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1 Forthcoming in Oxford Studies in Experimental Philosophy Causal Reasoning
Forthcoming in Oxford Studies in Experimental Philosophy Causal Reasoning: Philosophy and Experiment* James Woodward History and Philosophy of Science University of Pittsburgh 1. Introduction The past few decades have seen much interesting work, both within and outside philosophy, on causation and allied issues. Some of the philosophy is understood by its practitioners as metaphysics—it asks such questions as what causation “is”, whether there can be causation by absences, and so on. Other work reflects the interests of philosophers in the role that causation and causal reasoning play in science. Still other work, more computational in nature, focuses on problems of causal inference and learning, typically with substantial use of such formal apparatuses as Bayes nets (e.g. , Pearl, 2000, Spirtes et al, 2001) or hierarchical Bayesian models (e.g. Griffiths and Tenenbaum, 2009). All this work – the philosophical and the computational -- might be described as “theoretical” and it often has a strong “normative” component in the sense that it attempts to describe how we ought to learn, reason, and judge about causal relationships. Alongside this normative/theoretical work, there has also been a great deal of empirical work (hereafter Empirical Research on Causation or ERC) which focuses on how various subjects learn causal relationships, reason and judge causally. Much of this work has been carried out by psychologists, but it also includes contributions by primatologists, researchers in animal learning, and neurobiologists, and more rarely, philosophers. In my view, the interactions between these two groups—the normative/theoretical and the empirical -- has been extremely fruitful. In what follows, I describe some ideas about causal reasoning that have emerged from this research, focusing on the “interventionist” ideas that have figured in my own work. -
Experimental Philosophy, Robert Kane, and the Concept of Free Will
Journal of Cognition and Neuroethics Experimental Philosophy, Robert Kane, and the Concept of Free Will J. Neil Otte University at Buffalo, The State University of New York Biography J. Neil Otte is presently in the Ph.D. program at the University at Buffalo (SUNY) and works in moral psychology, cognitive science, and the history of philosophy. For six years, he was an adjunct lecturer in philosophy at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. In the last three years, he has been an organizer of the Buffalo Annual Experimental Philosophy Conference, an organizer for a conference on sentiment and reason in early modern philosophy, and has worked as an ontologist for the research foundation, CUBRC. Acknowledgements The author wishes to thank Gunnar Björnsson, Gregg Caruso, and Oisín Deery for their supportive comments and conversation during the Free Will Conference at the Insight Institute of Neurosurgery and Neuroscience in Fall of 2014, as well as conference organizer Jami Anderson. Publication Details Journal of Cognition and Neuroethics (ISSN: 2166-5087). March, 2015. Volume 3, Issue 1. Citation Otte, J. Neil. 2015. “Experimental Philosophy, Robert Kane, and the Concept of Free Will.” Journal of Cognition and Neuroethics 3 (1): 281–296. Experimental Philosophy, Robert Kane, and the Concept of Free Will J. Neil Otte Abstract Trends in experimental philosophy have provided new and compelling results that are cause for re-evaluations in contemporary discussions of free will. In this paper, I argue for one such re-evaluation by criticizing Robert Kane’s well-known views on free will. I argue that Kane’s claims about pre-theoretical intuitions are not supported by empirical findings on two accounts. -
Philosophical Ramifications: Theory, Experiment, & Empirical Truth
PCES 3.42 PHILOSOPHICAL RAMIFICATIONS: THEORY, EXPERIMENT, & EMPIRICAL TRUTH Even before Newton published his revolutionary work, philosophers had already been trying to come to grips with the questions raised by the new experimental philosophy. The work of Bacon, and most of all of Descartes, had forced the issue of empirical truth onto centre stage. There were several key questions: (i) Of what are we sure (is any of our knowledge certain)? This question was very old but the onslaught of empirical science meant that rationalist (Greek- style or otherwise) or scholastic arguments were now widely rejected. (ii) What is the stuff of experience (Sense data/mental ‘impressions’). So the empiricist philosophers turned instead to sense data, or more generally the stuff of direct human experience, as their touchstone. This eventually led to quite fantastic arguments by the British empiricist school (and later on by positivist philosophers on the continent, and eventually in the UK). These ideas were very influential in physics, where they were assimilated to the ‘experimental philosophy’ (iii) What are the influences & constraints imposed by human faculties? Eventually the obvious point, that human experience was dependent on and indeed constrained by our own sensory and mental faculties, was re-integrated into the discussion, notably by Kant. This almost inevitably led to a re-introduction of an extra-sensory world, beyond our faculties, which constituted a deeper or underlying ‘reality’. The success of new physical ideas inevitably helped this process. PCES 3.43 BRITISH EMPIRICISM I: Locke & “Sensations” Locke was the first British philosopher of note after Bacon; his work is a reaction to the European rationalists, and continues to elaborate ‘experimental philosophy’. -
CVII: 2 (February 2000), Pp
TAMAR SZABÓ GENDLER July 2014 Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences · Yale University · P.O. Box 208365 · New Haven, CT 06520-8365 E-mail: [email protected] · Office telephone: 203.432.4444 ACADEMIC EMPLOYMENT 2006- Yale University Academic Vincent J. Scully Professor of Philosophy (F2012-present) Professor of Philosophy (F2006-F2012); Professor of Psychology (F2009-present); Professor of Humanities (S2007-present); Professor of Cognitive Science (F2006-present) Administrative Dean, Faculty of Arts and Sciences (Sum2014-present) Deputy Provost, Humanities and Initiatives (F2013-Sum2014) Chair, Department of Philosophy (Sum2010-Sum2013) Chair, Cognitive Science Program (F2006-Sum2010) 2003-2006 Cornell University Academic Associate Professor of Philosophy (with tenure) (F2003-S2006) Administrative Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Philosophy (F2004-S2006) Co-Director, Program in Cognitive Studies (F2004-S2006) 1997-2003 Syracuse University Academic Associate Professor of Philosophy (with tenure) (F2002-S2003) Assistant Professor of Philosophy (tenure-track) (F1999-S2002) Allen and Anita Sutton Distinguished Faculty Fellow (F1997-S1999) Administrative Director of Undergraduate Studies, Department of Philosophy (F2001-S2003) 1996-1997 Yale University Academic Lecturer (F1996-S1997) EDUCATION 1990-1996 Harvard University. PhD (Philosophy), August 1996. Dissertation title: ‘Imaginary Exceptions: On the Powers and Limits of Thought Experiment’ Advisors: Robert Nozick, Derek Parfit, Hilary Putnam 1989-1990 University of California -
Experimental Philosophy Jordan Kiper, Stephen Stich, H. Clark Barrett
Experimental Philosophy Jordan Kiper, Stephen Stich, H. Clark Barrett, & Edouard Machery Kiper, J., Stich, S., Barrett, H.C., & Machery, E. (in press). Experimental philosophy. In D. Ludwig, I. Koskinen, Z. Mncube, L. Poliseli, & L. Reyes-Garcia (Eds.), Global Epistemologies and Philosophies of Science. New York, NY: Routledge. Acknowledgments: This publication was made possible through the support of a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation. Abstract Philosophers have argued that some philosophical concepts are universal, but it is increasingly clear that the question of philosophical universals is far from settled, and that far more cross- cultural research is necessary. In this chapter, we illustrate the relevance of investigating philosophical concepts and describe results from recent cross-cultural studies in experimental philosophy. We focus on the concept of knowledge and outline an ongoing project, the Geography of Philosophy Project, which empirically investigates the concepts of knowledge, understanding, and wisdom across cultures, languages, religions, and socioeconomic groups. We outline questions for future research on philosophical concepts across cultures, with an aim towards resolving questions about universals and variation in philosophical concepts. 1 Introduction For centuries, thinkers have urged that fundamental philosophical concepts, such as the concepts of knowledge or right and wrong, are universal or at least shared by all rational people (e.g., Plato 1892/375 BCE; Kant, 1998/1781; Foot, 2003). Yet many social scientists, in particular cultural anthropologists (e.g., Boas, 1940), but also continental philosophers such as Foucault (1969) have remained skeptical of these claims. -
1 Joshua Knobe Yale University Take a Few Courses in Cognitive Science
FREE WILL AND THE SCIENTIFIC VISION1 Joshua Knobe Yale University [Forthcoming in Edouard Machery and Elizabeth O’Neill (eds.), Current Controversies in Experimental Philosophy. RoutledGe.] Take a few courses in cognitive science, and you are likely to come across a certain kind of metaphor for the workinGs of the human mind. The metaphor Goes like this: Consider a piece of computer software. The software consists of a collection of states and processes. We can predict what the software will do by lookinG at the complex ways in which these states and processes interact. The human mind works in more or less the same way. It too is just a complex collection of states and processes, and we can predict what a human being will do by thinking about the complex ways in which these states and processes interact. One can imaGine someone sayinG: ‘I see all these states and processes, but aren’t you forgetting somethinG further – namely, the person herself?’ This question, however, is a foolish one. It is no more helpful than it would be to say: ‘I see all these states and processes, but where is the software itself?’ The software just is a collection of states and processes, and the human mind is the same sort of thinG. This metaphor does a Good job of capturinG the basic approach one finds throuGhout the sciences of the mind. We miGht say that it captures the scientific vision of how the human mind works. But one could also imaGine another, very different metaphor for the workinGs of the mind. -
Nietzsche's Naturalism As a Critique of Morality and Freedom
NIETZSCHE’S NATURALISM AS A CRITIQUE OF MORALITY AND FREEDOM A thesis submitted to Kent State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts by Nathan W. Radcliffe December, 2012 Thesis written by Nathan W. Radcliffe B.S., University of Akron, 1998 M.A., Kent State University, 2012 Approved by Gene Pendleton____________________________________, Advisor David Odell‐Scott___________________________________, Chair, Department of Philosophy Raymond Craig_____________________________________, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS....................................................................................................................v INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTERS I. NIETZSCHE’S NATURALISM AND ITS INFLUENCES....................................................... 8 1.1 Nietzsche’s Speculative‐Methodological Naturalism............................................ 8 1.2 Nietzsche’s Opposition to Materialism ............................................................... 15 1.3 The German Materialist Influence on Nietzsche................................................. 19 1.4 The Influence of Lange on Nietzsche .................................................................. 22 1.5 Nietzsche’s Break with Kant and Its Aftermath................................................... 25 1.6 Influences on Nietzsche’s Fatalism (Schopenhauer and Spinoza) -
Experimental Philosophy and the Compatibility of Free Will and Determinism: a Survey
Annals of the Japan Association for Philosophy of Science Vol.22 (2014) 17~37 17 Experimental Philosophy and the Compatibility of Free Will and Determinism: A Survey Florian Cova∗ and Yasuko Kitano∗∗ Abstract The debate over whether free will and determinism are compatible is con- troversial, and produces wide scholarly discussion. This paper argues that recent studies in experimental philosophy suggest that people are in fact “natural com- patibilists”. To support this claim, it surveys the experimental literature bearing directly (section 1) or indirectly (section 2) upon this issue, before pointing to three possible limitations of this claim (section 3). However, notwithstanding these limitations, the investigation concludes that the existing empirical evidence seems to support the view that most people have compatibilist intuitions. Key words: experimental philosophy; free will; moral responsibility; determin- ism Introduction The recently developed field of experimental philosophy advocates a methodolog- ical shift toward the use of an experimental methodology, in order to make progress on problems in philosophy (Knobe and Nichols, 2008). On a narrow view, experimen- tal philosophy is an experimental investigation of our intuitions about philosophical issues; on a larger view, it encompasses all tentative attempts to make progress on philosophical questions using experimental methods (Cova, 2012). Recently, a growing number of studies in experimental philosophy are addressing the relationship between free will and moral responsibility. Most of these aim (i) at testing whether people have the intuition that an agent in a deterministic universe cannot have free will and be morally responsible for his or her actions by (ii) probing their intuitions on small vignettes1. -
Experimental Philosophy and Feminist Epistemology: Conflicts and Complements
City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 9-2018 Experimental Philosophy and Feminist Epistemology: Conflicts and Complements Amanda Huminski The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/2826 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] EXPERIMENTAL PHILOSOPHY AND FEMINIST EPISTEMOLOGY: CONFLICTS AND COMPLEMENTS by AMANDA HUMINSKI A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Philosophy in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2018 © 2018 AMANDA HUMINSKI All Rights Reserved ii Experimental Philosophy and Feminist Epistemology: Conflicts and Complements By Amanda Huminski This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Philosophy in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. _______________________________ ________________________________________________ Date Linda Martín Alcoff Chair of Examining Committee _______________________________ ________________________________________________ Date Nickolas Pappas Executive Officer Supervisory Committee: Jesse Prinz Miranda Fricker THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii ABSTRACT Experimental Philosophy and Feminist Epistemology: Conflicts and Complements by Amanda Huminski Advisor: Jesse Prinz The recent turn toward experimental philosophy, particularly in ethics and epistemology, might appear to be supported by feminist epistemology, insofar as experimental philosophy signifies a break from the tradition of primarily white, middle-class men attempting to draw universal claims from within the limits of their own experience and research. -
Experimental Philosophy and Free Will Tamler Sommers* University of Houston
Philosophy Compass 5/2 (2010): 199–212, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2009.00273.x Experimental Philosophy and Free Will Tamler Sommers* University of Houston Abstract This paper develops a sympathetic critique of recent experimental work on free will and moral responsibility. Section 1 offers a brief defense of the relevance of experimental philosophy to the free will debate. Section 2 reviews a series of articles in the experimental literature that probe intuitions about the ‘‘compatibility question’’—whether we can be free and morally responsible if determinism is true. Section 3 argues that these studies have produced valuable insights on the fac- tors that influence our judgments on the compatibility question, but that their general approach suffers from significant practical and philosophical difficulties. Section 4 reviews experimental work addressing other aspects of the free will ⁄ moral responsibility debate, and section 5 concludes with a discussion of avenues for further research. 1. Introduction The precise meaning of ‘experimental philosophy’ is a matter of controversy even among its practitioners, but all agree that it refers to a movement which employs the methods of empirical science to shed light on philosophical debates. Most commonly, experimental philosophers attempt to probe ordinary intuitions about a particular case or question in hopes of learning about the psychological processes that underlie these intuitions (Knobe 2007).1 The unifying conviction behind the movement is that many deep philosophical problems ‘can only be properly addressed by immersing oneself in the messy, contingent, highly variable truths about how human beings really are’.2 And the problem that has received the most attention from experimental philosophers thus far is the problem of free will. -
Editorial: Psychology and Experimental Philosophy
Rev.Phil.Psych. (2010) 1:157–160 DOI 10.1007/s13164-009-0012-5 Editorial: Psychology and Experimental Philosophy Joshua Knobe & Tania Lombrozo & Edouard Machery Published online: 1 December 2009 # Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2009 Recent years have seen an explosion of new work at the intersection of philosophy and experimental psychology. This work takes the concerns with moral and conceptual issues that have so long been associated with philosophy and connects them with the use of systematic and well-controlled empirical investigations that one more typically finds in psychology. Work in this new field often goes under the name “experimental philosophy”. The aim of the present volume is to bring together some important new papers that demonstrate the promise and potential of this emerging field. The work collected here spans a wide range of philosophical topics—from ethics to epistemology to the philosophy of mind—and examines the ways in which empirical data can inform research in all of these fields. In addition, we have included a number of papers that offer critiques of contemporary experimental philosophy, suggesting ways in which existing studies might fail to address the philosophical questions they are supposed to be helping us to resolve. Geoffrey Goodwin and John Darley present a series of experimental studies investigating people’s ordinary intuitions in metaethics. Their research provides some tantalizing initial evidence that moral relativism is associated with a kind of “open” attitude toward ethical issues while a belief in objective moral truths is associated with a more “closed” attitude. Strikingly, the Goodwin and Darley studies show that relativism is more common among subjects who are high in an ability to J. -
Book Reviews
Journal of cognition and culture �4 (�0�4) �49–�55 brill.com/jocc Book Reviews Joshua Alexander Experimental Philosophy: An Introduction. Polity Press: Cambridge, MA, 2012. US$22.95 Experimental Philosophy: An Introduction is somewhat narrower in scope than Experimental Philosophy by Joshua Knobe and Shaun Nichols (2008, Oxford University Press, Oxford) and broader than Experiments in Ethics by Kwame Anthony Appiah (2008, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA). The brevity, concise writing style, and focus will make Experimental Philosophy: An Introduction a useful background text for undergraduate teaching and the best introduction to this exciting field for some time to come. Because the field of experimental philosophy is new, customary readers of Journal of Cognition and Culture may not be aware of the purview of such a book. First, Alexander’s book requires background knowledge in analytic phi- losophy; the audience is exclusively analytic philosophy students and profes- sionals. This allows the book its tight focus but gives the impression that, just like in mainstream analytic philosophy, philosophers are still talking amongst themselves. For example, we don’t have an account of the treatment of the cognitive psychology of reasoning and other cognate disciplines in this book. This, and larger discussion of the work of Jesse Prinz, Shaun Nichols and Shaun Gallagher would have been most welcome. Second, Experimental Philosophy: An Introduction appears to dichotomize experimental philosophy and main- stream analytic philosophy in ways that oversimplify how philosophers work. It omits any consideration of the historical tradition of experimental philoso- phy that went under the name ‘natural philosophy’. Overall Experimental Philosophy does not aim to answer fundamental ques- tions about the relationship of philosophy to empirical research, but rather aims to provide helpful, clearly structured summaries of articles, with glosses on them, that have appeared in the recent experimental philosophical litera- ture.