Recent work on the role of norms in the use of causal language by ordinary people has led to a consensus among several researchers: The consensus position is that causal attributions are sensitive to both statistical norms and prescriptive norms. But what is a statistical norm? We argue that there are at least two types that should be distinguished-agent-level statistical norms and population-level statistical norms. We then suggest an alternative account of ordinary causal attributions about agents (the responsibility view), noting that this view motivates divergent predictions about the effect of information about each of the two types of statistical norms noted. Further, these predictions run counter to those made by the consensus position. With this set-up in place, we present the results of a series of new experimental studies testing our predictions. The results are in line with the responsibility view, while indicating that the consensus position is seriously mistaken. Consider the following scenario based on a thought experiment by Joshua Knobe (2006):Lauren and Jane both work for a company that uses a mainframe that can be accessed from terminals on different floors of its building. The mainframe has recently become unstable, so that if more than one person is logged in at the same time, the system crashes. Therefore, the company has instituted a temporary policy restricting the use of terminals so that two terminals are not used at the same time until the mainframe is repaired. The policy prohibits logging into the mainframe from the terminal on any floor except the ground floor.One day, Lauren logged into the mainframe on the authorized terminal on the ground floor at the exact same time that Jane logged into the mainframe on the unauthorized terminal on the second floor. Lauren and Jane were both unaware that the other was logging in. Sure enough, the system crashed.When this scenario is given to people without training in philosophy, they are significantly more likely to say that Jane caused the system to crash than Lauren (Livengood, Sytsma, and Rose, Not surprisingly, some philosophers have sought to explain such results away, aiming to preserve the assumption that the ordinary concept of causation is purely descriptive in character.For example, Julia Driver (2008a) suggests that ordinary causal attributions might still be best explained in terms of a type of descriptive consideration-statistical norms. Thus, it might be that Jane is identified as the cause of the system crashing, in the above example, not because she violated a prescriptive norm per se, but because she did something that is statistically atypical in doing so-it presumably being unusual to violate company policy. Subsequent empirical work has suggested against this, however. In fact, a consensus position has emerged that focuses on norms more generally: Ordinary causal attributions are thought to be directly sensitive both to behaviors being out of the prescriptive norm (impermissible) and to behaviors being out of the s...
Abstract:In two fascinating articles, Machery, Mallon, Nichols, and Stich [2004, forthcoming] use experimental methods to raise a specter of doubt about reliance on intuitions in developing theories of reference which are then deployed in philosophical arguments outside the philosophy of language. Machery et al. ran a cross-cultural survey asking Western and East Asian participants about a famous case from the philosophical literature on reference (Kripke's Gödel example). They interpret their results as indicating that there is significant variation in participants' intuitions about semantic reference for that case. We argue that this interpretation is mistaken. We detail a type of ambiguity found in Machery et al.'s probe but not yet noted in the response literature. We argue that this epistemic ambiguity could have affected their results. We do not stop there, however: Rather than rest content with a possibility claim, we ran four studies to test the impact of this ambiguity on participants' responses. We found that this accounts for much of the variation in Machery et al.'s original experiment. We conclude that in the light of our new data, their argument is no longer convincing. Keywords:Reference; Semantic Intuitions; Experimental Philosophy; Machery, Mallon, Nichols, and Stich; Kripke; Gödel In two provocative articles, Edouard Machery, Ron Mallon, Shaun Nichols, and Stephen Stich [2004, forthcoming] have argued that there is a problem with the standard methodology for work on reference in modern analytic philosophy. They argue that this methodology attempts to construct theories consistent with our intuitions about prominent fictional and non-fictional cases [2004: B3]. Philosophical method presupposes that intuitions for such cases are sufficiently uniform across the relevant populations of people.2 Call this presupposition the uniformity conjecture. The uniformity conjecture is a testable, empirical claim (once sufficiently specified).However, philosophers have offered no empirical evidence that the conjecture is true.
Do philosophers and ordinary people conceive of subjective experience in the same way? In this article, we argue that they do not and that the philosophical concept of phenomenal consciousness does not coincide with the folk conception. We first offer experimental support for the hypothesis that philosophers and ordinary people conceive of subjective experience in markedly different ways. We then explore experimentally the folk conception, proposing that for the folk, subjective experience is closely linked to valence. We conclude by considering the implications of our findings for a central issue in the philosophy of mind, the hard problem of consciousness.Our first goal in this article is to examine whether ordinary people (viz. people without training in philosophy or in consciousness studies) and philosophers conceive of subjective experience in a similar way. Philosophers see subjective experiences as including such diverse mental states as seeing red and feeling pain, treating them as having something in common, namely that they are phenomenal-viz. that they share the second-order property that there is "something it is like" (Nagel 1974) to be in these mental states. We provide suggestive evidence that the folk, by contrast, do not conceive of subjective experience in this way. Our second goal is to explore this folk conception for its own sake. We successively consider two accounts. We first examine whether the folk treat perceptual states differently from bodily sensations or felt emotions, taking the latter, but not the former, to be subjectively experienced. This might be phrased in terms of the folk distinguishing between those states that tell us about the world 1 The first author did most of the work on this article. We would like to thank
There are two primary traditions in philosophical theorizing about moral standing-one emphasizing Experience (the capacity to feel pain and pleasure) and one emphasizing Agency (complexity of cognition and lifestyle). In this article we offer an explanation for this divide: Lay judgments about moral standing depend importantly on two independent cues (Experience and Agency), and the two philosophical traditions reflect this aspect of folk moral cognition. In support of this two-source hypothesis, we present the results of a series of new experiments providing evidence for our account of lay judgments about moral standing, and argue that these results lend plausibility to the proposed causal link between folk moral cognition and the philosophical traditions.Is it morally wrong to cause pain to or, more generally, to harm orangutans, rats, cardinals, halibuts, shrimp, or ants? Where should we draw the line and why? Is it morally wrong to keep chimpanzees in captivity, to sequester killer whales in marine theme parks, or to put guppies in aquariums? Where should we draw the line and why? Is it morally wrong to use cows' milk?And why isn't it wrong to cut down trees and collect fruit (supposing it isn't)? More generally, how do we decide which beings should be taken into account when we assess the moral significance of actions? That is, how do we decide which beings have moral standing?By and large, philosophers are of two minds about moral standing: Some emphasize the capacity to feel pain and pleasure, and are willing to grant moral standing to all sentient creatures; others emphasize sophisticated forms of cognition such as rationality and complex lifestyles, restricting moral standing to a few species-sometimes to humans only. This division in philosophical theorizing about moral standing is deeply entrenched, and it has a long history.Our goal in this article is to explain why there are these two traditions of thought about moral standing: Why is it that some philosophers have emphasized the capacity to feel pain and pleasure, and others the complexity of cognition and lifestyle?
Many philosophers have worried about what philosophy is. Often they have looked for answers by considering what it is that philosophers do. Given the diversity of topics and methods found in philosophy, however, we propose a different approach. In this article we consider the philosophical temperament, asking an alternative question: What are philosophers like? Our answer is that one important aspect of the philosophical temperament is that philosophers are especially reflective: They are less likely than their peers to embrace what seems obvious without questioning it. This claim is supported by a study of more than 4,000 philosophers and non-philosophers, the results of which indicate that even when we control for overall education level, philosophers tend to be significantly more reflective than their peers. We then illustrate this tendency by considering what we know about the philosophizing of a few prominent philosophers. Recognizing this aspect of the philosophical temperament, it is natural to wonder how philosophers came to be this way: Does philosophical training teach reflectivity or do more reflective people tend to gravitate to philosophy? We consider the limitations of our data with respect to this question and suggest that a longitudinal study be conducted.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.