Tania Lombrozo - Oxford Studies in Experimental Philosophy, Volume 4

Like its predecessor, the fourth volume of Oxford Studies in Experimental Philosophy showcases the growing depth and breadth of the field. Epistemology and moral psychology have been important foci of past work in experimental philosophy, and the contributions in this volume attest to the ways in which empirical methods are being used to add nuance to previous claims, both theoretical and empirical. Alongside this progress on familiar topics, we see an expansion to new areas in mind and metaphysics, with studies exploring how people typically conceptualize different aspects of mind and different kinds of minds, including the extension of agentive modes of thinking well beyond the mental. The volume concludes where the field began: with explicit attention to philosophical methodology, and the ways in which empirical results can inform philosophical debates.

A growing body of research finds that people have intuitions about certain types of Gettier cases that go against the more orthodox philosophical view. In addition, a separate line of research has been showing that peoples responses to certain epistemic questions do not genuinely reflect their epistemic intuitions but are instead due to a process of protagonist projection. Adrian Zikowski brings these two lines of research together, to ask whether peoples unorthodox responses in Gettier cases might be due to protagonist projection. The results show that there is indeed an effect of protagonist projection, but that, even when one controls for this effect, people do show unorthodox intuitions in certain types of Gettier cases.

Within philosophical discussions of epistemology, it has long been assumed that knowledge requires justification. However, a series of recent experimental studies appear to suggest that peoples intuitions might go against this principle, i.e., that people may sometimes attribute knowledge even in the absence of justification. Alexandra Nolte and colleagues further explore peoples intuitions in these cases. Looking at those cases, Nolte et al. show that participants may be inclined to attribute knowledge, but they are also inclined to attribute justification. In other words, participants may be attributing knowledge in cases where the epistemic subject is not in fact justified, but it does not appear that they are attributing knowledge in cases where they themselves judge that the epistemic subject is not justified.

Rawls famously argued for a theory of justice grounded in facts about the decisions we would make if we were behind a veil of ignorance. Within subsequent work, philosophers have cashed out this notion in a variety of different ways. For example, on one conception, when one is behind a veil of ignorance, one might know the probability that one will be in each position in society, but one does not know which position one will actually occupy, whereas on another conception, one doesnt even know these probabilities. Akira Inoue and colleagues report the results of a study that compares the judgments people make when placed behind these different types of veils. The results show that the degree to which people adopt Rawlss maximin principle varies depending on which specific type of veil they are placed behind.

Research on folk metaethics is often taken to indicate that people regard true moral claims as objectively true. The most prominent evidence for folk moral objectivism derives from the disagreement measure. When told that two people make different judgments about whether it is wrong to rob a bank, participants tend to say that one of those two people must be wrong. This is taken to indicate that participants regard bank robbery as objectively wrong. James R. Beebe argues that this interpretation of the evidence is premature, since judgments about such cases are affected by such things as whether the people who make different judgments are from different cultures. Beebe argues instead for an Indexical Moral Relativist view according to which moral terms like right and wrong are context-sensitive.

Both philosophers and psychologists have had a longstanding interest in the origins of knowledge. One manifestation of this interest is in debates about the origins of concepts and ideas: to what extent are they innate, and to what extent learned? While scholars have challenged the terms of this debate and evidence for both sides, Iris Berent and colleagues take a psychological approach, uncovering the cognitive mechanisms that shape our intuitive understanding of the mind. They argue that when it comes to nativism about ideas, two forces collide: a dualist tendency to regard ideas as immaterial, and an essentialism tendency to regard innate traits as material. The result is that ideas are less likely than other human traits to be regarded as innatea prediction that receives support across ten studies.

A long tradition of research has examined the hypothesis that racism can lead people to dehumanize members of racial outgroups, i.e., to see people who are the members of certain racial groups as being not fully human. Larisa Heiphetz and Maureen A. Craig ask whether there is also an effect in, as it were, the opposite direction. Do people show a tendency to dehumanize racists? Strikingly, in two studies, they do indeed find an effect whereby people appear to regard racists as not fully human.

Drawing on a broad array of recent empirical work, David Rose argues that peoples ordinary intuitions about objects are infected through and through by what he calls an Agentive Worldview. Consider the ways in which people might understand an ordinary artifact like a knife. Clearly, people will see the knife as having a particular purpose, and this attribution of purpose will affect peoples intuition about its various properties. Rose reviews a series of recent studies indicating that this effect arises even for core metaphysical intuitions involving essence, persistence, and mereology. He then argues that the same effects also arise for objects that were not created by any agent. The best explanation, he suggests, is that people are applying agentive intuitions even in cases where those intuitions are not at all warranted.