Experimental Philosophy

Chandra Sripada and Jason Stanley on Intuitions about Knowledge

Philosophers have often claimed that people are less inclined to attribute knowledge in cases where the stakes are high than in cases where the stakes are low, and there is a complex and sophisticated debate in the epistemology literature about the philosophical implications of this pattern in people's intuitions.

Unfortunately, when experimental philosophers went out and tested the exact cases that had appeared in the philosophical literature, what they found again and again was that there simply wasn't any effect (see here, here, here, here and here; for an opposing perspective, see here).  People were not substantially less inclined to ascribe knowledge in cases with high stakes than they were in cases with low stakes.  This discovery threatened to undermine the whole philosophical debate.  

In an exciting new development, Sripada and Stanley have now posted a new paper over at Certain Doubts in which they present a series of experimental studies showing that stakes actually do impact knowledge ascriptions.  I'd love to hear what people here think about their findings!

[Comments closed here to allow for discussion at Certain Doubts.]

How People Think About Meeting Needs

I've just posted a draft paper on how people think about meeting needs co-written with Nathan Lubchenco on my website here: How People Think About Meeting Need. Comments would be lovely.

The abstract is below:

This paper tries to determine how people think about meeting needs in a way that can inform both theory and practice. It uses data gathered from Kiva, an online, non-profit, organization that allows individuals to help other individuals in need to isolate intuitions that people find broadly compelling. The central result of the paper is that people accept a sufficiency principle for distributing limited resources to people in need. A sufficiency principle of distribution holds that it is better to help those below some (e.g. welfare,) threshold than those above this threshold. This paper’s results may be useful for engaging with and evaluating philosophical theories about how people think about meeting needs. Additionally, this paper’s methodology may have advantages over the survey techniques of traditional experimental philosophy, or at least encourage methodological reflection over the range of options available.

You can download the paper here and here.

Nahmias, Neuroscience, and Free Will in the NYT

Congrats to our own Eddy Nahmias, who has an op-ed on neuroscience and free will in today's NYT Opinionator/The Stone entitled, "Is Neuroscience the Death of Free Will?"   

Call for Paper: Midwest Empirical and Theoretical Association for Philosophical Researc

Jonathan Livengood (U of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) has the following cfp which should be of interest:

META is a bi-monthly meeting held at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where researchers present high quality empirical and  theoretical work in philosophy, psychology and cognitive neuroscience. 

Call for Papers 

We are pleased to announce that we are now accepting submissions for our bi-monthly META meetings for the Spring of 2012. We welcome papers in experimental and metaphilosophy, philosophy of science, psychology, and cognitive neuroscience. Papers should not exceed 3,500 words in length, excluding footnotes and bibliography, and should be suitable for a 30 minute presentation. The paper should be accompanied by an abstract and prepared for blind-review. 

The due date to present a paper at META is December 15th, 2011. 

Submissions should be sent to illinoismphil@gmail.com 

 

Response to Sripada et al.

We are grateful for Sripada and colleagues' very useful and interesting response, which identifies some mistakes in our analyses.

On the other hand, their response mistakenly asserts that the statistical issues they examine are “the basis” of our arguments. In fact, many of our key claims do not depend on these issues and are left untouched. 

Our full response is here.

While I will leave the comments open, it is unclear whether we will have the time to address responses, criticisms, etc. 

A Reply to Rose, Livengood, Sytsma, and Machery

Sara Konrath and I recently published a paper investigating the Knobe effect using an analysis method called structural equation modeling. The paper came out in Mind and Language and is available here. A really nice summary of the methods and findings from our study is available here.

David Rose, Jonathan Livengood, Justin Sytsma, and Edouard Machery wrote a critique that they posted on this blog earlier, and reposted today. It is available here. Their critique is quite strongly worded, and they claim repeatedly in their paper that ‘Sripada and Konrath’s own data undermines their model’.

Rose et al’s claim is very surprising because 1) the methods Sara and I use are completely standard in psychology – the methods we used are the basis of literally thousands of studies published in major journals such as Psychological Science, JPSP, etc…; and 2) we executed these standard analysis methods without errors, as Rose et al themselves have noted. How can it be that standard analysis methods strongly support our model, yet Rose et al conclude that the data in fact undermines our model?

To address this puzzle, I teamed up with a group of Michigan faculty that includes a social psychologist, two statisticians, one person who is a mathematical psychologist and statistician, and a computer specialist. We sought to examine Rose et al’s statistical tests in greater detail.

In short, our conclusion is that the statistical tests used by Rose et al are clearly invalid, and yield demonstrably false conclusions. There were three main statistical tests used by Rose et al in their critique, and that form the backbone of the three main sections of their paper. These tests were put forward by Rose et al, but are not accepted in the structural equation modeling field. These tests superficially look like accepted tests and this probably explains why Rose et al thought the tests were legitimate to use. But the tests are in fact statistically invalid. We demonstrate this by means of detailed theoretical analyses and Monte Carlo simulations.

Our report is available here. The paper is written in a non-technical style, and I hope that people will take the time to read this.

Deep Troubles for the Deep Self

is on line now. 

Where is the Pain?

Philosophers typically assume that pain is something in the mind. It is a certain sort of feeling, a phenomenal state. Indeed, it is perhaps the paradigm case of a psychological state that has phenomenal character.

In a new paper in Journal of Consciousness Studies, Justin Sytsma asks whether ordinary people see things in the same way. He reports a series of new studies indicating that they do not. On Sytsma's view, people do not think of pain as a psychological state. Instead, they think of pain as a real thing out there in the world, something located in their bodies. The idea is that the pain you feel when you stub your toe isn't in your mind at all -- it is in your toe.