Experimental Philosophy

Feels like a natural experimental philosophy of medicine project: is “addictive” an inherently normative term? (My guess: yes.)

This free online event is TOMORROW

The goal is to bring together two communities of researchers – folks in experimental pragmatics and folks in experimental philosophy

This is a fair point, thanks!

A key question now will be about its implications. If our goal is just to use intuitions as a tool to find the truth about some question, then this issue might not seem relevant, but if we are concerned with something more epistemic, then perhaps it is very irrelevant

It seems like you are thinking that even though we already know that a substantial proportion of people are giving the wrong answer, it's still possible that there are truth-seeking or truth-sensitive

Is that correct?

Now consider the further question as to whether beliefs about whether p or not-p are correlated with personality traits

Given that we already know that a substantial proportion of people are giving the wrong answer, why do we also need to know the answer to this further question?

This sounds promising. If you have a moment, I'd love to continue the discussion one more round so that I can be sure I understand

Consider a case in which 60% of people say that p and 40% say that not-p. Just from this, we can already know that at least 40% are saying something incorrect

This is a good point. One could say that if intuitions turn out *not* to be correlated with personality, then:

(a) the mere fact that there are split intuitions already shows that they are unreliable at this time

but:

(b) there is no obstacle to reaching agreement at a later time

Just from that we ALREADY know that no more than 60% of responses can be correct

Why would it matter whether we also discover that responses are correlated with personality traits?

(I am very open to hearing arguments against my view! Please do reply if you have further thoughts)

I don’t understand why one would think we are getting evidence against the reliability of intuitions when we find correlations between intuitions and personality traits

Suppose we run a study and find that 60% or people give one response, 40% give the opposite response…

1/

Psychophysics meets moral psych! In the best possible way!

I worry what this means for clinical research and patient reported outcomes, which often measure things like pain on a very simple 1-10 scale, often without clear anchoring.

Such important work by
@vladchituc.bsky.social!

Could you say a little bit more about why?

This work is closely related with the idea of resource rationality in cognitive science

The core thought is that we cannot possibly think about everything, so we need concepts that help focus our attention on the things that are worth thinking about

Mikayla Kelley, The Normative Function of Intentional Action - PhilPapers This essay identifies a normative function of the concept of intentional action. Specifically, I argue that the concept of intentional action functions to focus our evaluative concern on some doings r...

Mikayla Kelley has an important new paper on why human beings even have a concept of intentional action

The key question: What does this concept do in our lives?

Her answer: Since we can't possibly evaluate all actions, it helps us choose which ones to evaluate

philpapers.org/rec/KELTNF-3

Oddly enough, there actually is experimental philosophy research on this

People with training in philosophy have significantly less visual imagery than non-philosophers do

osf.io/preprints/ps...

This explanation makes sense, but another one would be this:

1. People think that whatever draws you to the right decision - the one that is really best - is the true self.

2. If your reasoning favors X over Y, you tend to think that X is a better decision than Y

This isn’t my paper, but I would love to discuss it with you

They are saying that people tend to to see intuition as more the true self than reasoning. Do you think that maybe that’s wrong?

Ha! I wonder if maybe people show that asymmetry more generally. I do sort of feel it in myself

There’s so much more in this paper — about how this relates to which choice people really think is the better one, how they rationalize their judgements, and so forth

osf.io/preprints/ps...

New paper by
@danielchiacchia.bsky.social, George Newman & Rachel Ruttan finds:

Other things being equal, people tend to see System 1 as the true self

People sometimes face a conflict between intuition (system 1) and reasoning (system 2)

In cases like these, which will be seen as the person’s true self?

Historical and experimental evidence that inherent properties are overweighted in early scientific explanation

💖This paper has been ~11 years in the making - and probably my favorite project of all time. Thrilled to see it in @pnas.org! I'm so lucky that Zach decided to do a second PhD and join my lab @psychillinois.bsky.social back in 2014 - a fabulous scientist & human being! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

The fabulous @jrabanos.bsky.social and @BojanSpaic discussed experimental jurisprudence with me in their awesome podcast! If you want to know why experimental jurisprudence is not like theoretical physics, or what does lying and reasonableness have in common, check it out!

One common view in moral psychology is “the primacy of the moral” - the view that people think your moral traits are what’s most fundamental about you

These new studies challenge that view, suggesting that people sometimes see artistic creation as just as fundamental as morality

Ep. #10 of Heavily Accented Philosophy of Law Podcast is here!

In this episode, we delve with Iza Skoczeń (@izaskoczen.bsky.social - Jagiellonian Centre for Law, Language and Philosophy) into the topic of experimental jurisprudence.

Listen to it here 👇
creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/...

New paper with @jowylie.bsky.social and @anagantman.bsky.social on art, morality, and the true self, forthcoming in Cognition! #philsky #psysky

Does ‘discrimination’ inherently imply unfairness, hence making it an evaluative (rather than a descriptive) term?

Research by Willemsen et al concludes it is a “thick concept” that fundamentally blends descriptive and evaluative content:

buff.ly/DUysv3c

HT @xphilosopher.bsky.social

Experimental philosophy paper by Pascale Willemsen et al. on on what it means for something to be "discrimination"

The studies focus specifically on discrimination -- but I think they also showing something more general about how thick concepts work

philpapers.org/archive/WILD...

What People Think Self-Deception Is and Why Philosophers Should Care

A summary of our x-phi paper (w/ @ivarr.bsky.social ) in the terrific Imperfect Cognitions blog. 🙌

Final call for global collaborators on this replication collaboration on @bioxphi studies — moral psychologists and x-phi researchers wanted! especially based in SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE! global-bioXphi | moral science lab www.mscilab.com/globalbioxphi/

🚨Publication Alert🚨
“Are the concepts of truth and lying shared across cultures?”

5 years in the making
~ 5000 participants
10 countries
6 languages

Forthcoming in American Psychologist
With @louisareins.bsky.social, . Mizumoto, A. Erut, Q. Li, and S. Orr.

Short thread and preprint below