Joshua Alexander, Research
Abstract: It has been standard philosophical practice in analytic philosophy to employ intuitions generated in response to thought-experiments as evidence in the evaluation of philosophical claims. In part as a response to this practice, an exciting new movement—experimental philosophy—has recently emerged. This movement is unified behind both a common methodology and a common aim: the application of methods of experimental psychology to the study of the nature of intuitions. In this paper, we will introduce two different views concerning the relationship that holds between experimental philosophy and the future of standard philosophical practice (what we call, the proper foundation view and the restrictionist view), discuss some of the more interesting and important results obtained by proponents of both views, and examine the pressure these results put on analytic philosophers to reform standard philosophical practice. We will also defend experimental philosophy from some recent objections, suggest future directions for work in experimental philosophy, and suggest what future lines of epistemological response might be available to those wishing to defend analytic epistemology from the challenges posed by experimental philosophy.
Abstract: A growing body of empirical literature challenges philosophers’ reliance on intuitions as evidence based on the fact that intuitions vary according to factors such as cultural and educational background, and socio-economic status. Our research extends this challenge, investigating Lehrer’s appeal to the Truetemp Case as evidence against reliabilism. We found that intuitions in response to this case vary according to whether, and which, other thought experiments are considered first. Our results show that compared to subjects who receive the Truetemp Case first, subjects first presented with a clear case of knowledge are less willing to attribute knowledge in the Truetemp Case, and subjects first presented with a clear case of non-knowledge are more willing to attribute knowledge in the Truetemp Case. We contend that this instability undermines the supposed evidential status of these intuitions, such that philosophers who deal in intuitions can no longer rest comfortably in their armchairs.
Accentuate the Negative
Joshua Alexander, Ronald Mallon, and Jonathan M. Weinberg
Review of Philosophy and Psychology, Vol. 1(2), 2010, pp. 297-314.
Abstract: There are a number of different programs that fall under the umbrella of “experimental philosophy”, and our interest here is to drive a wedge of contention between two of them. These two programs concern traditional analytic philosophy’s practice of appealing to philosophical intuitions either as evidence for (or against) philosophical claims, or as data both about the nature of our folk philosophical concepts and judgments and about the nature of the domains in which we make those judgments. According to what is sometimes called experimental philosophy’s “negative program”, experimental philosophy challenges the usefulness of this practice in achieving justified beliefs. According to experimental philosophy’s “positive program”, experimental philosophy is (at least an indispensable part of) the proper methodology for this practice. In this paper, we contend that the practice of appealing to intuitions, even as modified by the positive program, still faces significant challenges from the results of the negative program. We identify four different positive programs: direct extramentalism, semantic mentalism, conceptual mentalism, and mechanist mentalism. Each of these positive programs share at least two commitments: that intuitions are a trustworthy source of evidence or data; and that intuitions about a particular hypothetical case will, by and large, be stable and shared. However, recent empirical work conducted by philosophers and psychologists has revealed significant (and surprising) inter- and intra-personal intuitional instability. As such, positive programs face the challenge of accommodating the results of negative experimental philosophy. Some positive programs (namely, the various forms of mentalism) seem, at first glance, to be well-suited to meet this challenge. But we argue that these forms have their own problems, and so conclude that positive experimental philosophy seems to be almost as challenged by the results of negative experimental philosophy as is more traditional armchair analytic philosophy.
Abstract: Experimental philosophy has emerged as a very specific kind of response to an equally specific way of thinking about philosophy, one typically associated with philosophical analysis and according to which philosophical claims are measured, at least in part, by our intuitions. Since experimental philosophy has emerged as a response to this way of thinking about philosophy, its philosophical significance depends, in no small part, on how significant the practice of appealing to intuitions is to philosophy. In this paper, I defend the significance of experimental philosophy by defending the significance of intuitions – in particular, by defending their significance from a recent challenge advanced by Timothy Williamson.
Are Philosophers Expert Intuiters?
Jonathan M. Weinberg, Chad Gonnerman, Cameron Buckner, and Joshua Alexander
Philosophical Psychology, Vol. 23(3), 2010, 331-355.
Abstract: Recent experimental philosophy arguments have raised trouble for philosophers’ reliance on armchair intuitions. One popular line of response has been the expertise defense: philosophers are highly-trained experts, whereas the subjects in the experimental philosophy studies have generally been ordinary undergraduates, and so there’s no reason to think philosophers will make the same mistakes. But this deploys a substantive empirical claim, that philosophers’ training indeed inculcates sufficient protection from such mistakes. We canvass the psychological literature on expertise, which indicates that people are not generally very good at reckoning who will develop expertise under what circumstances. We consider three promising hypotheses concerning what philosophical expertise might consist in: (i) better conceptual schemata; (ii) mastery of entrenched theories; and (iii) general practical know-how with the entertaining of hypotheticals. On inspection, none seem to provide us with good reason to endorse this key empirical premise of the expertise defense.
S. Matthew Liao, Alex Wiegmann, Joshua Alexander, and Gerard Vong
Philosophical Psychology (forthcoming)
Abstract: In recent years, a number of philosophers have been conducting empirical studies that survey people’s intuitions about various subject matters in philosophy. Some have found that intuitions vary accordingly to seemingly irrelevant facts: facts about who is considering the hypothetical case, the presence or absence of certain kinds of content, or the context in which the hypothetical case is being considered. Our research applies this experimental philosophical methodology to Judith Jarvis Thomson’s famous Loop Case, which she used to call into question the validity of the intuitively plausible Doctrine of Double Effect. We found that intuitions about the Loop Case vary according to the context in which the case is considered. We contend that this undermines the supposed evidential status of intuitions about the Loop Case. We conclude by considering the implications of our findings for philosophers who rely on the Loop Case to make philosophical points and for philosophers who use intuitions in general.
Jonathan M. Weinberg, Joshua Alexander, Chad Gonnermna, and Shane Reuter
The Monist (forthcoming)
Abstract: It has become increasingly popular to respond to experimental philosophy by suggesting that experimental philosophers haven’t been studying the right kind of thing. One version of this kind of response, which we call the reflection defense, involves suggesting both that philosophers are interested only in intuitions that are the product of careful reflection on the details of hypothetical cases and the key concepts involved in those cases, and that these kinds of philosophical intuitions haven’t yet been (and possibly cannot be) adequately studied by experimental philosophers. Of course, as a defensive move, this works only if reflective intuitions are immune from the kinds of problematic effects that form the basis of recent experimental challenges to philosophy’s intuition-deploying practices. If they are not immune (or at least sufficiently less vulnerable) to these kinds of effects, then the fact that experimental philosophers have not had the right kind of thing in their sights would provide little comfort to folks invested in philosophy’s intuition-deploying practices. Here we provide reasons to worry that even reflective intuitions can display sensitivity to the same kinds of problematic effects, although possibly in slightly different ways. As it turns out, being reflective might sometimes just mean being wrong in a different way.
Jonathan M. Weinberg and Joshua Alexander
A. Booth & D. Rowbottom (eds), Intuitions, Oxford University Press (forthcoming)
Abstract: Philosophical discussions often involve appeals to verdicts about particular cases, sometimes actual, more often hypothetical, and usually with little or no substantive argument in their defense. Philosophers – including ones on both sides of debates over the standing of this practice – have very often called the basis for such appeals “intuitions”. But, what might such “intuitions” be, such that they could legitimately serve these purposes? Answers vary, ranging from “thin” conceptions that identify intuitions as merely instances of some fairly generic and epistemologically uncontroversial category of mental states or episodes to “thick” conceptions that add to this thin base certain semantic, phenomenological, etiological, or methodological conditions. While thin conceptions have received several high-profile endorsements in recent years, thick conceptions have become increasingly popular, in part because they seem to offer some way of responding to recent empirical challenges to our intuition-deploying practices that thin conceptions do not. But this response is not without its costs. Thick conceptions turn out to have their own methodological problems – some actually fail to properly immunize our intuition-deploying practices from the kinds of problems raised by recent empirical challenges, others expose our intuition-deploying practices to different kinds of empirical challenges, and still others leave us in the methodologically untenable position of being unable to determine when anyone is doing philosophy correctly.
