Intuitions and Experiments: A Defense of the Case Method in Epistemology

On Normativity and Epistemic Intuitions: Failure of Replication

“…As Jennifer Nagel has pointed out, the Asian students in the samples of Weinberg et al (2001) may have had lower levels of motivation or interest (Nagel, 2012). Nagel cites the National Center for Education Statistic, according to whom in 2001 Asian students were more than twice as likely than White students to major in Engineering and Biology (Nagel, 2012). Hence, it is possible that the Asian students captured by Weinberg et al were more likely to be non-philosophy majors who were taking philosophy classes as electives to fulfill requirements and ultimately less interested.…”

“…There are several reasons why this may make a difference. As Jennifer Nagel has pointed out, the Asian students in the samples of Weinberg et al (2001) may have had lower levels of motivation or interest (Nagel, 2012). Nagel cites the National Center for Education Statistic, according to whom in 2001 Asian students were more than twice as likely than White students to major in Engineering and Biology (Nagel, 2012).…”

“…3 There is currently an exchange between philosophers on the significance of these findings and its implications for philosophical methodology. For the current discussion, see (Nagel, 2012(Nagel, , 2013Stich, 2012). Despite these discussions and despite the influence that this paper has had on an entire field, to our knowledge, there has not been a replication attempt of Weinberg et al (2001) to date, where researchers present participants with identical scenarios as in the original paper in order to test the robustness of the findings.…”

Armchair‐Friendly Experimental Philosophy

“…If this is right, then the traditional philosopher who consults her own epistemic intuitions is arguably doing something very similar in kind to the experimentalist, essentially running a small experiment (e.g. Nagel 2012). If the same underlying human capacity produces the judgments of philosophers and laypeople alike, it is still possible that philosophers show stronger convergence in their judgments thanks to differences in performance, as opposed to competence: philosophers with an interest in a case are more likely to read the stipulations closely and construe the scenario in a way that makes sense in the dialectical context of the argument.…”

How to Gauge Moral Intuitions? Prospects for a New Methodology

“…In other words, the challenge is how to find intuitions , even if we know what they are (Kauppinen, 2007;Podsakoff et al, 2003;Nagel, 2012).…”