Experimental Philosophy E-Book

Joshua Alexander

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 279

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Experimental philosophy uses experimental research methods from psychology and cognitive science in order to investigate both philosophical and metaphilosophical questions. It explores philosophical questions about the nature of the psychological world - the very structure or meaning of our concepts of things, and about the nature of the non-psychological world - the things themselves. It also explores metaphilosophical questions about the nature of philosophical inquiry and its proper methodology.

This book provides a detailed and provocative introduction to this innovative field, focusing on the relationship between experimental philosophy and the aims and methods of more traditional analytic philosophy. Special attention is paid to carefully examining experimental philosophy's quite different philosophical programs, their individual strengths and weaknesses, and the different kinds of contributions that they can make to our philosophical understanding. Clear and accessible throughout, it situates experimental philosophy within both a contemporary and historical context, explains its aims and methods, examines and critically evaluates its most significant claims and arguments, and engages with its critics.

Leseprobe

Experimental Philosophy

For Donovan and Theresa

Experimental Philosophy

An Introduction

JOSHUAALEXANDER

polity

Copyright © Joshua Alexander 2012

The right of Joshua Alexander to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2012 by Polity Press

Polity Press

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Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK

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Malden, MA 02148, USA

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ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-6092-9

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Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1

Philosophical Intuitions

2

Experimental Philosophy and Philosophical Analysis

3

Experimental Philosophy and the Philosophy of Mind

4

Experimental Philosophy and Philosophical Methodology

5

In Defense of Experimental Philosophy

Epilogue

Notes

References

Index

Acknowledgments

Nothing is written alone, and I have benefited from the comments and advice of a large number of friends and colleagues. Among them, some deserve special thanks: John Alexander, Cameron Buckner, Adam Arico, Chad Gonnerman, Jonathan Ichikawa, Joshua Knobe, S. Matthew Liao, Ronald Mallon, Jennifer Nado, Shaun Nichols, Mark Phelan, Stephen Stich, and Jonathan Weinberg. At some point during the writing of this book, each of these people shared an insight that shaped the book in some significant way; many of them shared many, perhaps sometimes without knowing it, and their contributions to the book are immeasurable.

I would also like to thank my wonderful editor, Emma Hutchinson, the members of her team, and two anonymous referees at Polity Press, as well as Brandon Nelson, who provided the artwork used on the front cover. In both style and substance, this book is better for the care that they gave.

Chapter 5 contains a proper part of my paper “Is Experimental Philosophy Philosophically Relevant?” (Philosophical Psychology 23, 377–389). Permission to reprint is gratefully acknowledged. The real price of any book is time; time spent writing that might otherwise be spent with family and friends. Without the love and support of my friends and family, this book would not have been possible. I hope that, especially in their eyes, the book proves to be worth the price.

Introduction

1. Experimental Philosophy: Setting the Scene

We ask philosophical intuitions – what we would say or how things seem to us to be – to do a lot of work for us. We advance philosophical theories on the basis of their ability to explain our philosophical intuitions, defend their truth on the basis of their overall agreement with our philosophical intuitions, and justify our philosophical beliefs on the basis of their accordance with our philosophical intuitions. This may not be all that we do and maybe not all of us do it. But enough of us do it, and often enough, that this way of thinking about philosophy has come, at least in certain circles, to be the way to think about philosophy.

On this way of thinking about philosophy, it should seem natural for philosophers to be interested in studying people’s philosophical intuitions. Traditionally, this interest has taken the form of an introspective investigation of our own philosophical intuitions. Assuming that our own philosophical intuitions are appropriately representative, nothing more is needed. The problem with this approach is that the habit of assuming that our own philosophical intuitions are appropriately representative turns out to be a bad habit. It ignores our human tendency to overestimate the degree to which others agree with us (see, e.g., Fields & Schuman 1976, and Ross 1977) and fails to recognize that philosophers compose a rather distinctive group, determined not only by a shared educational history but also by a shared interest in certain kinds of questions and in certain ways of approaching those questions. A better approach is needed.

In recent years, experimental philosophy has emerged as an exciting new approach to the study of people’s philosophical intuitions. Experimental philosophers apply the methods of the social and cognitive sciences to the study of philosophical cognition since these methods are better suited than introspective methods to the study of what people, especially other people, actually think. These methods not only provide us with better access to the relevant intuitions themselves, they can also provide us with insight into the psychological mechanisms that are responsible for them and their overall evidentiary fitness. In this way, experimental philosophy can both complement more traditional approaches to philosophical questions and help identify ways in which this approach should be reformed.

Experimental philosophy is a diverse movement and, in this book, we will focus on three of its different programs:

•  Experimental Philosophy and Philosophical Analysis: What has traditionally interested philosophers about people’s philosophical intuitions has been what these intuitions are supposed to be able to tell us about the world and ourselves. This view is most commonly associated with philosophical analysis. Philosophical analyses often involve arguments that move from claims about people’s philosophical intuitions to claims about the truth or plausibility of specific philosophical theories. Sometimes these theories are about our concepts of things; sometimes they are about things themselves. Either way, the idea is that philosophical intuitions are supposed to be able to help us answer certain kinds of philosophical questions, and some experimental philosophers see themselves as making important contributions to this project. These experimental philosophers typically share with more traditional analytic philosophers the idea that philosophical intuitions provide us with important philosophical insight, but believe that we should employ methods better suited to the careful study of philosophical intuitions, namely, the methods of the social and cognitive sciences.•  Experimental Philosophy and the Philosophy of Mind: Some experimental philosophers think that what philosophical intuitions can tell us about ourselves is not limited to what they can tell us about our individual or shared concepts of things, arguing that our philosophical intuitions also provide us with important philosophical insight into the nature of our minds. These experimental philosophers are less interested in identifying the precise meaning of philosophical concepts than they are in identifying the factors that influence our application of these concepts. The goal is not to use our philosophical intuitions to help explain the meaning of our philosophical concepts, but to explain our intuitions themselves, and by doing so, to reveal something philosophically important about how our minds work and how we ordinarily understand the world.•  Experimental Philosophy and Philosophical Methodology: As it turns out, learning more about how our minds work and how we think about philosophical issues has yielded significant insights into the methods that we employ when doing philosophy, and has led some experimental philosophers to raise concerns about the role that intuitions play in philosophical practice. It turns out that different people have different intuitions, and that people’s intuitions are sensitive to a range of things (e.g., ethnicity, gender, affectivity, and presentation order) that we neither expected nor perhaps wanted them to be. What makes this situation worse is that, because we know so little about the cognitive processes involved, we currently lack the resources needed to determine whose intuitions to trust and when to trust them. After all, evidential diversity calls for some method of adjudication, unexpected evidential sensitivity for some method of forecast, and unwanted evidential sensitivity for some method of prophylaxis. What is needed, then, is a better understanding of the cognitive processes involved in the production of our philosophical intuitions. By coming to better understand what intuitions are, where they come from, and what factors influence them, we can better understand what role they can play in philosophical practice.

There are other ways of dividing up the landscape, and some work in experimental philosophy does not fit neatly into any of these categories, but enough does that this topography will be a useful, if not entirely accurate or exhaustive, guide to the experimental philosophy movement. At any rate, it will be our guide.1

2. A Note on Scope and Coverage

Books like this one are often measured not only by what is covered, but also by what is not. Although still young, the experimental philosophy movement has already produced more than what can adequately be treated in a short introduction, and so there are certain sins of omission in what follows. A few of these deserve special mention, and some attention, however brief.

Experimental Philosophy of Consciousness

Recently, there has been an explosion of interest in the experimental philosophy of consciousness and, in particular, interest in the distinction between phenomenal consciousness (experience) and non-phenomenal consciousness (agency). A great deal of this interest has focused on our folk psychological understanding of what is required in order for something to count as capable of phenomenal consciousness (as capable, for example, of seeing red or feeling pain), and whether those requirements differ from what is required in order for something to count as capable of non-phenomenal consciousness (as capable, for example, of forming beliefs, desires, and intentions). The early results have been fascinating, and suggest not only a rather complicated relationship between folk attributions of phenomenal consciousness and folk attributions of non-phenomenal consciousness (Gray et al. 2007, Knobe & Prinz 2008, Arico 2010, Huebner et al. 2010, Sytsma & Machery 2010, Arico et al. 2011), but also that folk psychological attributions of phenomenal consciousness are associated with attributions of moral standing (Robbins & Jack 2006, Gray & Wegner 2009). While a picture of the folk psychology of consciousness is beginning to emerge, more work will be needed in the coming years to explain the precise nature of the relationship between folk psychological attributions of phenomenal consciousness and attributions of non-phenomenal consciousness, and the cognitive process or processes that support both kinds of folk psychological mental state attributions.

Moral Philosophy and Moral Psychology

It is hard to over-emphasize the excitement and controversy surrounding much of the recent empirical work in moral psychology. Recent work in moral psychology draws on both the empirical resources of the social and cognitive sciences and the traditional conceptual resources of philosophy in order to carefully examine how we think about moral and ethical issues. The results have been fascinating, calling into question not only more traditional ways of approaching these issues, but also a number of orthodox views in philosophical ethics.

Character and Situation

Moral philosophers have often maintained that people possess robust character traits that are responsible for much of our moral and ethical behavior. Our character is not always virtuous, and can be influenced by contextual factors, but it is our moral character that explains the overall pattern of our moral and ethical behavior. While popular among moral philosophers, this view has come under attack in recent years due to the influence of empirical work in moral psychology. It turns out that people behave quite differently in different contexts, and that even minor contextual differences can influence our moral and ethical behavior. (See, for example, Isen & Levin 1972, Darley & Batson 1973, and Milgram 1974.) John Doris (1998, 2002) and Gilbert Harman (1999) argue that empirical findings spell trouble for character-based virtue ethics, arguing instead for a view they call situationism, according to which our moral and ethical behavior is determined not by robust character traits but instead in large part by contextual factors. (For recent discussions of the situationist challenge, including attempts to defend character-based virtue ethics, see Kupperman 2001, Sreenivasan 2002, Annas 2003, Kamtekar 2004, Appiah 2008, and Machery 2010.)

Reason and Emotion

Philosophers have long debated the role that emotion plays in moral judgment. Recently, this debate has taken an empirical turn. Evidence from neuroscience, social and developmental psychology, and psychopathology all seem to point to the view that emotions are essential to morality. The upshot has been a renewed interest in the idea that moral judgments are influenced in some manner by emotions or sentiments (dispositions to have certain emotions in certain circumstances). Shaun Nichols (2004b), for example, has argued that moral judgments arise from the interaction between our affective responses to certain events and normative theories specifying which actions are wrong. Nichols contends that both components of moral cognition are necessary since normative theories prohibit certain actions that we don’t judge to be morally wrong (e.g., norms of etiquette) and we can have strong affective reactions to events without thinking that moral transgressions have occurred (e.g., a child falling down and skinning her knee). While these two parts of moral cognition are distinct, they come together in core moral judgments – judgments that involve “sentimental rules” that prohibit certain actions that are independently likely to elicit strong negative affective responses.

Jesse Prinz (2007) advances an even stronger position about the relationship between emotion and moral judgment, which he calls strong emotionism. According to strong emotionism, both our moral concepts and moral properties themselves are essentially related to our emotional responses. Where Nichols thinks that there is a causal relationship between our emotional responses and our moral judgments, Prinz contends that the relationship is constitutive. (Actually, Prinz contends that moral sentiments are constitutive of both moral judgments and moral properties. This provides for the possibility that some moral judgment might not be accompanied by occurrent emotional responses.)

So there seems to be a strong causal or constitutive relationship between moral judgments and emotions or sentiments. This puts pressure on the idea, long popular in moral philosophy, that it is reason that plays an essential role in moral judgments. At the very least, it seems like we must make room at the moral table for our emotions and sentiments. But, the outlook for reason might not even be this good. Jonathan Haidt (2001) has suggested that emotion and sentiment play such a significant role in moral judgments that deliberative reason typically comes in only after the fact to provide post-hoc rationalization of those moral judgments. If this is right, then reason becomes nothing more than apologist to moral judgment.

Neuroethics

One of the most interesting developments in recent moral psychology involves the use of functional neuroimaging technology to study moral cognition. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology allows scientists to examine what areas of the brain are active when people make moral judgments and, by virtue of this, to better understand the different cognitive processes that are involved in making those judgments. Joshua Greene, for example, has used fMRI technology to advance what he calls a “dual process” theory of moral cognition, according to which characteristically deontological judgments are associated with emotional neural processes and characteristically consequentialist judgments are associated with deliberative cognitive processes (see, e.g., Greene et al. 2001 and Greene 2008). One advantage of the dual process theory is that it helps us understand the trolley problem, that is, why we think that it is morally permissible to sacrifice the life of an innocent bystander in certain versions of the trolley case but not in others. Greene (2003, 2008) and Peter Singer (2005) have also used evidence from neuroscientific studies of moral cognition as part of a normative argument about which kinds of moral judgments should be employed in moral philosophy. They contend that we have good reason to discount characteristically deontological judgments; namely, deontological judgments are sensitive to morally irrelevant factors and are associated with cognitive processes that weren’t evolutionarily selected to track moral facts. While this argument has proved to be rather controversial (see, e.g., Berker 2009), the idea that neuroscience can play some role in not only moral psychology but also moral philosophy is gaining more and more acceptance in both science and philosophy.

Moral Reflection and Moral Behavior

When asked to explain the value of philosophical education, philosophers often suggest among other things that thinking carefully about normative issues can have a positive effect on moral agency. The idea is that careful moral reflection improves moral behavior, and that this is the true value of moral education. It’s a nice story, but there is reason to worry that it isn’t true. If moral education improves moral performance, then we might expect professional ethicists to be models of moral agency and to behave better than non-ethicists. After all, they devote their professional lives to moral reflection and moral education, and presumably care deeply about morality itself. Yet, professional ethicists seem to be no more charitable (Schwitzgebel & Rust, forthcoming), politically conscientious (Schwitzgebel & Rust 2010), or courteous (Schwitzgebel et al., forthcoming) than non-ethicists, and even seem to be more likely to engage in certain kinds of morally objectionable behavior (Schwitzgebel 2009). This makes it difficult to sustain the idea that moral education truly is ameliorative in nature, and suggests that the value of moral education must be found elsewhere. (Interestingly, not only does empirical research suggest that professional ethicists aren’t models of moral agency, it also suggests that philosophers might already have known this at some level. See, for example, Schwitzgebel and Rust (2009). This makes it difficult to explain how the story rehearsed at the beginning of this paragraph got told in the first place.)

Experimental Philosophy of Science

Finally, it is worth briefly mentioning some extremely interesting work in the experimental philosophy of science that is concerned with understanding how we understand key scientific concepts – concepts like explanation and gene, to pick just two.

Explanation

We want to understand the world, and this means at least in part being able to explain why some things happen and others don’t. But, what does it mean to explain why something happened (or didn’t), and why does it matter so much to us to be able to do so? Recent empirical work by Tania Lombrozo (2006, 2011, and Lombrozo & Carey 2006) has begun to shed light on both of these questions. It turns out that we seem to prefer functional explanations (explanations in terms of reasons, functions, and goals) and that, while we tend to think that there is something intrinsically valuable about being able to provide explanations, this feeling is best explained in terms of the instrumental value that explanations have in our daily and scientific lives. Being able to explain why something happens supports our more practical goals of prediction and control, and we are sensitive to the explanatory properties that are themselves responsible for the practical benefits. We value explanations with those properties precisely because those properties give rise to practical benefits, even when we aren’t consciously aware that these properties are responsible for the practical benefits.

Gene

According to the “classical theory” of concepts, concepts are associated with sets of individually necessary and jointly sufficient characteristics. While some scientific concepts seem to fit this model, others don’t. (The same, of course, is true for non-scientific concepts as well.) Instead, some scientific concepts are vague or ambiguous, acquiring specific meanings in the different scientific contexts in which they are used. Recent empirical work by Paul Griffiths and Karola Stotz (2006, 2007) suggests that gene is this kind of concept; what it means for something to be a gene depends at least in part on the specific scientific context in which the concept is being used. But, if the concept gene is heterogeneous, and its meaning changes from context to context, then it becomes important to be able to determine not only what different meanings are in play but also when a specific meaning is in play. This turns out to be no easy task, and requires careful empirical examination not only of the different scientific contexts in which the concept gene is used, but also the way the concept has evolved in the history of biology. What we find is a remarkable pattern of different meanings across different scientific contexts.

3. An Issue Set Aside

Before we begin, it is worth saying something briefly about whether experimental philosophy really is philosophy.2 It has become somewhat fashionable to charge that it is not; that it is, instead, simply experimental psychology, or perhaps the psychology of philosophy. This charge usually comes packaged together with a story about what kinds of questions count as genuine philosophical questions and what kinds of methods can be employed when trying to answer these questions. The trouble with packaging the charge in this way is that it smacks of philosophical imperialism. Unless we adopt overly narrow and seemingly arbitrary standards, it is hard to sustain the idea that experimental philosophical questions aren’t genuine philosophical questions, or the idea that the methods of the social and cognitive sciences aren’t legitimate philosophical methods. The real problem isn’t how the charge is packaged, however; it’s the charge itself. To see why, let’s suppose that experimental philosophy is experimental psychology. So what? Unless we adopt a strict division of intellectual labor that permits no overlap, the fact that experimental philosophy asks questions about human cognition that are often associated with experimental psychology and uses the methods of the social and cognitive sciences doesn’t mean that it isn’t approaching genuine philosophical questions using appropriate philosophical methods. Questions can have both psychological and philosophical significance, and methods can transcend traditional academic boundaries. So, what’s going on here? I suspect that the charge is usually motivated by the worry that some genuine philosophical questions simply cannot be answered using the methods of the social and cognitive sciences. Fair enough, but this only means that not all philosophy is experimental philosophy. Quite right. What follows is the story of that part of philosophy that is.