The experience machine and the expertise defense

Löhr, Guido

doi:10.1080/09515089.2018.1540775

Cited by 17 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…the above references regarding philosophers' expertise). It should not only test the intuitions of lay people but also of philosophers (for some experimental ethics studies whose samples have already included philosophers see Löhr 2019;Schwitzgebel and Rust 2013; for a helpful overview see Wiegmann, Horvath, and Meyer 2020).…”

Section: Philosophers' Intuitionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Thought experiments and experimental ethics

Pölzler

Paulo

2021

Inquiry

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Section: Philosophers' Intuitionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Thought experiments and experimental ethics

Pölzler

Paulo

2021

Inquiry

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“…Schwitzgebel and Cushman (2015) replicated this earlier result, along with the finding that order effects are not reduced by, for example, reflection or self‐reported expertise. More recently, Löhr (2019) found that, although philosophers are more consistent in their verdicts about different versions of Nozick's experience‐machine scenario, a worrisome 29% still gave inconsistent answers in a within‐subjects design. Wiegmann, Horvath, and Meyer (2020) tested a standard trolley‐dilemma against a six‐option variant and found that expert ethicists—that is, subjects with an MA or PhD in philosophy, with ethics as an area of specialization or competence—are no less influenced by order effects and irrelevant options than lay people (descriptively, experts were even more influenced by these factors).…”

Section: The Myth Of Intuitive Expertisementioning

confidence: 99%

Experimental philosophy and the method of cases

Horvath

Koch

2020

Philosophy Compass

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In this paper, we first briefly survey the main responses to the challenge that experimental philosophy poses to the method of cases, given the common assumption that the latter is crucially based on intuitive judgments about cases. Second, we discuss two of the most popular responses in more detail: the expertise defense and the mischaracterization objection. Our take on the expertise defense is that the available empirical data do not support the claim that professional philosophers enjoy relevant expertise in their intuitive judgments about cases. In contrast, the mischaracterization objection seems considerably more promising than its largely negative reception has suggested. We argue that the burden of proof is thus on philosophers who still hold that the method of cases crucially relies on intuitive judgments about cases. Finally, we discuss whether conceptual engineering provides an alternative to the method of cases in light of the challenge from experimental philosophy. We argue that this is not clearly the case, because conceptual engineering also requires descriptive information about the concepts it aims to improve. However, its primarily normative perspective on our concepts makes it largely orthogonal to the challenge from experimental philosophy, and it can also benefit from the empirical methods of the latter.

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“…A study by Löhr [2019] tested various hypotheses about Nozick's experience machine scenario with professional philosophers and laypeople. Even though professional philosophers were more consistent in their overall responses, 29% still gave inconsistent answers in a within-subject presentation of three variations of Nozick's scenario.…”

Section: Collaboration [2015])mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These are order effects Cushman 2012, 2015;Wiegmann et al 2020], 'Asian disease' framing[Schwitzgebel and Cushman 2015], actor-observer bias[Löhr 2019;Tobia, Buckwalter, et al 2013;Tobia, Chapman, et al 2013], cleanliness priming[Tobia, Chapman, et al 2013], and irrelevant additional options[Wiegmann et al 2020].…”

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confidence: 99%

Intuitive Expertise in Moral Judgements

Wiegmann¹,

Horvath²

2020

Preprint

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According to the ‘expertise defence’, experimental findings which suggest that intuitive judgements about hypothetical cases are influenced by philosophically irrelevant factors do not undermine their evidential use in (moral) philosophy. This defence assumes that philosophical experts are unlikely to be influenced by irrelevant factors. We discuss relevant findings from experimental metaphilosophy that largely tell against this assumption. To advance the debate, we present the most comprehensive experimental study of intuitive expertise in ethics to date, which tests five well-known biases of judgement and decision-making among expert ethicists and laypeople. We found that even expert ethicists are affected by some of these biases, but also that they enjoy a slight advantage over laypeople in some cases. We discuss the implications of these results for the expertise defence, and conclude that they still do not support the defence as it is typically presented in (moral) philosophy.

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The experience machine and the expertise defense

Cited by 17 publications

References 20 publications

Thought experiments and experimental ethics

Thought experiments and experimental ethics

Experimental philosophy and the method of cases

Intuitive Expertise in Moral Judgements

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