Experimental Philosophy

Moral Language Survey

Hello all,

I'm a senior  majoring in philosophy at the University of Vermont.  This year I am working on my honors thesis with Don Loeb.  The bulk of my thesis has been designing a survey to get at how regular people use moral language- to give support to either cognitivism or noncognitivism (or another theory like moral incoherentism).  Don suggested that I send my survey into the experimental philosophy blog in the hopes that I can get some comments.  Don has already given me a long list of possible improvements, but multiple sets of eyes are always welcome.

Here is a link to the page where my survey is posted:

www.uvm.edu/~kdalane

It's the file called "Moral Language Survey"

I'll just give a short description of what each section of the survey is aiming to get at.

• Section 1 includes an educational intro in which the distinction between 'statements that are true or false' and 'statements that are not true or false' is explained.  Then there are a few questions that ask the participants to decide whether a statement is true or false, or neither true or false.  This section includes a few moral language questions, but it is mostly to test the participants to see if they have mastered the distinction.  If they haven't, then their answers on the rest of the survey can't be trusted.
• Section 2 focuses on moral questions.  It describes situations and then presents statements about these situations.  Partipants must chose whether the statements are true, false, or neither true or false.  The obvious aim of this section is to see whether or not people chose true or false, or neither true or false.  A secondary purpose is test if the participants are using moral langauge in a cognitivist way, but making statements about 'what is accepted around here' or 'what I accept' rather than 'what is true for everyone'.
• Section 3 directly asks participants to chose which statement is closest to what a particular moral statement means.
• Section 4 asks the participants a few questions about themselves to make sure there is enough variation in the survey population.

I am doing the surveys in undergraduate lectures.  I have actually already collected about 400 surveys, but Don suggested it still might be useful to get feedback so I can ammend the survey if any grievous errors are pointed out to us.  So far, the results have shown that many (most I would say) of the participants have answers that are all over the place.  Many can't successfully identify 'statements that are true or false' versus 'statements that are not true or false'.  Many also chose confused looking combinations in the other two sections.

I'd like to get comments on what people think of the survey itself.  I'm also wondering what people think about the fact that the majority of surveys so far look like they are filled out by very confused, inconsistent people.  Is the educational section not clear enough?  Or is it possible that people in general just have trouble understanding the disctinction between facts and nonfacts?

I'd appreciate any input.

Ahem.

From Timothy Williamson's response to Hillary Kornblith's contribution to a symposium on The Philosophy of Philosophy in the most recent volume of Analysis:

 

Unfortunately, ‘experimental philosophy’ has acquired a bad name in mainstream philosophy, in view of the crudity with which it is too often carried out: poor experimental design and crass philosophical errors in the interpretation of the data, perhaps as a result of philistine contempt for more traditional philosophical skills and methods (such as long, subtle chains of armchair reasoning). Those defects can charitably be regarded as growing pains, even if holding theoreticians in low esteem is an occupational hazard for experimentalists (and vice versa). Kornblith and I agree that in principle and sometimes in practice the use of experimental data is compatible with the highest degree of philosophical sophistication.

The legitimacy in principle of experimental philosophy does not make armchair philosophy illegitimate in principle. It would be legitimate in principle for mathematicians to conduct large-scale trials concerning the effect of coffee consumption on susceptibility to computational error, and to modify their practice in consequence if sufficiently alarming results were obtained; that does not make it illegitimate in principle for them not to bother. The book defends an armchair methodology as a good way to address many philosophical problems, not as the only good way to address any philosophical problem. It does so without compromising a straightforwardly realist view of what philosophy is about by any restriction to words or concepts.

Discuss.

P.S. Everyone should also check out a piece by Genoveva Marti' in that same volume of the journal, "Against semantic multiculturalism" (targeting Machery, Mallon, Nichols, and Stich).

Experimental Epistemology at SUNY Buffalo

James Beebe and Wesley Buckwalter have started the Experimental Epistemology Research Group.  It looks like a really interesting resource!  They also appear to be hosting an upcoming Experimental Epistemology Conference at SUNY Buffalo.  Speakers include James Bebe, Michael Bishop, Ram Neta, Shaun Nichols, and Jonathan Weinberg.

Congrats to Bryce Huebner!

Congratulations to our own Bryce Huebner--who has accepted a tenure track offer from Georgetown University.  Yet another experimental philosopher who has had success on the job market in recent years.  This is a good sign for young x-philes coming down the graduate school pipeline.

X-Phi article in UK's Prospect

David Edmonds and Nigel Warburton (of Philosophy Bites fame) have an article, "Philosophy's great experiment" online in the UK Prospect.  In addition to the usual sort of suspects who hang out at this blog, there is also some good discussion of some other folks' work that some of our readership might not already be familiar with.

Devitt on Galton as Experimental Philosopher

Kate Devitt has an interesting post up over on her blog  Philosophy of Memory about an early experimental philosopher--Francis Galton (cousin of Darwin, eugenicist, creator of the notion of correlation, and early explorer of individual differences in psychology).  Her post can be found here.  Check it out...

Experimental Philosophy of Consciousness at Consciousness Online

I currently have a multimedia presentation up as part of the Consciousness Online conference. The title of the talk is "Folk Psychology and Phenomenal Consciousness" and it can be viewed, along with a commentary by Adam Arico, here. In the talk I present the results of four new studies exploring whether non-philosophers are generally naïve realists. I focus on two cases, one where many have thought that they are (colors) and one where most have thought that they are not (pains). The setup and results for the studies are given below (for framing and discussion, see the talk).

Study 1:

To test whether non-philosophers hold a naïve realist view of colors I gave 52 subjects a brief paragraph introducing them to the philosophical disputes concerning colors. They were then asked four questions (counterbalanced for order):

1. Do you think that a ripe tomato would still be red even if there was nobody around to see it?

2. Do you think that the red you see when you look at a ripe tomato is in your mind?

3. Do you think that the red you see when you look at a ripe tomato is in the tomato?

4. Do you think it is possible that somebody else might actually see the color that you call “blue” when they look at an ordinary ripe tomato, despite having normal visual acuity (i.e., without being color-blind)?

Each question was answered on a 7-point scale anchored at 1 with “clearly no,” at 4 with “not sure,” and at 7 with “clearly yes.” High answers to questions 1 and 3, and low answers to questions 2 and 4, follow the naïve view of colors. The mean response for the first and third questions were significantly above the neutral point of 4 (M=5.92, SD=1.98, p<0.001; M=4.88, SD=1.67, p<0.001), while the mean response for the second and fourth questions were significantly below 4 (M=3.27, SD=1.98, p=0.010; M=3.19, SD=2.16, p=0.009):

Study 2:

In Study 2, 56 subjects were given a description of a situation in which, on the naïve view, it would be natural to hold that a pain existed unfelt. Subjects were asked:

It is common for people who have been badly injured and are in ongoing pain to report being distracted from the pain by an interesting conversation, an intense movie, or a good book. Afterwards, the person will often reflect that for a period of time they hadn’t noticed any pain at all! In such a situation, do you think that the injured person still had the pain and was just not feeling it at the moment? Or, that there was no pain during that period?

They answered on a 7-point scale anchored at 1 with “clearly in pain, but not feeling it,” at 4 with “not sure,” and at 7 with “clearly not in pain.”

The average response was 2.54, indicating that contrary to the philosophical consensus, the subjects surveyed hold that pains can exist unfelt. Planned analysis showed that the mean response was significantly different from 4 (SD=1.66; p<0.001).

Study 3:

If non-philosophers hold a naïve view of pains we would also expect them to say that pains can be shared, at least in those atypical cases in which a body part is shared. My third and fourth studies presented subjects with descriptions of two such cases and asked them whether the numerically identical pain was felt by two different people. In Study 3, 41 subjects were given the following two scenarios in sequence, counterbalanced for order:

Henry and Johnny are normal undergraduates at a state university. They are distinct people with their own beliefs and desires. One day they were participating in a three-legged race in a park with Henry’s right leg tied to Johnny’s left leg. While running toward the finish line their “third-leg” forcefully kicked a large rock that, unbeknownst to them, was hidden in the grass. Henry and Johnny both grimaced and shouted out “Ouch!”

Bobby and Robby are conjoined twins that are joined at the torso. While they are distinct people, each with their own beliefs and desires, they share the lower half of their body. One day while running through a park they forcefully kicked a large rock that, unbeknownst to them, was hidden in the grass. Bobby and Robby both grimaced and shouted out “Ouch!”

After each vignette, subjects were asked whether the runners felt one and the same pain or two different pains. They answered on a 7-point scale anchored at 1 with “clearly same pain,” at 4 with “not sure,” and at 7 with “clearly different pains.”

The mean responses were significantly different (p<0.001), with the mean for the three-legged race scenario significantly above the neutral response of 4 (M=5.20, SD=1.45, p<0.001) and the mean response for the conjoined twins scenario significantly below 4 (M=3.27, SD=2.09, P=0.030).

Study 4:

In Study 4, 60 subjects were given the following vignette:

As part of an experiment, a mad scientist attached two men who had lost their arms to the same donor hand! To do this, the scientist carefully connected each of the patients’ nerve fibers to the new appendage. The two of them now share the one hand. After the operation, the doctor tested their ability to use the new hand. He found that while the two patients have some difficulty picking things up with the shared hand, they show normal pain responses. In particular, when the doctor cut the palm of the shared hand, both patients grimaced and shouted out “Ouch!” Upon questioning, they told the doctor that it had hurt when he cut them.

Subjects where then asked whether the patients felt one and the same pain or two different pains, answering on the same scale used in Study 3.

Again, the mean response was significantly below four (M=3.42, SD=1.82; p=0.016), with the majority of subjects indicating that the two patients felt the same pain.

[Cross-posted at WIPLASH]

Knobe wins SPP's Stanton Award

Congratulations to Joshua Knobe for winning this year's SPP Stanton Prize.  He joins other experimental philosophers such as John Doris (2007), Shaun Nichols (2005), and Jesse Prinz (2003) who have recently won the award as well.  It is also worth pointing out the  long and distinguished list of experimental philosophers who have won the SPP's William James Prize--e.g., Justin Sytsma (2008), Chad Gonnerman (2007), Liane Young (2006), Adina Roskies (2002), Jonathan Weinberg (2001), and Pete Mandik (2000 & 1998).   It is delightful to see so many contributors to this blog being honored for the interesting and exciting work they do.  So, congrats to all of the x-phi honorees (old and new)!

Placement at the Central meeting?

Not an X-Phi question, but one that may be relevant to some would-be X-Phiers: are any of our readers in attendance at the Chicago meeting, who can thus tell us how much placement (if any) is going on there this year?

Brain, Mind, and Emergence (Stanford 2003)

This is a bit dated, but there is an all-star cast of participants--e.g., Damasio, Ramachandran, Rose, and Sapolsky--giving talks in 2003 about the relationship between the mind and the brain (see here).  I thought readers of this blog might find some of the video lectures to be as interesting as I did.  Enjoy!