Experimental philosophy
[8][9][10] Experimental philosophy initially began by focusing on philosophical questions related to intentional action, the putative conflict between free will and determinism, and causal vs. descriptive theories of linguistic reference.
[12] Others claim that experimental philosophers are engaged in conceptual analysis, but taking advantage of the rigor of quantitative research to aid in that project.
For instance, work by Joshua Knobe and Jesse Prinz (2008) suggests that people may have two different ways of understanding minds generally, and Justin Sytsma and Edouard Machery (2009) have written about the proper methodology for studying folk intuitions about consciousness.
Adam Arico, Brian Fiala, Rob Goldberg, and Shaun Nichols,[23] for instance, propose a cognitive model of mental state attribution (the AGENCY model), whereby an entity's displaying certain relatively simple features (e.g., eyes, distinctive motions, interactive behavior) triggers a disposition to attribute conscious states to that entity.
Following the work of Richard Nisbett, which showed that there were differences in a wide range of cognitive tasks between Westerners and East Asians, Jonathan Weinberg, Shaun Nichols and Stephen Stich (2001) compared epistemic intuitions of Western college students and East Asian college students.
Each group of authors argued that these cultural variances undermined the philosophical project of using intuitions to create theories of knowledge or reference.
[28] One area of philosophical inquiry has been concerned with whether or not a person can be morally responsible if their actions are entirely determined, e.g., by the laws of Newtonian physics.
One side of the debate, the proponents of which are called ‘incompatibilists,’ argue that there is no way for people to be morally responsible for immoral acts if they could not have done otherwise.
People who hold this view are often referred to as ‘compatibilists.’ It was generally claimed that non-philosophers were naturally incompatibilist,[29] that is they think that if you couldn't have done anything else, then you are not morally responsible for your action.
Experimental philosophers have addressed this question by presenting people with hypothetical situations in which it is clear that a person's actions are completely determined.
For example, research on epistemic contextualism has proceeded by conducting experiments in which ordinary people are presented with vignettes that involve a knowledge ascription.
[32][33][34] Other work in experimental epistemology includes, among other things, the examination of moral valence on knowledge attributions (the so-called "epistemic side-effect effect"),[35] of the knowing-that / knowing-how distinction,[36] and of laypeople's intuitions about lying,[37][38] improper assertion,[39][40] and insincerity.
[42] Knobe (2003a) asked people to suppose that the CEO of a corporation is presented with a proposal that would, as a side effect, affect the environment.
[44][45][46] The field departs from traditional analytic legal philosophy in its ambition to elucidate common intuitions in a systematic fashion.
Equally, unlike research in legal psychology, experimental jurisprudence emphasises the philosophical implications of its findings, notably, for questions about whether, how, and in what respects, the law's content is a matter of moral perspective.
Because the Big Five Personality Traits are highly heritable, some have argued that many contemporary philosophical disputes are likely to persist through the generations.
[64] For example, accepting faulty intuitions on reflection tests has predicted belief in God,[65] and disbelieving that scientific theories are true,[66] while correct responses on reflection tests predicts decisions to minimize harm (a la utilitarianism) or avoid causing harm (a la deontology) on the trolley problem.
In a series of studies published in 2012[73][74][75] and later peer-reviewed,[76][77][78] Hamid Seyedsayamdost showed that some of the most famous results in experimental philosophy were not reproducible.
A large amount of research also focused on epistemology as Stephen Stich argued early on that findings reported by him and co-authors suggested that long practiced methods in philosophy had to be discarded, famously noting that in light of their findings a "reasonable conclusion is that philosophy's 2400 year long infatuation with Plato's method has been a terrible mistake.
