Inappropriate stereotypical inferences? An adversarial collaboration in experimental ordinary language philosophy

Abstract

This paper trials new experimental methods for the analysis of natural language reasoning and the (re)development of critical ordinary language philosophy in the wake of J.L. Austin. Philosophical arguments and thought experiments are strongly shaped by default pragmatic inferences, including stereotypical inferences. Austin suggested that contextually inappropriate stereotypical inferences are at the root of some philosophical paradoxes and problems, and that these can be resolved by exposing those verbal fallacies. This paper builds on recent efforts to empirically document inappropriate stereotypical inferences that may drive philosophical arguments. We demonstrate that previously employed questionnaire-based output measures do not suffice to exclude relevant confounds. We then report an experiment that combines reading time measurements with plausibility ratings. The study seeks to provide evidence of inappropriate stereotypical inferences from appearance verbs that have been suggested to lie at the root of the influential 'argument from illusion'. Our findings support a diagnostic reconstruction of this argument. They provide the missing component for proof of concept for an experimental implementation of critical ordinary language philosophy that is in line with the ambitions of current 'evidential' experimental philosophy.

Philosophers’ linguistic expertise: a psycholinguistic approach to the expertise objection against experimental philosophy

“…Psychological findings about how cognitive biases affect verbal reasoning help expose previously undetected fallacies. A number of studies with lay participants followed up the suggestion that linguistic salience bias leads to previously undetected fallacies of equivocation, for example, in philosophical arguments about perception: arguments 'from illusion' and 'from hallucination' rely on default inferences from special ('phenomenal') uses of appearanceand perception-verbs that are licensed only by their dominant sense and cancelled by the sentence or discourse context (Fischer & Engelhardt, 2016, 2017, 2020Fischer et al, 2021aFischer et al, , 2021b. These and other philosophical arguments have been advanced mainly by professional philosophers.…”

“…This bias matters for philosophy: Philosophers often employ familiar words in new, but related senses, so that conditions (i) and (ii) are met (Fischer et al, 2021a(Fischer et al, , 2021b. Philosophical thought experiments often pull apart features that typically go together (Machery, 2017, pp.…”

“…Empirically studied examples include inappropriate inferences from appearanceand perception-verbs in arguments from illusion and hallucination (Fischer & Engelhardt, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2020Fischer et al, 2021aFischer et al, , 2021b, from 'zombie' in the eponymous argument (Fischer & Sytsma, 2021), and from purely descriptive uses of the verb 'cause' in morally valenced cases (Livengood & Sytsma, 2020;Livengood et al, 2017).…”

Projects and Methods of Experimental Philosophy

“…To address, for example, philosophical questions or problems about vision, experimental philosophers have not only built on the psychology and neuroscience of vision and added their own investigations of the mechanisms of vision (e.g., Schwenkler and Weksler 2019, Weksler, Jacobson, and Bronfman 2021). Rather, experimental philosophers of perception have also built on the psychologies of judgment and language, and have empirically investigated how people think and speak about vision (e.g., , Fischer, Engelhardt, and Sytsma 2021, Roberts, Allen, and Schmidtke 2018. Similarly, to address philosophical questions about colour, experimental philosophers have primarily investigated not colour perception but colour cognition (e.g., Cohen and Nichols 2010, Sytsma 2010, Hansen and Chemla 2017, Roberts and Schmidtke 2019, and similarly with regard to other topics, such as pain (e.g., Sytsma and Reuter 2017, Liu 2020, Reuter and Sytsma 2020, Salomons et al 2021.…”

What is it like to be colour‐blind? A case study in experimental philosophy of experience

“…A third aim is methodological: to assess the prospects of using qualitative research methods in experimental philosophy (x‐phi), and more specifically in the nascent field of “experimental philosophy of experience.” Recent years have seen the sustained development of x‐phi, a research programme that employs methods from the behavioural and social sciences to investigate empirically how we think about philosophically important concepts, with a view to addressing core philosophical questions. However, while there has been some experimental work considering issues in the philosophy of perception (e.g., Fischer et al, 2020; Roberts et al, 2021), and the philosophy of conscious experience more generally (e.g., Reuter & Sytsma, 2020), these areas of philosophical inquiry have been relatively neglected by experimental philosophers.…”