Responding to recent concerns about the reliability of the published literature in psychology and other disciplines, we formed the X-Phi Replicability Project (XRP) to estimate the reproducibility of experimental philosophy (osf.io/dvkpr). Drawing on a representative sample of 40 x-phi studies published between 2003 and 2015, we enlisted 20 research teams across 8 countries to conduct a high-quality replication of each study in order to compare the results to the original published findings. We found that x-phi studiesas represented in our samplesuccessfully replicated about 70% of the time. We discuss possible reasons for this relatively high replication rate in the field of experimental philosophy and offer suggestions for best research practices going forward.

For scientific theories grounded in empirical data, replicability is a core principle, for at least two reasons. First, unless we accept to have scientific theories rest on the authority of a small number of researchers, empirical studies should be replicable, in the sense that its methods and procedure should be detailed enough for someone else to conduct the same study. Second, for empirical results to provide a solid foundation for scientific theorizing, they should also be replicable, in the sense that most attempts at replicating the original study that produced them would yield similar results. The XPhi Replicability Project is primarily concerned with replicability in the second sense, that is: the replicability of results. In the past year, several projects have shed doubt on the replicability of key findings in psychology, and most notably social psychology. Because the methods of experimental philosophy have often been close to the ones used in social psychology, it is only natural to wonder to which extent the results experimental philosophers ground their theory are replicable. The aim of the XPhi Replicability Project is precisely to reach a reliable estimate of the replicability of empirical results in experimental philosophy. To this end, several research teams across the world will replicate around 40 studies in experimental philosophy, some among the most cited, others drawn at random. The results of the project will be published in a special issue of the Review of Philosophy and Psychology dedicated to the topic of replicability in cognitive science.The official website of the project can be found here :https://sites.google.com/site/thexphireplicabilityproject/homeThe project can also be followed on social medias:https://twitter.com/XPhiReplicationhttps://www.facebook.com/XPhiReplicabilityProject/

Most philosophers believe that a person can have an obligation only insofar as she is able to fulfil it, a principle generally referred to as “Ought Implies Can”. Arguably, this principle reflects something basic about the ordinary concept of obligation. However, in a paper published recently in this journal, Wesley Buckwalter and John Turri presented evidence for the conclusion that ordinary people in fact reject that principle. With a series of studies, they claimed to have demonstrated that, in people’s judgements, obligations persist irrespective of whether those who hold them have the ability to fulfil them. We argue in this paper that due to some problems in their design, Buckwalter & Turri’s conclusions may not be warranted. We present the results of a series of studies demonstrating the problems with their design and showing that, with an improved design, people judge that obligation depends on ability after all.

Vaccination can sufficiently ameliorate the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19). Investigating what factors influence vaccine uptake may benefit ongoing vaccination efforts (e.g. booster injections, annual vaccination). The present study expanded Protection Motivation Theory with possible factors including perceived knowledge, adaptive responses, and maladaptive responses to develop a proposed model investigating vaccine uptake among United Kingdom (UK) and Taiwan (TW) populations. An online survey collected responses from UK ( n = 751) and TW ( n = 1052) participants (August to September, 2022). The results of structural equation modeling (SEM) showed that perceived knowledge was significantly associated with coping appraisal in both samples (standardized coefficient [β] = 0.941 and 0.898; p < .001). Coping appraisal was correlated with vaccine uptake only in the TW sample (β = 0.319, p < .05). Multigroup analysis showed there were significant differences between the path coefficients of perceived knowledge to coping and threat appraisals ( p < .001), coping appraisal to adaptive and maladaptive responses ( p < .001), as well as threat appraisal to adaptive response ( p < .001). Such knowledge may improve vaccine uptake in Taiwan. The potential factors for the UK population require further investigation.

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