Experimental Philosophy in Slate

Today's installation of the on-line magazine Slate includes an article on our nascent X-Phi movement.  Here's the final paragraph:

"Even if philosophers manage to put forth new theories based on answers that are replicated all over the globe, philosophy will never regain its old degree of certainty. What makes x-phi revolutionary, and horrifying to some, is that once philosophy opens up to the methods, and the irreducible uncertainties, of empirical science, its tenets can no longer be articles of faith. Philosophy is no longer something you believe in. It's something you test, and expect to change tomorrow."

Comments

[Dan]

David Velleman responds critically to the Slate piece at Left2Right (linked through my name). His final paragraphs:

"Of course, it's useful to know what most people think about intentional action and moral responsibility. In philosophizing on these topics, we can't stray too far from what people think, lest we end up changing the subject, talking about things that won't be recognizable as intentional action or moral responsibility at all. Even Aristotle relied on endoxa — received opinions — as a starting point of his inquiries.

Maybe Aristotle was the first "experimental philosopher", then? No. Aristotle knew that the real philosophizing starts after the endoxa have been surveyed.

His view remains true today."

[jonathan weinberg]

Thanks for the tip, Dan -- I kinda got out of the habit of checking that blog when it went quiet a little while ago.

But I must say, I'm just not sure I understand what Velleman is complaining about. Is there anyone in the x-phi community who would disagree with the basic points he's making? For starters, I don't know anyone who thinks that x-phi should totally replace all philosophical reflection. At least, I don't think that anyone here thinks that; I would welcome comments correcting (or corroborating) me on this.

[Dan]

I think it's all just a misunderstanding. Re-reading Velleman's post, it looks like he would probably support x-phi as it is actually practiced ("putting empirical findings to philosophical use"). But filtered through the Slate article and his reading of that article, x-phi turns into something very different ("substituting [empirical findings] for philosophy altogether").

I think the last paragraph of the Slate piece, which talked about philosophy taking on the "methods ... and the irreducible uncertainties ... of empirical science", is what threw Velleman off the most. He seemed to take it to mean that x-phi was presenting itself as an alternative to the practice of thinking, arguing, etc. that makes up "traditional" philosophy, rather than an ingredient to add to the mix. And when the Slate piece went through the contributions of x-phi, Velleman's reading apparently was that it was saying "look, these experimentalists uncovered possibilities that traditional philosophers never would have thought of." For instance, he took the article to be saying something like "the x-phi movement recently discovered that moral responsibility may be compatible with the absence of free will!" rather than that x-phi studies suggest that compatibilist intuitions are more common among the general public than most philosophers had suspected, which weakens arguments against compatibilism based on common sense.

Maybe someone should go comment on Velleman's post, to let him know that x-phi is not what he fears, and to give him a link to a paper that can explain more fully what x-phi is.

[tnadelhoffer]

I have to admit that I find it very odd how many people seem to voice complaints about what we do without having actually read any of the work we have done. At least Sosa has taken the time to read and engage with the literature. Perhaps Velleman has, but if so, it is unclear why he would have said the things he did. The opposition we generate in people who do not even know what exactly it is we are up to is both surprising and irritating. Indeed, I have spent an awful lot of time on The Garden of Forking Paths trying to explain to people what we are and are not doing--which would be unnecessary if they would simply read our papers before criticizing them. There was a post a few days over there that was a case in point.

[jonathan weinberg]

I concur with your analysis, Dan.

[James Gambrell]

I didn't get the quotes from Sosa at all. They seemed to imply that a few well done investigations would end all strong skeptical debate. Does anyone really expect that to happen? We're just going to end 2000+ years of skepticism with an experiment? If there is one thing we should recognize in philosophy, its that answers just lead to more questions.

I think that if X-philosophy is successful it will broaden the field, make it more relevant, and less repetitious. I don't see X-phi as "replacing" anything in philosophy, it is augmenting, adding, and hopefully bridging the gaps between philosophy and psychology which I think are way too large.

[Audrey]

Velleman's discussion of X-philosophy is unclear. Previous comments have reviewed some of my worries, but here's another one: Velleman asserts that Aristotle relied on endoxa - received opinions - to begin philosophical inquiries. Do x-phis seek the "received opinion?" I suppose that the best interpretation of the received opinion is "what the majority say is the case."

The received opinion is a good starting point for x-phi. But if I'm understanding the literature correctly, x-phis want more than that. X-phis aim to generate data on the statistical significance of subjects' intuitions. Statistical significance gets you the degree of confidence you can have in accepting or rejecting a hypothesis. So, philosophers will be more confident that they're correct on philosophical issues, i.e., free will, intentional action, etc.

On this count - and not on the count Velleman cites - x-phis differ with Aristotle. "Real philosophizing" - whatever that is - begins with data.

[jonathan weinberg]

Audrey, it might help to remember that it's _the expermental results about the folk_ that are what, in the typical x-phi study, are being evaluated in terms of statistical significance. E.g., given the differences we found between one group of Asian-Americans and another group of European Americans, in terms of their intuitions on a Gettier case , how likely is it that those observed differences were just the result of chance? But it's all about the observed differences themselves, not about, say, knowledge is or what 'the' right intuition is or anything like that.

I hope that clarifies matters somewhat.

[hilzoy]

Hi -- I wrote about the Slate piece on my blog, and just wanted to say, for the record, that I was writing about the Slate piece, which I thought was inane, not experimental philosophy per se. (I know a lot of people who do empirical research on philosophical questions, but if there's a whole movement out there, as the Slate article seems to suggest, I don't know about it (you?), and thus wouldn't write about it.)

[Audrey]

Jonathan,

Thanks! I misspoke in my original comment. I merely wanted to say that statistical analysis makes one more confident in talking about folk intuitions. But statistical analysis is not polling, in the way that Velleman talks about it. *That* is my problem with Velleman's objection.

[Brandon Towl]

All I have to say is: I wish I had trademarked "X-phi" while I had the chance :(

[Brandon Towl]

OK, that last remark was a bit off-topic... here's a more substantive commentary. I have to confess that when I dabbled in "x-phi" about three to four years ago, only a small minority considered it worthy of a grad student's time and attention. In fact, I've been dormant in the field for some time so as to complete a more "traditional" dissertation thesis.

But to more substantive discussion: one of the things confounding the debate is the confusion between what x-philosphers would like to see done, and what they have done. The latter, much more so than the former, is constrained by what is feasible, affordable, and publishable. And so, yes, many of the experiments that have been done have been surveys about folk intituions. But one should not assume that this is *all* that x-phi is about. This is merely one area where experimental philosophy has gotten a foothold. (Surveys are also easy to understand as far as experiments go, which makes them ideal for talks and colloquia. But again, it would be unfortunately if, upon seeing such a talk, one assumed that the x-philosophers were just survey takers who were ignoring the philosophy.)

So what *is* it that the x-philosophers are up to? I think, broadly, that x-philosophers simply want to be open to methodologies typically used in the sciences, even when "doing their philosophy". This is not just because empirical research provides data which may bear on philosophical issues (though this often happens). Such research is also important because it changes our concepts and forces us to think about old philosophical problems in a new way. Or so I'd say.

Under this definition, there has been lots of "experimental philosophy" out there for some time. Here's a list that I like:

* Naturalized Ethics/Moral Psychology: moral perception, empathy, pain studies, moral cognition, etc.
* Naturalized Epistemology: belief formation and change, intersubjectivity, practices of justification, epsitemology & cognition.
* Philosophy of Mind: Patient-based studies (philosophical psychopathology), theory of mind, linguistic studies, etc.
* Science Studies: Naturalized philosophy of science, sociology of science, anthropology of science.

I hope this helps some!
--Brandon N. Towl
www.x-philosophy.com/bntowl

[Eddy Nahmias]

Brandon, what you say does help, and one thing I think it helps clarify is that there seems to be two "movements" going on here. The one called "experimental philosophy" is new, exciting in its "newness" (though possibly not very significant in the long run depending on how the meta-philosophical discussion goes), and mostly involves surveys of non-philosophers (either to test intuitions about philosophical questions, to test how those intuitions vary across scenarios, and/or to test how those intuitions vary across cultures or other types of groups).

The other movement should be called "empirically informed philosophy" or something of that sort, and it is clearly quite old, exciting to many philosophers, and has clearly demonstrated its significance. The topics Brandon listed above are some of the many included in this type of philosophy (though exp phil can work on them too). Notice that Stich et al. letter on Leiter Reports includes links to psych work that goes beyond surveying the folk (though some of it includes surveys), so it is clear there is no sharp line between the movements, but what so-called exp phils have been doing so far is generally limited to surveys.

I'd guess that much of the debate about exp phil derives in part from confusion about whether empirically informed philosophy is a good thing, how exp phil fits into empirically informed philosophy, and questions about the methodology of surveys.

Do people think we should limit the label "exp phil" to philosophers doing surveys of folk intuitions? If not, what makes it anything new, since empirically informed philosophy is nothing new (though it may be undergoing a resurgence of late and branched into new fields--e.g., Doris' work on ethics and social psychology)?

[Horacio Arlo-Costa]

I think that Eddy has just made a very important point. Jeff Helzner made a similar point in the discussion posted in Leiter's blog. The "empirically informed philosophy" that he mentions has indeed a long philosophical pedigree. Some things have changed though. One of them is that today some philosophers are not merely passive recipients of data produced in other empirical fields. They might be also the source of interesting empirical hypothesis that they would like to see tested in order to rethink purely normative issues. This work tends to be collaborative and/or interdisciplinary. Much of my recent work on neural models of choice is of this kind (in collaboration with NIH).

Or as in the case of our work with Jeff:

http://www.sipta.org/isipta05/proceedings/043.html

philosophers might question the very methodology presupposed in much of the social psychology and behavioral decision making that seems to be taken for granted in the recent work testing folk intuitions.

I promised a while ago to Thomas a survey of recent empiraical work at CMU which could very well illustrate the trend articulated by Eddy. I’ll try to do it during this week taking advantage of Spring break.

[Mike Tintner]

I agree with Eddy. No problem with experimental philosophy. But the really big deal is "empirically informed philosophy". And the very fact that you have had to invent a phrase [correctly, I think - there is no proper commonly accepted term] indicates a major problem in philosophy. However old this approach is, its principles are still not clearly crystallised and trumpeted. And to do that, you also have to define its opposite.

My thoughts at the moment are that I would call it "natural philosophy" as opposed to "artificial philosophy."

The business of philosophy is not directly to investigate the world, but to stand over the sciences and other fields of knowledge that do, and criticise and improve the frameworks, concepts and criteria they apply to the world.

A natural philosophy, I would suggest, will insist that philosophy's ideas must always be BASED on real evidence about the world, (rather than directly, experimentally producing evidence).

A great deal of twentieth century and modern philosophy, however, is artificial. It uses artificial, "other world" or "unreal world" models and experiments to support its findings. Classic examples are "Mary's black and white room" of Jackson, and the "brain in a vat" model. There are no such scenarios, and there are no signs that either is possible. But that does not deter a vast number of philosophers from endlessly studying them. A vast amount of philosophy is still artificially based, still essentially "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" A natural philosophy would not allow such models or approaches.

I'd welcome comments, and suggestions as to areas of philosophy which are currently expressing similar or compatible thoughts to the above.