Epistemic Intuitions in Fake-Barn Thought Experiments

David Colaço, Wes Buckwalter and I have recently posted a paper on SSRN reporting a surprising age effect in “fake-barn” style thought experiments.  Here’s the Abstract:

In epistemology, fake-barn thought experiments are often taken to be intuitively clear cases in which a justified true belief does not qualify as knowledge. We report a study designed to determine whether non-philosophers share this intuition. The data suggest that while participants are less inclined to attribute knowledge in fake-barn cases than in unproblematic cases of knowledge, they nonetheless do attribute knowledge to protagonists in fake-barn cases. Moreover, the intuition that fake-barn cases do count as knowledge is negatively correlated with age; older participants are less likely than younger participants to attribute knowledge in fake-barn cases. We also found that increasing the number of defeaters (fakes) does not decrease the inclination to attribute knowledge.

The paper can be downloaded at  http://ssrn.com/abstract=1973351 . 

Wes and I have also posted a substantially revised version of our “Gender and Philosophical Intuition” paper.  It can be downloaded here:  http://ssrn.com/abstract=1966324