Feltz and Cokely on Intuition and Personality

Adam Feltz and Edward Cokely have an exciting new paper about the relationship between personality differences and philosophical intuitions.  The paper reports a series of surprising correlations between personality measures and responses to philosophical questions.

Some highlights:

• A lack of openness to experience predicts belief in moral realism.
• A lack of cognitive reflectiveness predicts actor/observer asymmetries in moral judgments.
• Extraversion predicts intuitions about intentional action.

In subsequent work, Feltz and Cokely make the intriguing suggestion that the persistence of philosophical debate might be due in part to the fact that people with different personalities actually have genuinely different philosophical intuitions.  I'd be interested to hear whether people think they might be onto something there...

Comments

[Kate Devitt]

This is sociologically interesting. It reminds me of William James' classic 'The Will to Believe' and the impact of personality differences on agnosticism.

[Eric Schwitzgebel]

Absolutely! The time is ripe for the psychology of philosophy.

[Joachim Horvath]

Actually, something like this was already put forward as a speculative and rather controversial hypothesis by the German idealist Johann Gottlieb Fichte (in his "Introductions to the Wissenschaftslehre"):

"The kind of philosophy one chooses depends on what kind of human being one is: for a philosophical system is not a dead instrument, which one can pick up or put down as one pleases, but rather it is animated by the soul of the human being whose system it is."

What is so controversial about such a view, it seems to me, is that it immediately invites some form of meta-philosophical relativism or expressivism. Certainly, it jeopardizes the rationality of fundamental philosophical disagreements, and probably also the idea that philosophy has a distinctive subject matter. Anyway, I don't really see what the point of the "psychology of philosophy" may be, except to undermine philosophy's claim to objectivity. Put differently, is there anything we can learn about e.g. quantum mechanics if we study the psychology of Niels Bohr or Erwin Schrödinger? I very much doubt it... So, what is the philosophical relevance of the psychology of philosophy supposed to be, according to its proponents?

[Tamler Sommers]

Joachim,

You ask:

"So, what is the philosophical relevance of the psychology of philosophy supposed to be, according to its proponents?"

It seems to me you gave an excellent answer to your own question (before you asked it).

"It immediately invites some form of meta-philosophical relativism or expressivism. Certainly, it jeopardizes the rationality of fundamental philosophical disagreements, and probably also the idea that philosophy has a distinctive subject matter. Anyway, I don't really see what the point of the "psychology of philosophy" may be, except to undermine philosophy's claim to objectivity."

1. Invites philosophical relativism or expressivism.

2. Jeopardizes the rationality of fundamental philosophical disagreements,

3. Jeopardizes the idea that philosophy has a distinctive subject matter.

If that's the point, it seems well worth looking into, no?

[Jason Shepard]

Joachim,

You ask: "Put differently, is there anything we can learn about e.g. quantum mechanics if we study the psychology of Niels Bohr or Erwin Schrödinger?"

I think this is an interesting question. I would think that personality differences (or some other individual differences) may be able to account for why one physicist (or psychologist, economist, chemist, biologists, etc.) takes one side or another of an on-going theoretical debate. (Of course, this is an empirical question that can only be sufficiently answered through the right methods.)

But if this is the case, which I think that it is very much likely that this is the case, would you say that physics (psychology, economics, chemistry, biology, etc.) should be doomed to invite the same kind of dismissive and cynical conclusions? (Of course, you might reach similar conclusions, but for some reason, people tend to take these conclusions as a serious challenge to the viability of philosophy as a discipline, whereas when these same conclusions are reached in regards to science, they are seen as non-devastating.)

Besides, this study is about folk intuitions concerning the application of certain philosophical concepts, and to get to the original question raised by Josh: This line of research is very interesting for those working in areas dealing with folk intuitions, and I think should be pursued vigorously. I am at the tail end of finishing up some empirical work on the side-effect effect. And in this work, I had an open-ended question to which I received responses that spoke to me of personality/individual differences causing differences in concept application. So, I am very excited to see explorations of these kinds already happening.

[Adam Feltz]

Thanks for the thoughtful and thought provoking comments.

We agree that there is a relatively long history of argument suggesting that individual differences might be related to a variety of philosophical intuitions. Unlike Fichte and most others, however, we present empirical data not only demonstrating systematic variation but indicating that in many cases the variation in philosophically important intuitions is predicted by largely stable and strongly heritable individual differences in psychological traits.

We'd like to echo Jason's point which leads into why we think identifying individual differences in philosophically relevant intuitions is potentially theoretically important. First, we think what Tamler and Joachim suggest as important upshots of identifying individual differences could be right—they might imply a number of rather untidy (and perhaps unexplored) things for philosophically relevant intuitions and for philosophy in general.

However, we are not at all advocating anything like “there goes the neighborhood.” In contrast, we think that an important positive implication for these types of results should not be overlooked. Namely, we think that these results might help us understand the nature of philosophical disagreement by coming to understand the cognitive processes and psychological dynamics that generate these intuitions (e.g. heuristics, situation models, meta-cognition, subjective experiences). As we better understand (i.e., map out) related processes, we could better understand why people have different intuitions about philosophically important cases. For example, because different people have different sensitivities, they may (1) interpret scenarios differently or (2) may be differentially influenced by different features of cases. Theoretically, these influences might be made to “go away” in specific conditions (e.g. task environments, learning histories). Finding those kinds of things out (e.g, 1 and 2) holds hope for ways to reach agreement—or at least identify sources of disagreement—about important philosophical questions.

Of course, we are also quite aware of the possibility that once all these things are equalized, there still may be (at least some) persistent differences in intuitions. But finding out how things go—either way—would seem to us to be a largely unique move in a theoretically interesting and important direction.

Adam and Edward

[Joachim Horvath]

Tamler,

the question I asked was actually a bit longer, if you conjoin it with my first question: What is the philosophical relevance of the psychology of philosophy, except to undermine philosophy's claim to objectivity? And it really isn't clear to me that you or Adam and Edward have really answered it. For, I take it that physicists would outrightly dismiss the idea that the psychology of philosophy helps them to resolve some fundamental disagreement, say about the right interpretation of quantum mechanics. For them, I take it, the only ultimately relevant consideration is what the physical evidence is, quite irrespective of the psychological motivation behind producing and using such evidence. So, I think that the psychology of philosophy can only get a grip on us if we already have some significant doubts about the existence of philosophical evidence and the objectivity of our discipline (but see Williamson's new book for a vigorous defense). Yet, if am right about this, then the psychology of philosophy does not so much invite or support meta-philosophical relativism, but more or less presuppose it in order to become relevant to the resolution of first-order philosophical disagreements at all...

[Joachim Horvath]

Sorry, I meant "that physicists would outrightly dismiss the idea that the psychology of PHYSICS helps them to resolve some fundamental disagreement".

The psychology of physics may not help the physicists come to a better understanding of some on-going theoretical debate X, but it can help the physicists understand why one physicists prefers explanation A and another prefers explanation B, where A and B are two currently conceived theories that are underdetermined by the known evidence.

And, yes, in many ways, this would show that objectivity of individual scientists may have to be doubted. (BTW, don't most philosophers/psychologists/historians/sociologist of science already doubt that individual scientists can truly be objective?) But this would in no way, taken by itself, undermine science as an objective seeking discipline that achieves some limited and rough but meaningful success in this pursuit of objectivity and truth.

Besides, it may turn out that there is some fact of the matter relating individual differences to probability of being on the "right" side of theoretical debates within certain contexts and constraints. So, ultimately, knowing the psychology of physicists may actual help predict what physicists are more likely to fall on the "right" side of the debate.

I don't know. Perhaps I am missing something here?

[Jason Shepard]

Sorry. Forgot to post name to above comment.
-Jason

[tnadelhoffer]

While Trevor, Eddy, and I are not ready to discuss the results of our recent on-line study in any detail--since we are just now starting to wade through the data (800+ people completed the survey)--it is nevertheless worth pointing out that we may have preliminary evidence that philosophical training minimizes whatever effect that temperament and personality type may have on the kinds of intuitions probed by Adam and Edward. We have a number of other interesting results as well--but for now, I just wanted to say that the driving force between competing intuitions amongst philosophers may be something other than temperament. But more on that later...

That being said, I want to echo what Adam, Tamler, and others have said about the relevance of the psychology of philosophy to philosophy proper. At the end of the day, if it turns out that there are correlations between certain philosophical views/intuitions and specific temperaments or personality traits, it would put pressure on philosophers who operate under the assumption that reflective equilibrium provides us with a tool for arriving at informed judgments that are not driven by biases, heuristics, and other philosophically irrelevant factors. In short, it would put pressure on the view of philosophy whereby we arrive at our judgments and theories as the result of cold and impartial reason and logic. Just as behavioral economics puts pressure on homo economicus, so could the psychology of philosophy put pressure on homo philosophicus. But more on that later as well...

[Jussi Suikkanen]

Thanks. This is a very interesting paper.

Could we also draw some conclusions about the relationship between personality differences and commitment to classic logic or willingness to accept contradictions?

It is assumed that John and Fred are making *contradictory* claims. Aren't contradictory claims supposed to have to be by definition of the form p and ~p? Could anything else count as a contradiction? A lot of people then think that neither one of the relevant claims is true. So, they must think that it is the case that ~p and also ~~p, i.e., ~p & p which seems like a contradiction. Either these people endorse the contradiction or they reject logic.

[John A.]

A psychology of philosophy may well help us understand why people think as they do regarding the beliefs that they hold. Going back to James brought in by Kate, he made the distinction between tough-minded and tender-mined philosophers so the idea that personality traits/types might tend to be correlated to certain beliefs is not new. But he also had criteria for admitting beliefs into a system regardless of personality traits and one of them was the idea that a belief had not been contradicted by experience. I think that it is important to remember that while we may come to better understand why people think as they do it does not follow that they should think the way the do. I can understand why a person is a racist, but that does not make racism a valid position.

This may not be the case in ethics/values if I understand what Nichols and Prinz are doing, but it certainly would be the case regarding the ontological status of entities. It might be the case that certain personality types tend to believe that there is a God, but that is not an argument for the existence of God. I suspect that it is reasonable to believe in the existence of something that may turn out not to exist along the lines argued for by James in the source cited by Kate, but that fact that it is reasonable to believe in x must be based on some sort of evidence that would apply to all persons regardless of their personalities.