Tamler Sommers on the Death of the X-Phi Debate

A recent issue of the Philosophers' Magazine included a special section on experimental philosophy. Just as you might expect, there were separate articles on the various different topics that experimental philosophers have investigated (consciousness, intentional action, gender, moral relativism). But then, the editors thought there should also be an article on the very idea of experimental philosophy and the controversy that this idea has engendered. To write this article, they commissioned Tamler Sommers. 

As Sommers explains in the text of his published piece, he had an incredibly difficult time trying to muster up anything interesting to say on the topic. 

I couldn’t do it. I could not get myself to write an essay about the general debate over experimental philosophy. At the time, I had no idea why it was so difficult, but I think I do now. Debates are interesting when there is more than one reasonable position to hold. A debate about whether a particular instance of hate speech should be protected by federal law might be interesting. A debate about the value of freedom of expression laws in general is not. On the question of the general value or viability of experimental philosophy, there is only one reasonable position. This makes it an exceptionally boring debate...

Ultimately, the conclusion Sommers reaches is that the only interesting questions here are about the individual topics that experimental philosophers discuss (consciousness, intentional action, and all the rest). There is just no philosophically interesting issue about whether experimental philosophy itself is a worthwhile field. 

Thoughts? 

Comments

[Confused Traditionalist]

"The unanimous verdict was that experimental philosophy, as a matter of principle, could offer important insight on deep philosophical problems. Room for debate? There didn’t seem to be any. To the extent that there was disagreement, it concerned the quality of the existing literature. But since no one could discuss specific studies or articles – this was a debate about X-Phi in general, remember – no one could provide a shred of support for their views on that matter. What I learned from the exchange was this: for debates about experimental philosophy to be fruitful and interesting, to be genuine debates, they must be about the details and implications of particular experiments within the literature and not about the potential or in principle importance of the movement as a whole."

I had a few questions about this passage. Like Tamler, I find this all very confusing. Unlike Tamler, I feel that I'm not on Tamler's side on this issue. (In part, perhaps, because I can't quite understand what the sides are.)

This seems a bit hedged, "The unanimous verdict was that experimental philosophy, as a matter of principle, could offer important insight on deep philosophical problems."

Let's unhedge for a moment and consider a bold conjecture: X-Phi will offer important insights on deep philosophical problems.

Will it? I can't ever tell what the point of X-Phi papers are. Are they about the issues or are they about thoughts about the issues? I get the sense that X-Phi is primarily interested in looking at the methods more traditional philosophers (allegedly) use in working towards their conclusions. Learning that my intuitionometer is wonky isn't learning a thing about freedom, knowledge, obligation, causation, etc... So, if the result of an X-Phi paper is that there's widespread disagreement, evidence of unreliability, etc..., I don't feel we've learned a thing about a philosophical issue. Maybe someone someday will publish a paper in X-Phi that says that the folk around the world think the philosopher are right, there's no evidence of unreliability, etc... I sort of worry that such a paper wouldn't shed any light on a philosophical issue. It just seems to increase our confidence in the traditional methods.

Am I right that papers of this form don't shed light on traditional philosophical issues? If so, is there a third kind of paper that would?

I can see the value in what X-Phis do if that's taken to be a check on the methods of traditional philosophy, but I guess I don't quite see that X-Phi papers are about philosophical problems. I thought we were supposed to think of the work as work that addressed methodological issues.

Perhaps that's wrong, but I've never been clear on this.

[Ron Warrick]

I'm no expert on philosophy, but I assume that philosophers are expected to muster evidence to support their arguments. I don't see any reason why they should be precluded from also generating such evidence in a controlled scientific manner, as long as they are cognizant of the reductive nature of most experiments.

[Eddy Nahmias]

Not surprisingly, I agree with most of what Tamler says, and I really like the way he discusses the debate. Perhaps someone other than me can answer Confused Traditionalist. (I humbly submit that Thomas and my piece, "The Past and Future of Experimental Philosophy," was the first obituary of the 'meta-debate' about the value of x-phi.)

However, here are two points that the opposition might develop (I promise I'm not (consciously) trying to perpetuate the debate to make x-phi more visible!):

1. One of the points Thomas and I make is that x-phi was (still is!) very young and many of the criticisms, such as some of Antti's, have been aimed at the use of surveys and simple statistical analyses of simple questions. We suggested that the future of x-phi would go beyond these methods, and since we wrote that article, it already has: mediation analyses, statistical equation modeling, behavioral studies, fMRI studies, reaction time studies, etc.

But the critic might suggest a dilemma here: Either (a) x-phi studies are too simple to be able to obtain the very information they say is valuable to obtain, or (b) x-phi is not really *x-phi* but just a branch of cognitive/social psychology and/or a branch of *empirical philosophy* (Jesse Prinz's term for philosophy that looks at empirical results). Now, I think (a) is false (regarding most studies), and I think (b) is not a big problem. But maybe (b) suggests one reason the 'meta-debate' was dead before it started, since virtually no one wants to argue 'empirically informed philosophy' is not worth doing. Tamler suggests this point.

2. As Tamler and others have pointed out, x-phi defenders often motivate their work by saying, "Look, we didn't start it. Philosophers throw around talk of what is intuitive or obvious or commensensical all the time, often right when they are trying to motivate some crucial premise or claim that they don't--or can't--defend in any other way. [I always tell my students to look for these claims when they need to find a place to object to an argument.] So, we're just testing the claims they throw around, either to see if they are supported by folk intuitions [positive program] and/or to check if there are any unified or reliable intuitions about the relevant issues [negative program]."

But one response to such claims that could be pushed more is: "No no, when philosophers make these claims, they are not really making an empirical prediction about what most people actually believe (or they shouldn't be). Rather, they are offering an *invitation* to follow them further into the discussion. They are saying, 'X is what I find intuitive--i.e., obvious but perhaps not defensible with further argument. If you don't agree, feel free to stop reading, unless you want to see some thought experiments and such where I try to show you why I find X obvious. If you do agree, then let's see what follows from X...'."

Some philosophers actually say something like this (I have some good quotations somewhere). Mostly, they don't. They present their intuitive claims as empirical claims about what most (non-stupid) people believe, and use that to shift burden onto opponent, etc. (This is clearly what most incompatibilists do in the free will debate when they say their position is intuitive.) But they could just back off to the 'invitation' language. And if they did, it seems x-phi results might not have the bite they sometimes have.

Anyway, just thought I'd throw these out there, in part because I sometimes feel like critics of x-phi think we practitioners haven't already thought of most of the problems posed to us (including the methodological ones) or already tried to address them. We have.

[Clayton Littlejohn]

I enjoyed Tamler's piece, but I'm still somewhat puzzled by an argument of his. I'm puzzled, largely, because there's a specific point I'm curious about and Tamler doesn't come quite out and say which side he takes on this point.

I take it that one of the things he wants to do is defend the claim that, "experimental philosophy can offer insights on deep philosophical questions". In support of this claim, he offers two points.

(i) The work [experimental philosophers do] ... have a potential effect on the large majority of philosophical arguments that (often frankly) include such an appeal [to intuition].

(ii) Second, much of the experimental literature aims to examine the origins of our philosophical intuitions and the psychological mechanisms that underlie them. Shedding light on the psychology behind our philosophical beliefs can have important philosophical implications for how we regard these beliefs.

I agree with (i) and (ii), but these claims seem to support the conclusion that X-Phi can shed a great deal of light on the methods that philosophers use to resolve some deep problems. Do they also shed light on the problems themselves?

You might say that there are deep philosophical problems about methodology that this work sheds some light on, and that might be right. (We can worry about the role armchair reflection plays in connecting the empirical work to these further claims about methodology.) This still doesn't tell me if the work aims to shed light on deep problems that don't have to do with methodology.

Tamler remarks, "To take just one example, imagine that Nietzsche were correct that conventional Western morality grew out of the resentment of a weak and oppressed people. This would tell us something philosophically interesting about our moral beliefs and attitudes, even if we need sophisticated philosophical analysis to figure out what. "

I think he is right that this would tell us something interesting about our moral beliefs, but I don't see it would tell us much about _morality_ (e.g., about the nature of duty and obligation, the normativity of morality, etc...). Do people working in X-Phi accept this point, or do they think that their work can shed light on deep problems in areas like ethics or metaphysics? I'm still not clear what the aspirations of X-Phi includes and whether there's a consensus view on this matter amongst X-Phi-ers or the larger community.

[[None of this is meant to denigrate the work of X-Phi, by the way. In some of the areas that most interest me, the work of Darley and Robinson has been incredibly helpful as a counterbalance to claims about what everyone thinks, finds intuitive. Like some of you, I've experienced firsthand the frustration of referees telling me that some intuitions matter and others don't where it seems that the intuitions that matter happen to be those that support the views that got into print first. I think that methodological reflection is important and agree that X-Phi can make a positive contribution to discussion of methodological issues some of which double as deep philosophical problems.]]

[Damian Szmuc]

Following Eddy's thoughts about the meta-debate, I think X-Phi has a really good point when doing philosophy. To put it clearer, the meta-debate isn't really dead if we regard it as a debate concerning the metaphilosophical importance of the experiments delivered by the people working in X-Phi (should philosophy and science come to the same conclusions? is philosophy autonomous in some sense -if any? and so on -all these questions are related to the different metaphilosophical conceptions concerning to X-Phi's relevance).

Just to take an example of what sort of debates can be elicited (still today) by X-Phi works, I think that while assuming in part what Eddy's imaginary objector considers:

"when philosophers make these claims, they are not really making an empirical prediction about what most people actually believe (or they shouldn't be). Rather, they are offering an *invitation* to follow them further into the discussion. They are saying, 'X is what I find intuitive--i.e., obvious but perhaps not defensible with further argument."

we can take intuitions to be invitations to debate, the one which looks for the normativization (task that we philosophers should accomplish) of both the folk concepts included in philosophy and also the theoretic ones.

I really don't think the meta-debate is dead. At least not when considering some metaphilosophical issues.

[Max D.]

I think some of Sommer's case for the philosophical significance of xphi trades on an ambiguity in 'intuition'. Sure, philosophical arguments "rely on intuitions" and "treat intuitions as evidence" in the sense of relying on the propositional contents of intuitive judgments/beliefs and treating those contents as evidence. But do they rely on the intuitiveness of those contents? Do they treat the intuitiveness of a proposition as evidence for its truth? 'Yes' answers to these questions, if correct, would show how/why survey style xphi is significant, but I, for one, think 'no' is the right answer to these questions. At the very least, there is an important methodological question here that is masked by ambiguous formulations such as "a sizable percentage of philosophical arguments rely on both implicit and explicit appeals to intuitions about cases and principles".

[max seeger]

The question has been asked twice (Confused Traditionalist and Clayton Littlejohn), whether x-phi not only speaks to questions of philosophical methodology, but also “sheds light on” / “offers insight into” / “tells us about” first order philosophical questions such as the problem of free will, morality, etc. There are at least two ways in which x-phi might be taken to speak to first order philosophical questions.

First, and this is mainly what the restrictionists aim to do, by checking the evidence (intuitions) relevant to particular arguments addressing first order questions. Take the analysis of knowledge as a first order question. Suppose x-phi could show that, contrary to what philosophers have since believed, the Gettier intuition is not trustworthy. Wouldn’t this mean in some sense that x-phi has shed some light on the question “What is knowledge?”? Of course, it hasn’t thereby answered the question itself.

Directly answering the first-order questions by experimental means is the second way x-phi could shed light on philosophical questions. Doing so seems to be the aim of the positive program of x-phi. The presupposition of some of this program seems to be that ordinary speakers’ use of words is relevant to philosophical questions. Roughly, the presupposition might be that, for instance, knowledge is that which ordinary speakers count as knowledge (or: to which ordinary speakers apply the term “knowledge”). The first-order philosophical question is thereby turned into a somewhat empirical question about the ordinary speakers’ use of language. [Re Sommers’ thesis: perhaps part of the debate is about the truth of this presupposition? I wouldn’t think this part of the debate could be buried just yet.]

[Tamler Sommers]

I think I'm betraying the thesis of my essay by weighing in here, but what are you gonna do...

Both Clayton and Confused Traditionalists ask about X-Phi can shed light on more than just philosophical methodology. I would hope so. As Kurt Vonnegut said about literature, philosophy should not disappear up its own ass. Fortunately, I think there are philosophical debates to which X-phi can make substantive contributions and here's one example.

Philosophers on both sides of realist/anti-realist debate in metaethics hold that the plausibility of moral objectivism hangs on the (empirical) question of whether cross-cultural disagreement is "fundamental"--not a product of irrationality, ignorance of non-moral facts, etc. In a recent Mind and Language article, Fraser and Hauser offer experimental evidence that Mayans do not make a moral distinction between harms caused by direct action and harms caused by omissions. They consider several ways the disagreement might be explained away--and argue that only one seems like a possible candidate. (Westerners suppress the act-omission distinction when the principles are closely related in terms of solidarity or hierarchy. Since Mayans tend to live in tight-knit groups, they may assume that the people in the scenarios are related in terms of solidarity, which leads them to suppress the distinction.) However, it is just a possibility--there is no evidence that the disagreement can be explained away in this manner. The burden of proof then arguably shifts to the moral objectivist. Here is a plausible candidate for fundamental moral disagreement. If objectivists claim that it can nevertheless be explained away, they need to offer some evidence. As Ron points out, philosophers are expected to muster evidence to support their arguments.

Of course, this is just one experiment--and anti-realists would need a lot more than this to mount a compelling and comprehensive argument. And there needs to be plenty of non-empirical philosophy to show why fundamental disagreement is such a threat to objectivism. But no experimental philosopher believes that a study or even a series of studies can establish an important conclusion on their own.

Two other points. First, I do think methodological questions are extremely important. Proper methodology is itself a real issue in philosophy. Clayton, you'd agree with that, right?

Finally, to Max D. To Max D.. You write,

"Do [philosophers] treat the intuitiveness of a proposition as evidence for its truth? 'Yes' answers to these questions, if correct, would show how/why survey style xphi is significant, but I, for one, think 'no' is the right answer to these questions."

Can you explain to me then what's going on in, say, Judith Jarvis Thomson's defense of abortion? If we're not supposed to think it's true that it's permissible to disconnect ourselves from the violinist, then why should buy her conclusion? And if it turned out that only 15% of reflective people had that intuition, would that have no implications for the plausibility of her argument? Or take Susan Wolf's example of Jojo, the son of a cruel dictator. Again, if we're not meant to think it's true that Jojo is not morally responsible for his behavior due to his upbringing, then why would we find this case problematic for ordinary deep self views of responsibility? (Chandra Sripada, incidentally, has some interesting experimental work on this issue...) Honestly, I don't get how your claims would apply to most arguments in normative ethics. How do you conceive of those arguments--directed only to an individual reader, an attempt to persuade him or her to agree with the author? If that's the idea, fine, that makes sense--but then philosophy becomes a subjective enterprise to the core, right?

[Tamler Sommers]

Max S., your comment hadn't been posted when I wrote my comment--but I see we're addressing the same questions, but from different directions.

Regarding your final point, I do want to clear one thing up about my essay. I never claimed that there were no interesting 'meta' issues worth discussing about X-Phi. Rather, my claim is that there's nothing interesting about one particular 'meta' debate concerning X-phi --the question of whether it is capable of contributing anything useful to philosophy.

[Josh May]

I think I mentioned this to you before, Tamler, but I love this piece!

Just to quickly chime in on the issue of whether x-phi can contribute to ground-level philosophical issues, rather than just methodology (an issue both Clayton and the Traditionalist raise):

Here's one way it can do so, which various x-phiers have employed. Philosopher says "We'd say P about Q, so R." If x-phiers provide evidence that we *do* say P about Q, then that's some support for the argument, and so addresses the issue in R. Similarly, if x-phiers provide evidence that we *don't* say P about Q, then this counts against the argument, and so says something about the issue in R. Either way, x-phi is addressing the ground-level issue. Conclusions about methodology seem secondary to me. This is just one way I think x-phi can address the issues.

Of course, not all philosophers make claims like "We'd say P about Q" or believe that it's ever good to make such claims in support of a philosophical argument. But some do.

[Max D.]

Hi Tammler,

Thanks for the direct reply. I appreciate that. Why do you think normative ethics is an area where its _especially_ clear that the intuitiveness of various propositions is taken as evidence for their truth? Just curious... I hear this fairly frequently but don't really get it. Thought experiments and hypothetical cases are found in every area of philosophy after all.

I'm not sure why you're asking whether we're meant to take it as true that in, for example, Thomson's violinist case, it's permissible for us to disconnect. Of course we are! The question is whether we're supposed to take the intuitiveness of the judgment that it's permissible as evidence that it's permissible. I don't think it's at all obvious that we're meant to. And, even if Thomson writes as though we are meant to, there is still a question of whether she ought to be writing that way. To my mind, "Lot's of reflective people judge that it's permissible to disconnect" isn't a terrific reason for thinking that it's permissible to disconnect. Reflective people can make mistakes, and, anyway, if I needed convincing that it was permissible, I'd look for moral reasons, not for facts about who believes/judges/intuits what. Could I find any? That is, are there reasons that don't have anything to do with who intuits what that count in favor of the judgment that it's permissible to disconnect? I'm thinking there probably are. If so, it's these reasons combined with the similarity between the violinist case and abortion cases that get Thomson her conclusion. Right? What does intuitiveness have to do with any of it?

[David Chalmers]

If the only general issue is zero insight versus nonzero insight, there is no interesting general debate. But the premise is obviously false. (Compare: if the only nature-nurture issue is whether nature, or nurture, has nonzero influence, there is no interesting nature-nurture debate; but the premise is obviously false.) There remains open the general issue of how much insight, and of what character, experimental philosophy can contribute.

For example, here's a general thesis worthy of debate: x-phi does not provide primary insight in first-order philosophical debates (roughly, direct evidence for a substantive first-order philosophical claim p), but only provides secondary insight on these debates (roughly, providing a check on other arguments for first-order philosophical claims) or primary insight about second-order debates (evidence for second-order claims about how people think and talk about philosophically relevant topics). I'm not endorsing the thesis, but I'd be interested to see counterexamples.

[Joachim Horvath]

Hi Dave, I'm surprised that nobody has taken up the issue you are raising here, which I think is a very important one. I was often wondering myself how much experimental philosophy really has to offer to those of us who continue to be interested in good old first-order questions, and not just in "how the mind works" or in metaphilosophical issues (and even the later can only be fully addressed on the basis of lots of first-order assumptions).
So, let me try something on behalf of x-phi.

First, x-phi can at least seriously constrain first-order inquiries by undermining a lot of first-order evidence that philosophers would otherwise be inclined to appeal to - but maybe that still goes under the heading of what you call "secondary first-order insight".

Second, suppose that a rigorous study (or better: a number of such studies, or a suitable meta-study) establishes that 95% of the relevant philosophical experts find it intuitive that p, and that p bears on the first-order issue whether q. Now, if we add the plausible bridge-principle "If the overwhelming majority of the relevant experts find it intuitive that p, and there is no independent evidence that bears on p, then we should use p as evidence", then it seems that we got a primary first-order insight concerning q, namely p.

[Tamler Sommers]

Dave, I missed this somehow.

"If the only general issue is zero insight versus nonzero insight, there is no interesting general debate. But the premise is obviously false. (Compare: if the only nature-nurture issue is whether nature, or nurture, has nonzero influence, there is no interesting nature-nurture debate; but the premise is obviously false.) There remains open the general issue of how much insight, and of what character, experimental philosophy can contribute."

Again, my premise was that the actual debate, as it exists today, is uninteresting because the actual debate does focus on the question of whether X-phi can offer important contributions to philosophy. It may be possible for a general debate about X-phi to be interesting. The nature/nurture debate is a great analogy in part because so much of that general debate in fact takes it to be an all-or-nothing issue.

That said, I wonder if it really would be interesting to have a general debate about the nature/nurture issue--one that doesn't focus on particular theories or models in the relevant subfields. I can't think of one.

Similarly, although I was initially on board with your suggestion, I'm becoming skeptical. The question: "Does Nichols and Knobe's study provide primary support for incompatibilism" sounds a lot more interesting to me than a general question about X-phi and first order issues in philosophy.

Compare with another thesis: The philosophy of biology can offer no primary insight on issues in first order ethics.

Would that be a thesis be worth discussing? I don't think so. You would need to get more specific, and focus on particular theories or arguments in the philosophy of biology. Why shouldn't that be the case with X-phi?

[Clayton Littlejohn]

Hi Tamler,

I meant to follow up earlier, but duty got in the way. I think I agree that X-Phi can provide us with data that we wouldn't get from armchair reflection. Of course, so can anthropology. Then there's the worry about what to do with the data and it's at that point where I wonder if traditional methods take over and X-Phi's contribution ends. (This might be related to Chalmers' question).

In the example you gave, it seems like there's a division of labor. Armchair methods tell us what the commitments of moral realism are and among the things they tell us (allegedly) is that a defense of moral realism involves a defense of certain empirical claims that armchair methods cannot resolve (e.g., we don't know from the armchair whether there is deep disagreement about matters of value).

It seems that we're then in agreement on this:
"Of course, this is just one experiment--and anti-realists would need a lot more than this to mount a compelling and comprehensive argument. And there needs to be plenty of non-empirical philosophy to show why fundamental disagreement is such a threat to objectivism. But no experimental philosopher believes that a study or even a series of studies can establish an important conclusion on their own. "

It looks as if you're saying that armchair philosophy is indispensable if we're ever to settle a "deep philosophical question".

You added, "First, I do think methodological questions are extremely important. Proper methodology is itself a real issue in philosophy. Clayton, you'd agree with that, right?"

Certainly. But, on the deep philosophical questions about methodology, I wonder if you'd agree that armchair methods again prove indispensable. Up thread, Joachim asks an interesting question. Suppose we were to discover widespread agreement wrt to some proposition, p. If intuition is united in backing p, we might then make the move to p. This might rest on the assumption that:

"If the overwhelming majority of the relevant experts find it intuitive that p, and there is no independent evidence that bears on p, then we should use p as evidence", then it seems that we got a primary first-order insight concerning q, namely p."

_This_ assumption, however, seems to be just the sort of methodological assumption that we need armchair methods to justify.

So, now I'm starting to wonder the extent to which you'd agree to these claims:

(I) If philosophers are ever going to settle any deep philosophical question, the role that X-Phi will play is limited to the role of gathering data (which may or may not include additional data that consists of intuitions of the philosophers, observations of anthropologists, etc...) the significance of which will always need to be settled by traditional methodology.

(II) The results of X-Phi bear on methodological issues by raising questions about the significance of intuition and not by settling any methodological issues without the assistance of traditional methodology.

These claims seem to secure X-Phi a role (and I can't imagine anyone denying X-Phi this limited role), but it's not obvious that they vindicate the claim that X-Phi offers "insights" into deep philosophical question as opposed to more data to ponder over before taking yourself to have settled one of these questions. It certainly shouldn't encourage us to set fire to or piss on our comfy armchairs.

[Tamler Sommers]

Hi Clayton--I agree with what you're saying, I think-. But I'm confused by how this could be conceived of as a critique of X-Phi or its significance (if that's what you're intending to do, are you?). Let me try to get more specific.

"I wonder if traditional methods take over and X-Phi's contribution ends."

If you mean that traditional methods take over after we discover new empirical information--well, yeah. But experimental philosophers are allowed to engage in philosophical analysis, right?

"It looks as if you're saying that armchair philosophy is indispensable if we're ever to settle a "deep philosophical question"."

Of course. Does anyone deny this?

""If the overwhelming majority of the relevant experts find it intuitive that p, and there is no independent evidence that bears on p, then we should use p as evidence", then it seems that we got a primary first-order insight concerning q, namely p."

_This_ assumption, however, seems to be just the sort of methodological assumption that we need armchair methods to justify."

Yes, of course.

"So, now I'm starting to wonder the extent to which you'd agree to these claims:

(I) If philosophers are ever going to settle any deep philosophical question, the role that X-Phi will play is limited to the role of gathering data (which may or may not include additional data that consists of intuitions of the philosophers, observations of anthropologists, etc...) the significance of which will always need to be settled by traditional methodology."

Here I disagree. It seems like you're defining X-phi as something that is only committed to gathering data. But that's crazy. Is there a single published X-phi article that just reports the data and then claims to solve or even address a philosophical problem? Experimental philosophers are philosophers. They employ their data as part of a broader philosophical argument. Eddy Nahmias has had a hard-on for compatibilism since graduate school, and so he employs the (fascinating) data from his studies to support for a philosophical argument for his position.

"(II) The results of X-Phi bear on methodological issues by raising questions about the significance of intuition and not by settling any methodological issues without the assistance of traditional methodology."

Yes of course. Who thinks otherwise? Do you think someone does? Who?

"These claims seem to secure X-Phi a role (and I can't imagine anyone denying X-Phi this limited role),"

I would have hard time imagining them too. But you don't have to imagine them. They exist.

"but it's not obvious that they vindicate the claim that X-Phi offers "insights" into deep philosophical question as opposed to more data to ponder over before taking yourself to have settled one of these questions. It certainly shouldn't encourage us to set fire to or piss on our comfy armchairs."

You're right, we shouldn't set fire to or piss on our armchairs. I'm on board with that.

But--right now, my daughter wants to watch Martha Speaks while the Celtics are on. And she has the remote control. So I have to leave my armchair and change the channel. That doesn't mean I hate my armchair or that I want to piss on my armchair. It just means that there are certain things you can't do from it.

(Actually, I don't even have an armchair in my house.)

So I'm not sure where exactly we disagree--except maybe about the nature of X-phi's ambitions.

[Clayton Littlejohn]

"But I'm confused by how this could be conceived of as a critique of X-Phi or its significance (if that's what you're intending to do, are you?). Let me try to get more specific."

Hi Tamler,
No, I wasn't trying to critique X-Phi. I think we're pretty much in agreement on these issues.

[David Chalmers]

Tamler: Suppose that we examine a whole bunch of specific x-phi studies, and find that some (Knobe, etc) offer primary insight on second-order questions, others (Weinberg/Stich/Nichols, etc) offer secondary insight on first-order questions, but none offer primary insight on first-order questions. (I think there's at least a case for that being where we are now.) Then we might formulate the general hypothesis: no x-phi study offers primary insight on first-order philosophical questions. To assess that general hypothesis, one will want to both examine specific cases and engage in general reasoning. If the hypothesis is true, it is certainly interesting and consequential: it suggests that while x-phi may be important, it is also importantly limited.

Joachim: Yes, I'd count your first role as secondary insight. Your second role (counting expert judgments) isn't secondary insight in the sense I defined above, but I think it plausibly counts as secondary or derivative insight in a broader sense, as it piggybacks wholly on the first-order insights of experts.

[Eric Schwitzgebel]

Dave: What counts as a first-order claim? Would "philosophical moral reflection tends to improve moral behavior" count? Would "philosophical reflection tends to lead us in the direction of truth on philosophical issues" count? Or are such questions too "meta"?

No single x-phi study could resolve such grand and difficult questions, but I do think x-phi studies can shed direct light on such questions, exerting pressure for and against certain sorts of answers to those questions.

Perhaps philosophy is one discipline in which the meta is also part of the disciplinary core.

[Joachim Horvath]

Hi Dave,

I think that your hypothesis - that x-phi never provides any direct, non-derivative insight on first-order philosophical issues (well, maybe with the exception of questions about how the mind works, which certainly shouldn't be simply excluded from the philosophical first-order realm!?) - has a very good chance of being true, at least given the x-phi studies we have seen so far.

When we step back a bit, the reason why this hypothesis is probably true should also be clear: the only thing that x-phi studies investigate directly and in a non-derivative way are people and their responses to certain (mostly verbal) stimuli; given that many philosophical first-order questions concern things other than people and their behavioral and psychological properties, x-phi cannot possibly provide any direct first-order insight on those questions.

An interesting follow-up question might be: Why actually put so much weight on direct first-order insight, given that such insight is pretty rare even in our best sciences - after all, how much direct microphysical insight do we really have? So, if x-phi can at least provide insight that allows us to settle certain first-order issues on the basis of various inductive/abductive inferences, then that would be first-order insight enough by all ordinary standards...