Experimental Philosophy Friendly Departments

As more people start taking an interest in the empirically informed approach to philosophy preferred by the experimental philosophy crowd, I thought it might be helpful to students interested in our growing field if I tried to compile of list of departments that either (a) have one or more faculty members who have strong interdisciplinary interests, (b) have one or more faculty members who are actively engaged in (or at least encourage) empirical research, or (c) have specifically constructed interdisciplinary programs such as Washington University's PNP program, Georgia State University's recently formed Brain and Behavior program (which is offering two recently created fellowships-), UC San Diego's Experimental Philosophy Laboratory, and Arizona's Center for Consciousness Studies--to name a few that come immediately to mind. Obviously, there are a number of places that satisfy some (or all) of these criteria. I suppose I am particularly interested in where our readers would suggest that undergrads who might be interested in getting into our line of research would be well served in graduate school. Once I have a healty list of departments and research programs/labs, I will create a permanent list with links for those who are interested. Joshua Knobe has already put a list together here of philosophers who do experimental work of one form or another--but I thought a list of empirically friendly philosophy departments and interdisciplinary programs might be helpful as well. Many of our home institutions would obviously be a good place to start--especially in the event that you feel like your department is particularly receptive to experimental work. As we all know, a number of philosophers are not. Presumably, the same can be said for a number of departments.

Comments

[Matt]

Depending on how you understand "experimental" Cristina Bicchieri at Penn does a fair amount of work that might qualify. Gary Hatfield also regularly teaches on and makes use of experimental work in psychology (especially relating to perception) though I don't think he does much, if any, experimental work himself. Micheal Weisberg has done actual scientific work, mostly in chemestry, before focusing on philosophy. He might have done more later, though I don't know. Any of these three would be possible to work with at Penn, though I'd explore the situation very carefully before deciding on it.

[tnadelhoffer]

Thanks Matt--that is precisely the kind of advice I was hoping to elicit.

[Horacio Arlo-Costa]

Carnegie Mellon certainly has been experimentally friendly for a relatively long time now. Various of my colleagues perform experiments regularly as part of their research programs and they routinely train students in the use of relevant techniques.

Here is a brief overview. Linda Palmer is an expert in Kant who has done also serious and systematic work in neuroscience. She is currently a member of the Center for the Basis of Neural Cognition (http://www.cnbc.cmu.edu/) and has her laboratory in the University of Pittsburgh. David Danks conducts experiments about the structure of causal judgment along the lines the research program presented by Clark Glymour in his recent book: The Mind's Arrows: Bayes Nets and Graphical Causal Models in Psychology (MIT, 2003). Richard Scheines has also recently run experiments comparing lecture vs. online delivery while teaching causal reasoning on line with didactic materials developed by our Laboratory for Symbolic and Educational Computing. Peter Vanderschraaf does not conduct experiments with human subjects but he appeals to computer simulations in order to gain insight about the nature of social conventions.

I am interested in experiments in the area of decision-making and, more broadly theories of rationality. So far this work has focused on the study of decision problems where probabilities are imprecise or vague (see a recent posting) as well as work on the neural basis of decision-making. The last topic includes fMRI studies, as well as experiments with patients with brain lesions (in collaboration with NIH) and behavioral experiments in the area of behavioral game theory (in collaboration with Social and Decision Sciences, CMU).

CMU is well know by its interdisciplinary work and our department is not an exception. For a general overview see: http://www.hss.cmu.edu/philosophy/index.php.

[jonathan weinberg]

I wonder whether we need to distinguish between experimental philosophy-qua-doing of experiments in the context of traditional philosophical disputes; and experimetnal philosophy-qua-seriously naturalistic philosophy of science that draws on real scientific results. Obviously there's going to be a lot of overlap between the two, but the latter already exists in force, and has for some time. Also, the latter requires a fairly in-depth knowledge of the relevant real science, in a way that the former doesn't (at least not yet). So I would reserve "experimental philosophy" for the former: doing experiments within philosophy. But I'm happy to accede to whatever preferred group usage there is out there.

[Arlo-Costa]

Concerning Jonathan's post, it is unclear to me what is `doing experiments within philosophy'. It seems to me that philosophy does not have special norms as to how to conduct experiments, and I hope that when a philosopher engages in experimentation he is actually able to produce `real scientific results', with all the in-depth knowledge of the relevant science that this requires. Otherwise I do not see what is the value of the experiment in question.

A philosopher might be, of course, motivated to consider, say, highly abstract problems related to the structure of cognition. Problems that psychologists could consider too foundational to care about. And the solution of these problems might require, in turn, knowledge about relevant empirical constraints. But these empirical constraints might focus on data and problems which scientist do not prioritize in their research agendas.

In my particular case, when studying issues related to the notion of rationality, I noticed that it would be nice to know about certain empirical constraints. But when I looked in the relevant empirical literature I did not find studies of the kind I wanted. So, I collaborated with scientist in order to produce the relevant knowledge. But these empirical constraints continue to be what they are, empirical facts about how people actually make decisions which could have been produced by any scientist working in this area (and which can be used by a psychologist for a completely different purpose than the ones that interest me)

One of the possible uses of experiments in philosophy could be related to put philosophical intuitions to the test, by actually looking for empirical patters of responses. This kind of experiments have been conducted in the social sciences for a long time and there are well know methodological considerations as to how to design and run these kind of surveys (statistical constraints as well as conceptual ones). Of course, philosophers could contribute to improve this methodology, but there is nothing to gain by ignoring it (and there is much to lose, namely scientific credibility). The same applies to any other type of more sophisticated experiments, say in neuro-economics, behavioral game theory, etc. Philosophers might have in mind experimental questions that scientists have not considered or that they do not care about, but once the question is well-formed and a protocol designed, the philosopher (if minimally careful) should proceed as an expert in the respective empirical area would proceed. It seems to me that anything less than striving for this standard is not worth of serious consideration neither in philosophy nor outside it.

[tnadelhoffer]

When I originally posted my query concerning experimentally friendly departments, I suppose I had in mind both of the kinds of philosophers Jonathan mentions--i.e., both philosphers who pay close attention to the relevant empirical data in their respective fields as well as philosophers who are interested in helping contribute to the collection of this relevant data. On the surface, I may have cast an overly broad net given that there are--and have always been--a number of philosophers of the former type. Philosophers interested in the latter kinds of projects, on the other hand, are certainly less common (and have arrived on the philosophical scene much more recently). I suppose reserving the label "experimental philosopher" for the latter kind of philosopher makes sense so long as we have another title for the former type--such as "empirically minded or informed philosopher"--otherwise, there is no easy way of distinguishing these two kinds of bedfellows from their apriorist counterparts. Of course, some philosophers--including myself, Jonathan, and Horacio--fall into both the empirically informed and the experimental camps. My main goal was to try and come up with a thorough list of places and programs where students of both stripes will fit in and find scholars willing to encourage their preferred research programs--whether it involve paying close attention to existing salient data or running studies/experiments of their own. I suspect that it is easier to find programs that encourage the former kind of work than it is to find places receptive to the latter.

More traditional departments--and the more traditional philosophers who populate them--are mainly a priorist in their approach and tendencies, and are often resistant (if not downright hostile)to the kind of stuff we do. And since this kind of apriorism is often anathema to the work that the experimental/empirically informed crowd prefer, I wanted to ask which departments our readers feel are particularly supportive of experimental--rather than merely empirically informed--philosophy. Of course, Horacio is right to suggest that to the extent that empirically informed philosophers are going to try their hand at doing experimental work, they should obviously be faithful to the methodological practices and constraints adhered to by the scientific community working in their field of choice. In my own research, for instance, I try to live up to the methodological standards of social psychology--but I am nevertheless painfully aware that once more psychologists become interested in the folk concepts and intuitions that fascinate me, they will likely be better equipped (and better funded!) to carry the kind of preliminary stuff I do to a more sophisticated level--a turn of events which I welcome whole-heartedly. In fact, this is precisely why I think working in a department with close ties to other scientific disciplines is importnat. I have no doubt that if I were working closely with psychologists, the results of my studies would be much more useful to the scientific community at large.

[uriah]

Thanks for mentioning our consciousness center, Thomas. Also, don't forget that we hired Shaun Nichols, who will join us in Fall 06!

[Edouard Machery]

My department, History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, would probably consider favorably students who have some knowledge both in philosophy of science and in experimental philosophy a la Shaun, Josh, etc. (see the posts above).
Beside my own work with Steve, Peter Machamer has collaborated with neuropsychologists and Ken Schaffner, who will join us, is working closely with psychiatrists (he is himself trained in medicine). Some of our current students have a double training in philosophy and in neuropsychology.

[Eric Schwitzgebel]

Such students would be welcomed by me at UC Riverside!

[Karola Stotz]

I would support Edouard in his assessment of the HPS department in Pittsburgh. Beside the work Edouard has mentioned, Paul Griffiths and my 'Representing Genes' project, an empirical study of the concept of the gene, was located at the HPS department during its run of 4 years and several members of the department have been actively participating in it (Jim Lennox, Sandra Mitchell, and Bob Olby.
I am now at IU Bloomington and would think that both the philosophy department (with Jonathan Weinberg) and the cognitive science program would welcome students with interest in a more empirical, expreimental approach to philosophical issues.

[wes anderson]

Thomas Nadelhoffer,

The Knobe link doesn't work anymore (I tried a few times). Do you know when you will create a permanent list of X-Phi schools, or are you still interested in that idea?

[wes anderson]

Brian Leiter has a list of departments with naturalistic contingents (and non-naturalist contingents) near the end of this page: http://www.philosophicalgourmet.com/2006/meaningof.asp

However, I am not sure if these include the departments who train students to conduct experiments AND be scientifically informed. I look forward to the development of this list.