Experimental Philosophy

First Issue of the Review of Philosophy and Psychology on Experimental Philosophy

The first issue of the RPP dedicated to experimental philosophy is now out. Check out the ToC here. This is really an excellent issue with very good articles.

The equally excellent articles for the second issue dedicated to experimental philosophy are on-line here.

A Judge's Guide to Neuroscience

The MacArthur Law and Neuroscience Project (along with the SAGE Center at UCSB) recently published A Judge's Guide to Neuroscience:  A Concise Introduction.  The useful manual contains articles by Marcus Raichle, Michael Gazzaniga, Adina Roskies, Read Montague, Scott Grafton, and others.  And while it is aimed at judges, I think it might be useful for philosophers interested in these interdisciplinary issues as well. 

Experimental Philosophy Lab Meeting in NYC

Join MERG on Friday, July 30th, for an Experimental Philosophy Lab Meeting at NYU. Presenters will include Jeff Sebo (New York University) and Jonathan Phillips (Yale University). The lab meeting will run from 3:00-5:00 pm in room 202 of the NYU philosophy department. Informal discussion will follow.

You can learn more about the meeting here:

http://yale.edu/cogsci/lab.htm

MERG also has a facebook page:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=165286086303&ref=ts

Workshop Programme: Experimental Philosophy Group UK 1st Workshop

The Experimental Philosophy Group UK are pleased to publish a full programme for their 1st Workshop to be held in the Philosophy Department, University of Bristol, UK from 1:00pm till 6:30pm on Wednesday 15th September 2010.

1:00pm-2:00pm, David Papineau (KCL), ‘The Significance of Experimental Philosophy’

2:00pm-2.15pm, Drinks Break

2.15pm-2.45pm, Krist Vaesen & Martin Peterson (Eindhoven), ‘Knowledge and the Quality of Information’

2.45pm-3.15pm, Matthew Kieran (presenting) (Leeds) & Aaron Meskin (Leeds), ‘Aesthetic Judgement: Mere Exposure, Value and Expertise’

3.15pm-3.45pm, Florian Cova (presenting) (Institut Jean Nicod) & Hichem Naar (Manchester), ‘Does intentional action come from the deep self?’

3.45pm-4.15pm, Drinks Break

4.15pm-4.45pm, Katinka Quintelier (presenting) (UCLA/Ghent), Daniel Fessler (UCLA) & Stephen Stich (Rutgers), ‘Harm, authority and generalizability: further experiments on the moral/conventional distinction’

4.45pm-5.15pm, Julian Baggini (The Philosophers’ Magazine), ‘The Bundlists’ Conjecture’

5.15pm-5.30pm, Drinks Break

5.30pm-6.30pm, Finn Spicer (Bristol), ‘The Goals of Experimental Philosophy’

Followed by drinks at a local pub and an informal, affordable meal. All invited.

Registration is open and is free of charge.  However, places are limited and will be allocated on a first come, first served basis.  To register please e-mail experimentalphilosophyuk@gmail.com with your name, affiliation and a contact phone number (optional).  Subject line of email should read “REGISTRATION [YOUR NAME]”. 

Registration will close when all the places are filled or on  the 5th of September 2010, whichever happens sooner.  PDF copies of the programme available on request, just send an e-mail to the above address. 

 

 

More Stakes and Evidence-Seeking

In a fascinating new blog post, paper, and discussion, N. Ángel Pinillos offers us some new experimental evidence suggesting that unlike some earlier results, subject stakes do in fact influence third-person mental state attributions of knowledge.  Specifically, Pinillos shows that people think more evidence is required before they agree a subject knows (that there are no typos in his writing assignment) when the stakes of the situation are high than when they are low.  Yet, one potential worry regarding performance error in evidence-seeking designs is that the differences detected in the amount of evidence collected between low and high stakes subjects in this particular experiment arises not because third-person mental state attributions of knowledge are or aren’t intrinsically sensitive to stakes, but rather because high-stakes subjects are expected to collect more evidence than low-stakes subjects to actually have an outright belief on the issue at all. 

I ran a further experiment [download Stakes and Evidence Seeking] to check out whether this was the case.  In an online study, 100 participants were given the exact manipulation as in Pinillos’ study involving subject stakes proofreading for typos, but also varied the kind of mental state that was attributed to that subject.  This resulted in a 2x2 between-subjects experimental design, independently varying the practical stakes of the subject (either high or low) and the predicate satisfied (does that subject either “believe” or “know” that there are no typos).   Below are the quick means for how much evidence people thought was required for each case:

 

As predicted there was a main effect for stakes F (1, 86) = 23.1, p <.001, but unfortunately no significant differences for the predicate used, or the interaction of these factors.  I take this result to show that this particular evidence seeking experiment does show some kind of effect of stakes, but that we really can’t claim on the basis of these data that this effect has anything specifically to do with participants’ mental state attributions of knowledge (though it still could turn out that stakes actually do or do not play this role). 

Given our recent discussion over on CD, I would really love to hear what people think about these new results, how they might relate to theories like IRI, and especially how we could design an even better test to get to the bottom of these stakes in third person ascriptions!

Intentional Side-Effects and X-Phi Methods: new paper

Robin Scaife and I have a new paper on intentional side-effects forthcoming in Journal of Moral Philosophy. You can download a draft here.

The paper argues against the consensus view that experiments have shown a normative dimension to the folk concept of intentional action (or at least to its application).

Our preferred hypothesis is that the outcome of an action is classified as intentional only if the agent is taken to have assigned it some relative importance when deciding what to do.

We argue that the existing experiments support this hypothesis and we present data from two experiments of our own that we claim can only be explained by our hypothesis.

Our hypothesis is broader than Machery’s cost–benefit analysis account, since cost in relation to benefit is only one among various ways in which relative importance can be assigned to a side-effect. We argue that our hypothesis explains the data Mallon presents against Machery as well as Machery’s data (and Knobe’s data, Nadelhoffer’s data, our data, and more).

Over the course of the paper, we develop a methodological critique of the preceding literature. We are particularly concerned with the effect that changing one word in a vignette (e.g. changing ‘harm’ for ‘help’ in Knobe’s original experiment) has on the way the reader takes other sentences in the vignette (e.g. ‘I don’t care at all about the environment!’).

We also introduce qualitative analysis of the comments provided by respondents and reflect on the relation between these and the respondents’ actual practice in applying the concept ‘intentional’. From this, we sketch a picture of the relation between experimental philosophy and more traditional conceptual analysis.

Enjoy.

The Character Project

Christian Miller asked me to post the following information about The Character Project:

• The past 30 years have seen a resurgence of interest in character, particularly in the areas of psychology, philosophy, and theology. This work has given rise to a number of challenging questions, such as:
• (i) Do character traits such as honesty or compassion really exist?
• (ii) If they do exist, how prevalent are they, and what is their underlying psychological nature?
• (iii) Should character traits such as the virtues be the centerpiece of our best ethical theory?
• (iv) How should we go about improving our characters and overcoming our character flaws?
• (v) For those working in theology, should thinking about human and divine character be central to theological ethics?

Post-doc in Moral Cognition

Nicholas Iles asked me to pass along the following job advertisement (seehere for more details):

Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Moral Cognition

FACULTY OF PHILOSOPHY, Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics and the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics

Grade 7: Salary £28,983 - £35,646 p.a.

Applications are invited for a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship to work on a project that is funded by the Volkswagen Foundation, and jointly hosted by the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics and the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics (both of which are within the Faculty of Philosophy). The project is entitled Emotion and Intuition in Moral Decision-Making: Empirical Evidence and Ethical Implications.

The fellowship is for a fixed-term of two years from the date of appointment. The Research Fellow will be based at the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics, which is located at Littlegate House in central Oxford, where the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics is also based.

Registration Open: 1st Workshop of the Experimental Philosophy Group UK

Registration is now open for the 1st Workshop of the Experimental Philosophy Group UK, to be held in the Philosophy Department, University of Bristol, UK from 13:00 till 18:30 on Wednesday 15th September 2010.

Keynote presentations will be given by David Papineau (KCL) on ‘The Significance of Experimental Philosophy’ and Finn Spicer (Bristol) on ‘The Goals of Experimental Philosophy'.  The Workshop will also feature a series of five 10-minute presentations, each followed by 20 minutes' discussion.  A full programme will be released shortly.  The workshop will be followed by drinks and an informal affordable meal.

Registration for the workshop is free.  However, places are limited and will be allocated on a first come, first served basis.  To register please e-mail experimentalphilosophyuk@gmail.com with your name, affiliation and a contact phone number (optional).  Subject line of email should read “REGISTRATION [YOUR NAME]”.  Registration will close when all the places are filled or on the 5^th of September 2010, whichever happens sooner.

Experimental Philosophy Group UK aims to provide a forum for UK-based researchers from all disciplines who are engaged in or interested in the investigation of philosophical topics using empirical methods.  This first meeting aims to bring those researchers together to share their work and help build a supportive network for those with an interest in experimental methods.  We aim for a relaxed workshop atmosphere with a concentration on meeting like-minded researchers and encouraging new experimental research in the UK.

Workshop Organisers:  Bryony Pierce (Bristol), Robin Scaife (Sheffield) and James Andow (Nottingham)

The Moral Psychology Handbook

John Doris's The Moral Psychology Handbook (OUP) is now available.  So, you should check it out.  Here is the description:

The Moral Psychology Handbook offers a survey of contemporary moral psychology, integrating evidence and argument from philosophy and the human sciences. The chapters cover major issues in moral psychology, including moral reasoning, character, moral emotion, positive psychology, moral rules, the neural correlates of ethical judgment, and the attribution of moral responsibility. Each chapter is a collaborative effort, written jointly by leading researchers in the field.

As always, happy reading!