challenges to our a posteriori knowledge of contingent truths. Hamid Vahid has recently offered several reasons for thinking the unequal treatment of these two kinds of skepticism is justified, one of which is a priori skepticism’s seeming dependence upon the widely scorned KK thesis. In the present article, I defend a priori skepticism against Vahid’s criticisms.
In 2004 Edouard Machery, Ron Mallon, Shaun Nichols, and Stephen Stich published what has become o... more In 2004 Edouard Machery, Ron Mallon, Shaun Nichols, and Stephen Stich published what has become one of the most widely discussed papers in experimental philosophy, in which they reported that East Asian and Western participants had different intuitions about the semantic reference of proper names. A flurry of criticisms of their work has emerged, and although various replications have been performed, many critics remain unconvinced. We review the current debate over Machery et al.’s (2004) results and take note of which objections to their work have been satisfactorily answered and which ones still need to be addressed. We then report the results of studies that reveal significant cross-cultural and intra-cultural differences in semantic intuitions when we control for variables that critics allege have had a potentially distorting effect on Machery et al.’s findings. These variables include the epistemic perspective from which participants are supposed to understand the research materials, unintended anchoring effects of those materials, and pragmatic factors involved in the interpretation of speech acts within them. Our results confirm the robustness of the cross-cultural differences observed by Machery et al. and thereby strengthen the philosophical challenge they pose.
Despite the swirling tide of controversy surrounding the work of Machery et al. (Cognition 92:B1-... more Despite the swirling tide of controversy surrounding the work of Machery et al. (Cognition 92:B1-B12, 2004), 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 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.
Although the empirical study of folk metaethical judgments is still in its infancy, a variety of ... more Although the empirical study of folk metaethical judgments is still in its infancy, a variety of interesting and significant results have been obtained. Goodwin and Darley (2008), for example, report that individuals tend to regard ethical statements as more objective than conventional or taste claims and almost as objective as scientific claims, although there is considerable variation in metaethical intuitions across individuals and across different ethical issues. Goodwin and Darley (2012) also report (i) that participants treat statements condemning ethical wrongdoing as more objective than statements enjoining good or morally exemplary actions, (ii) that perceived consensus regarding an ethical statement positively influences ratings of metaethical objectivity, and (iii) that moral objectivism is associated with greater discomfort with and more pejorative attributions toward those with whom individuals disagreed. Beebe and Sackris (under review) found that folk metaethical commitments vary across different life stages, with decreased objectivism during the college years. Sarkissian, Parks, Tien, Wright, and Knobe (2011) found that folk intuitions about metaethical objectivity vary as a function of cultural distance, with increased cultural distance between disagreeing parties leading to decreased attributions of metaethical objectivity. Wright, Grandjean, and McWhite (forthcoming) found that not only is there significant diversity among individuals with regard to the objectivity they attribute to ethical claims, there is also significant diversity of opinion with respect to whether individuals take certain issues such as abortion or anonymously donating money to charity to be ethical issues at all, despite the fact that philosophers overwhelmingly regard these issues as ethical. The present article reports a series of experiments designed to extend the empirical investigation of folk metaethical intuitions by examining how different kinds of ethical disagreement can impact attributions of objectivity to ethical claims. Study 1 reports a replication of Beebe and Sackris’ work on metaethical intuitions, in order to establish a baseline of comparison for Studies 2 through 4. In Study 2, societal disagreement about ethical issues was made salient to participants before they answered metaethical questions about the objectivity of ethical claims, and this was found to decrease attributions of objectivity to those claims. In Studies 3 and 4, the parties with whom participants were asked to consider having an ethical disagreement were made more concrete than in Studies 1 and 2, using either verbal descriptions or facial pictures. This manipulation was found to increase attributions of metaethical objectivity. In a final study, metaethical judgments were shown to vary with the moral valence of the actions performed by the disagreeing party—in other words, a Knobe effect for metaethical judgments was found. These studies aim to increase our understanding of the complexity of the folk metaethical landscape.
Experimental philosophers have recently begun to investigate the folk conception of weakness of w... more Experimental philosophers have recently begun to investigate the folk conception of weakness of will. Their work has focused primarily on the ways in which akrasia (i.e., acting contrary to one's better judgment), unreasonable violations of resolutions, and variations in the moral valence of actions modulate folk attributions of weakness of will. A key finding that has emerged from this research is that-contrary to the predominant view in the history of philosophy-ordinary participants do not think of weakness of will solely in terms of akrasia but see resolution violations and moral evaluations as playing equally important roles. The present article extends this line of research by reporting the results of four experiments that investigate (i) the interplay between hastily revising one's resolutions and the degree of reasonableness of the actions one had resolved to undertake, (ii) whether ordinary participants are willing to ascribe weakness of will to agents whose actions stem from compulsion or addiction, and (iii) the respects in which akratic action, resolution violations, and the seriousness of an addiction impact attributions of weakness of will to agents acting in accord with their addictions.
Recent empirical work on folk moral objectivism has attempted to examine the extent to which folk... more Recent empirical work on folk moral objectivism has attempted to examine the extent to which folk morality presumes that moral judgments are objectively true or false. Some researchers report findings that they take to indicate folk commitment to objectivism (Nichols & Folds-Bennett, 2003; Wainryb et al., 2004; Goodwin & Darley, 2008, 2010, 2012), while others report findings that may reveal a more variable commitment to objectivism (Sarkissian, et al., 2011; Wright, Grandjean, & McWhite, 2013; Wright, McWhite, & Grandjean, 2014; Beebe, 2014; Beebe et al., 2015; Beebe & Sackris, 2016; Wright, 2018). However, the various probes that have been used to examine folk moral objectivism almost always fail to be good direct measures of objectivism. Some critics (Beebe, 2015; Pölzler, 2017, 2018) have suggested that the problems with existing probes are serious enough that they should be viewed as largely incapable of shedding any light on folk metaethical commitments. Building upon the work of Justin Khoo and Joshua Knobe (2018), I argue that many of the existing probes can be seen as good measures of the extent to which people think that the truth of one moral judgment excludes the possibility that a judgment made by a disagreeing party is also true and that the best explanation of the findings obtained using these measures is significant folk support for indexical moral relativism—the view that the content of moral judgments is context-sensitive. If my thesis is correct, most contemporary moral philosophers are deeply mistaken about the metaethical contours of folk morality in one very important respect.
Within the cognitive science of religion, some scholars hypothesize (1) that minimally counterint... more Within the cognitive science of religion, some scholars hypothesize (1) that minimally counterintuitive (MCI) concepts enjoy a transmission advantage over both intuitive and highly counterintuitive concepts, (2) that religions concern counterintuitive agents, objects, or events, and
We report the results of a study that investigated the views of researchers working in seven scie... more We report the results of a study that investigated the views of researchers working in seven scientific disciplines (physics, chemistry, biology, economics, psychology, sociology, and anthropology) and in HPS (N = 1,798) in regard to four hypothesized dimensions of scientific realism. Among other things, we found (i) that natural scientists tended to express more strongly realist views than social scientists, (ii) that social scientists working in fields where quantitative methods predominate tended to express more strongly realist views than social scientists working in fields where qualitative methods are more common, (iii) that HPS scholars tended to express more anti-realist views than natural scientists, aligning themselves with social scientists working in fields where qualitative methods are more common, (iv) that van Fraassen's characterization of scientific realism failed to cluster with more standard characterizations, (v) that a van Fraassen-style anti-realism is significantly more popular among scientists and HPS scholars than more standard forms of anti-realism, and (vi) that while those who endorsed the No-Miracles Argument were more likely to endorse scientific realism, those who endorsed the Pessimistic Induction were no more or less likely to endorse anti-realism.
Confused terms appear to signify more than one entity. Carnap (1957) maintained that any putative... more Confused terms appear to signify more than one entity. Carnap (1957) maintained that any putative name that is associated with more than one object in a relevant universe of discourse fails to be a genuine name. Although many philosophers have agreed with Carnap, they have not always agreed among themselves about the truth-values of atomic sentences containing such terms. Some hold that such atomic sentences are always false, and others claim they are always truth-valueless. Field (1973) maintained that confused terms can still refer, albeit partially, and offered a supervaluational account of their semantic properties on which some atomic sentences with confused terms can be true. After outlining many of the most important theoretical considerations for and against various semantic theories for such terms, we report the results of a study designed to investigate which of these accounts best accords with the truth-value judgments of ordinary language users about sentences containing these terms. We found that naïve participants view confused names as capable of successfully referring to one or more objects. Thus, semantic theories that judge them to involve total reference failure do not comport well with patterns of ordinary usage.
We report the results of an exploratory study that examines the reactions of climate scientists, ... more We report the results of an exploratory study that examines the reactions of climate scientists, climate policy experts, astrophysicists, and non-experts (N = 3,367) to instances of disagreement within climate science and astrophysics. The study explores respondents' judgments about the factors that contribute to the creation and persistence of those disagreements and how one should respond to disagreements among experts. We found that, as compared to educated non-experts, climate experts believe (i) that there is less disagreement within climate science about climate change, (ii) that more of the disagreement that does exist concerns public policy questions rather than the science itself, (iii) that methodological factors play less of a role in generating existing disagreement among experts about climate science, (iv) that fewer personal and institutional biases influence the nature and direction of climate science research, (v) that there is more agreement among scientists about which methods or theoretical perspectives should be used to examine and explain the relevant phenomena, (vi) that disagreements about climate change should not lead people to conclude that the scientific methods being employed today are unreliable or incapable of revealing the truth, and (vii) that climate science is more settled than ideological pundits would have us believe and settled enough to base public policy on it. In addition, we observed that the uniquely American political context predicted participants' judgments about many of these factors. We also found that, commensurate with the greater inherent uncertainty and data lacunae in their field, astrophysicists working on cosmic rays were generally more willing to acknowledge expert disagreement, more open to the idea that a set of data can have multiple valid interpretations, and generally less quick to dismiss someone articulating a non-standard view as non-expert, than climate scientists.
We report the results of four empirical studies designed to investigate the extent to which an ep... more We report the results of four empirical studies designed to investigate the extent to which an epistemic closure principle for knowledge is reflected in folk epistemology. Previous work by Turri (2015a) suggested that our shared epistemic practices may only include a source-relative closure principle—one that applies to perceptual beliefs but not to inferential beliefs. We argue that the results of our studies provide reason for thinking that individuals are making a performance error when their knowledge attributions and denials conflict with the closure principle. When we used research materials that overcome what we think are difficulties with Turri's original materials, we found that participants did not reject closure. Furthermore, when we presented Turri's original materials to non-philosophers with expertise in deductive reasoning (viz., professional mathematicians), they endorsed closure for both perceptual and inferential beliefs. Our results suggest that an unrestricted closure principle—one that applies to all beliefs, regardless of their source—provides a better model of folk patterns of knowledge attribution than a source-relative closure principle.
In this paper, I review recent attempts by experimental philosophers and psychologists to study f... more In this paper, I review recent attempts by experimental philosophers and psychologists to study folk metaethics empirically and discuss some of the difficulties that researchers face when trying to construct the right kind of research materials and interpreting the results that they obtain. At first glance, the findings obtained so far do not look good for the thesis that people are everywhere moral realists about every moral issue. However, because of difficulties in interpreting these results, I argue that better research is needed to move the debate forward.
Recent work in experimental philosophy has shown that people are more likely to attribute intenti... more Recent work in experimental philosophy has shown that people are more likely to attribute intentionality, knowledge, and other psychological properties to someone who causes a bad side effect than to someone who causes a good one. We argue that all of these asymmetries can be explained in terms of a single underlying asymmetry involving belief attribution because the belief that one's action would result in a certain side effect is a necessary component of each of the psychological attitudes in question. We argue further that this belief-attribution asymmetry is rational because it mirrors a belief-formation asymmetry, and that the belief-formation asymmetry is also rational because it is more useful to form some beliefs than others.
Justifi cation has long been considered a necessary condition for knowledge, and theories that de... more Justifi cation has long been considered a necessary condition for knowledge, and theories that deny the necessity of justifi cation have been dismissed as nonstarters. In this paper, we challenge this longstanding view by showing that many of the arguments off ered in support of it fall short and by providing empirical evidence that individuals are oft en willing to attribute knowledge when epistemic justifi cation is lacking.
We report the results of two studies that examine folk metaethical judgments about the objectivit... more We report the results of two studies that examine folk metaethical judgments about the objectivity of morality. We found that participants attributed almost as much objectivity to ethical statements as they did to statements of physical fact and significantly more objectivity to ethical statements than to statements about preferences or tastes. In both studies, younger participants attributed less objectivity to ethical statements than older participants. Females were observed to attribute slightly less objectivity to ethical statements than males, and we found important interactions between attributions of objectivity and other factors, such as how strong participants’ moral opinions were and how much disagreement about the issue they perceived to exist within society. We believe our results have significant implications for debates about the nature of folk morality and about the nature of morality in general.
Justification has long been considered a necessary condition for knowledge, and theories that den... more Justification has long been considered a necessary condition for knowledge, and theories that deny the necessity of justification have been dismissed as non-starters. In this paper, we challenge this longstanding view by showing that many of the arguments offered in support of it fall short and by providing empirical evidence that individuals are often willing to attribute knowledge when epistemic justification is lacking.
Explanationist (or abductivist) responses to skepticism maintain that our commonsense beliefs abo... more Explanationist (or abductivist) responses to skepticism maintain that our commonsense beliefs about the external world can be rationally preferred to skeptical hypotheses on the grounds that the former provide better explanations of our sensory experiences than the latter. This kind of response to radical skepticism has never enjoyed widespread acceptance in the epistemological community due to concerns about the epistemic merits of inference to the best explanation and appeals to the explanatory virtues. Against this tide of skepticism about explanationism, I argue that traditional skeptical challenges rest upon central explanationist tenets and thus that one cannot harbor doubts about the general class of explanationist responses to skepticism while at the same time granting the force of the skeptical challenges they seek to answer. I also show how explanationist principles do a better job than epistemic closure and underdetermination principles in articulating the structure and force of skeptical challenges.
A central topic in experimental epistemology has been the ways that nonepistemic evaluations of a... more A central topic in experimental epistemology has been the ways that nonepistemic evaluations of an agent’s actions can affect whether the agent is taken to have certain kinds of knowledge. Several scholars have found that the positive or negative valence of an action can influence attributions of knowledge to the agent. These evaluative effects on knowledge attributions are commonly seen as performance errors, failing to reflect individuals’ genuine conceptual competence with knows. In the present article, I report the results of a series of studies designed to test the leading version of this view, which appeals to the allegedly distorting influence of individuals' motivation to blame. I argue that the data pose significant challenges to such a view.
We report and discuss the results of a series of experiments that address a contrast effect exhib... more We report and discuss the results of a series of experiments that address a contrast effect exhibited by folk judgments about knowledge ascriptions. The contrast effect, which was first reported by Schaffer and Knobe (2012), is an important aspect of our folk epistemology. However, there are competing theoretical accounts of it. We shed light on the various accounts by providing novel empirical data and theoretical considerations. Our key findings are, firstly, that belief ascriptions exhibit a similar contrast effect and, secondly, that the contrast effect is systematically sensitive to the content of what is in contrast. We argue that these data pose significant challenges to contrastivist accounts of the contrast effect. Furthermore, some of the data set provides, in conjunction with some non-empirical epistemological arguments, some limited evidence for what we call a focal bias account of the data (Gerken 2012, 2013). According to the focal bias account, the contrast effects arise at least in part because epistemically relevant facts are not always adequately processed when they are presented in certain ways.
Overview of the epistemic side-effect effect in the experimental philosophy literature for a refe... more Overview of the epistemic side-effect effect in the experimental philosophy literature for a reference work.
In a previous article, I argued against the widespread reluctance of philosophers to treat skepti... more In a previous article, I argued against the widespread reluctance of philosophers to treat skeptical challenges to our a priori knowledge of necessary truths with the same seriousness as skeptical challenges to our a posteriori knowledge of contingent truths. Hamid Vahid has recently offered several reasons for thinking the unequal treatment of these two kinds of skepticism is justified, one of which is a priori skepticism’s seeming dependence upon the widely scorned KK thesis. In the present article, I defend a priori skepticism against Vahid’s criticisms.
In 2004 Edouard Machery, Ron Mallon, Shaun Nichols, and Stephen Stich published what has become o... more In 2004 Edouard Machery, Ron Mallon, Shaun Nichols, and Stephen Stich published what has become one of the most widely discussed papers in experimental philosophy, in which they reported that East Asian and Western participants had different intuitions about the semantic reference of proper names. A flurry of criticisms of their work has emerged, and although various replications have been performed, many critics remain unconvinced. We review the current debate over Machery et al.’s (2004) results and take note of which objections to their work have been satisfactorily answered and which ones still need to be addressed. We then report the results of studies that reveal significant cross-cultural and intra-cultural differences in semantic intuitions when we control for variables that critics allege have had a potentially distorting effect on Machery et al.’s findings. These variables include the epistemic perspective from which participants are supposed to understand the research materials, unintended anchoring effects of those materials, and pragmatic factors involved in the interpretation of speech acts within them. Our results confirm the robustness of the cross-cultural differences observed by Machery et al. and thereby strengthen the philosophical challenge they pose.
Despite the swirling tide of controversy surrounding the work of Machery et al. (Cognition 92:B1-... more Despite the swirling tide of controversy surrounding the work of Machery et al. (Cognition 92:B1-B12, 2004), 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 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.
Although the empirical study of folk metaethical judgments is still in its infancy, a variety of ... more Although the empirical study of folk metaethical judgments is still in its infancy, a variety of interesting and significant results have been obtained. Goodwin and Darley (2008), for example, report that individuals tend to regard ethical statements as more objective than conventional or taste claims and almost as objective as scientific claims, although there is considerable variation in metaethical intuitions across individuals and across different ethical issues. Goodwin and Darley (2012) also report (i) that participants treat statements condemning ethical wrongdoing as more objective than statements enjoining good or morally exemplary actions, (ii) that perceived consensus regarding an ethical statement positively influences ratings of metaethical objectivity, and (iii) that moral objectivism is associated with greater discomfort with and more pejorative attributions toward those with whom individuals disagreed. Beebe and Sackris (under review) found that folk metaethical commitments vary across different life stages, with decreased objectivism during the college years. Sarkissian, Parks, Tien, Wright, and Knobe (2011) found that folk intuitions about metaethical objectivity vary as a function of cultural distance, with increased cultural distance between disagreeing parties leading to decreased attributions of metaethical objectivity. Wright, Grandjean, and McWhite (forthcoming) found that not only is there significant diversity among individuals with regard to the objectivity they attribute to ethical claims, there is also significant diversity of opinion with respect to whether individuals take certain issues such as abortion or anonymously donating money to charity to be ethical issues at all, despite the fact that philosophers overwhelmingly regard these issues as ethical. The present article reports a series of experiments designed to extend the empirical investigation of folk metaethical intuitions by examining how different kinds of ethical disagreement can impact attributions of objectivity to ethical claims. Study 1 reports a replication of Beebe and Sackris’ work on metaethical intuitions, in order to establish a baseline of comparison for Studies 2 through 4. In Study 2, societal disagreement about ethical issues was made salient to participants before they answered metaethical questions about the objectivity of ethical claims, and this was found to decrease attributions of objectivity to those claims. In Studies 3 and 4, the parties with whom participants were asked to consider having an ethical disagreement were made more concrete than in Studies 1 and 2, using either verbal descriptions or facial pictures. This manipulation was found to increase attributions of metaethical objectivity. In a final study, metaethical judgments were shown to vary with the moral valence of the actions performed by the disagreeing party—in other words, a Knobe effect for metaethical judgments was found. These studies aim to increase our understanding of the complexity of the folk metaethical landscape.
Experimental philosophers have recently begun to investigate the folk conception of weakness of w... more Experimental philosophers have recently begun to investigate the folk conception of weakness of will. Their work has focused primarily on the ways in which akrasia (i.e., acting contrary to one's better judgment), unreasonable violations of resolutions, and variations in the moral valence of actions modulate folk attributions of weakness of will. A key finding that has emerged from this research is that-contrary to the predominant view in the history of philosophy-ordinary participants do not think of weakness of will solely in terms of akrasia but see resolution violations and moral evaluations as playing equally important roles. The present article extends this line of research by reporting the results of four experiments that investigate (i) the interplay between hastily revising one's resolutions and the degree of reasonableness of the actions one had resolved to undertake, (ii) whether ordinary participants are willing to ascribe weakness of will to agents whose actions stem from compulsion or addiction, and (iii) the respects in which akratic action, resolution violations, and the seriousness of an addiction impact attributions of weakness of will to agents acting in accord with their addictions.
If a person requires a tissue donation in order to survive, many philosophers argue that whatever... more If a person requires a tissue donation in order to survive, many philosophers argue that whatever moral responsibility a biological relative may have to donate to the person in need will be grounded at least partially, if not entirely, in the biological relations the potential donor bears to the recipient. Such views tend to ignore the role played by a potential donor's unique ability to help the person in need and the perceived burden of the donation type in underwriting such judgments. If, for example, a sperm donor is judged to have a significant moral responsibility to donate tissue to a child conceived with his sperm, we argue that such judgments will largely be grounded in the presumed unique ability of the sperm donor to help the child due to the compatibility of his tissues with those of the recipient. In this paper, we report the results of two main studies and three supplementary studies designed to investigate the comparative roles that biological relatedness, unique ability to help, and donation burden play in generating judgments of moral responsibility in tissue donation cases. We found that the primary factor driving individuals' judgments about the moral responsibility of a potential donor to donate tissue to someone in need was the degree to which a donor was in a unique ability to help. We observed no significant role for biological relatedness as such. Biologically related individuals were deemed to have a significant moral responsibility to donate tissue only when they are one of a small number of people who have a relatively unique capacity to help. We also found that people are less inclined to think individuals have a moral responsibility to donate tissue when the donation is more costly to make. We bring these results into dialogue with contemporary disputes concerning the ethics of tissue donation.
In this chapter we consider three philosophical perspectives (including those of Stalnaker and Le... more In this chapter we consider three philosophical perspectives (including those of Stalnaker and Lewis) on the question of whether and how the principle of conditional excluded middle should figure in the logic and semantics of counterfactuals. We articulate and defend a third view that is based upon belief revision theories in the tradition of the Ramsey Test. Unlike Lewis' view, the belief revision perspective does not reject conditional excluded middle, and unlike Stalnaker's, it does not embrace supervaluationism. We adduce both theoretical and empirical considerations to argue that the belief revision perspective should be preferred to its alternatives. The empirical considerations are drawn from the results of four empirical studies (which we report below) of non-experts' judgments about counterfactuals and conditional excluded middle.
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Papers by James R Beebe