The normative conception of philosophical methodology take as a starting point the teleological prioritization of practical knowledge over theoretical knowledge I examine what a normative philosopher might make of the emergent practice of experimental philosophy. Generally speaking, experimental philosophers set as their methodology the suspension of a priori reflection in favor of empirical experimentation in order to examine the cognitive factors that influence concept application and behavior. I begin by examining the normative view of philosophy. This view is rooted in a pursuit of practical knowledge, which is an inherently normative endeavor. I then consider how a normative philosopher might approach the role of X-phi. I examine two prominent X-phi projects in order to establish some criteria for meeting that normative philosophical expectation. I conclude that some X-phi projects may not meet the normative expectation because of a pervasive neglect of practical knowledge, while others do manage to incorporate a practical element and fall within the bounds of the normative conception. / Master of Arts

<p>The Explanation Hypothesis is a psychological hypothesis about how people attribute moral responsibility. The hypothesis makes general claims about everyday thinking of moral responsibility and is also said to have important consequences for related philosophical issues. Since arguments in favor of the hypothesis are largely based on a number of intuitive cases, there is need to investigate whether it is supported by empirical evidence. In this study, the hypothesis was tested by means of quantitative experimental methods. The data were collected by conducting online surveys in which participants were introduced to a number of different scenarios. For each scenario, questions about moral responsibility were asked. Results provide general support for the Explanation Hypothesis and there are therefore more reasons to take its proposed consequences seriously.</p>

The Explanation Hypothesis is a psychological hypothesis about how people attribute moral responsibility. The hypothesis makes general claims about everyday thinking of moral responsibility and is also said to have important consequences for related philosophical issues. Since arguments in favor of the hypothesis are largely based on a number of intuitive cases, there is need to investigate whether it is supported by empirical evidence. In this study, the hypothesis was tested by means of quantitative experimental methods. The data were collected by conducting online surveys in which participants were introduced to a number of different scenarios. For each scenario, questions about moral responsibility were asked. Results provide general support for the Explanation Hypothesis and there are therefore more reasons to take its proposed consequences seriously.

Yes / There is conflicting experimental evidence about whether the “stakes” or importance of being wrong affect judgments about whether a subject knows a proposition. To date, judgments about stakes effects on knowledge have been investigated using binary paradigms: responses to “low” stakes cases are compared with responses to “high stakes” cases. However, stakes or importance are not binary properties—they are scalar: whether a situation is “high” or “low” stakes is a matter of degree. So far, no experimental work has investigated the scalar nature of stakes effects on knowledge: do stakes effects increase as the stakes get higher? Do stakes effects only appear once a certain threshold of stakes has been crossed? Does the effect plateau at a certain point? To address these questions, we conducted experiments that probe for the scalarity of stakes effects using several experimental approaches. We found evidence of scalar stakes effects using an “evidenceseeking” experimental design, but no evidence of scalar effects using a traditional “evidence-fixed” experimental design. In addition, using the evidence-seeking design, we uncovered a large, but previously unnoticed framing effect on whether participants are skeptical about whether someone can know something, no matter how much evidence they have. The rate of skeptical responses and the rate at which participants were willing to attribute “lazy knowledge”—that someone can know something without having to check— were themselves subject to a stakes effect: participants were more skeptical when the stakes were higher, and more prone to attribute lazy knowledge when the stakes were lower. We argue that the novel skeptical stakes effect provides resources to respond to criticisms of the evidence-seeking approach that argue that it does not target knowledge / Leverhulme Trust Research Project Grant (RPG-2016-193)

Traditional philosophy has been under attack from several quarters in recent years. The traditional philosopher views philosophy as an armchair discipline relying, for the most part, on reason and reflection. Some philosophers doubt the legitimacy of this type of inquiry. Their arguments usually occur along two dimensions. Some argue that the primary data source for the armchair philosopher--intuition--does not provide evidence for philosophical theories. Others argue that conceptual analysis, which is the preferred method of inquiry for armchair philosophers, can't yield the results the philosopher is looking for, since concepts like 'knowledge' or 'free-will' vary from culture to culture or even between persons within a culture. Finally, some philosophers argue that we should abandon the armchair program because philosophy should be an empirical enterprise continuous with the sciences. I argue that attempts to undermine intuition fail and that one can justify the evidential status of intuition in a non-question begging way. I then argue that attacks on the belief in shared concepts do not succeed because they often conflate the nature of scientific objects with those of interest to the philosopher. However, if concepts do vary from culture to culture, I show that the philosopher need not abandon the armchair. She can still do conceptual analysis but it will be only the entry point into the philosophical dialogue. I apply this approach to epistemology arguing that the central epistemic questions ought to be the existential and the normative. This approach helps to vindicate epistemic internalism.

The tradition of semantic externalism that follows Kripke (1972) and Putnam (1975) is built on the assumption that the folk have essentialist commitments about natural kinds. Externalists commonly take the body of empirical data concerning psychological essentialism as support for this claim. However, recent empirical findings (Malt, 1994; Kalish, 2002) call the psychological theory of essentialism into question. This thesis examines the relevance of these findings to both essentialism and semantic externalism. I argue that these findings suggest that these theories fail to reflect folk beliefs about natural kinds and folk natural kind term usage. This leads me to propose an alternative thesis-- the Ambiguity Thesis-- that is better able to accommodate the existing body of empirical data.

Against moral intuitionism, which holds that moral intuitions can be non-inferentially justified, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong argues that moral intuitions are unreliable and must be confirmed to be justified (i.e. must be justified inferentially) because they are subject to cognitive biases. However, I suggest this is merely a renewed version of the argument from disagreement against intuitionism. As such, I attempt to show that the renewed argument is subject to an analogous objection as the old one; many cognitive biases of moral intuitions result from biases of non-moral judgments. Thus, the unreliability of moral intuitions due to biases (and the reason inferential justification was required) can be removed by clearing up the non-moral biases. Accordingly, biases of moral intuitions do not threaten a slightly qualified version intuitionism which posits non-inferential justification of intuitions when non-moral biases are not present. I also present an empirical study that lends initial support to my argument.

abstract: Saying, "if Mary had watered Sam's plant, it wouldn't have died," is an ordinary way to identify Mary not watering Sam's plant as the cause of its death. But there are problems with this statement. If we identify Mary's omitted action as the cause, we seemingly admit an inordinate number of omissions as causes. For any counterfactual statement containing the omitted action is true (e.g. if Hillary Clinton had watered Sam's plant, it wouldn't have died). The statement, moreover, is mysterious because it is not clear why one protasis is more salient than any alternatives such as "if Sam hadn't gone to Bismarck." In the burgeoning field of experimental metaphysics, some theorists have tried to account for these intuitions about omissive causes. By synthesizing this data and providing a few experiments, I will suggest that judgments - and maybe metaphysics - about omissive causes necessarily have a normative feature. This understanding of omissive causes may be able to adequately resolve the problems above. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Philosophy 2013

Yes / We investigate claims about the frequency of "know" made by philosophers. Our investigation has several overlapping aims. First, we aim to show what is required to confirm or disconfirm philosophers' claims about the comparative frequency of different uses of philosophically interesting expressions. Second, we aim to show how using linguistic corpora as tools for investigating meaning is a productive methodology, in the sense that it yields discoveries about the use of language that philosophers would have overlooked if they remained in their "armchairs of an afternoon", to use J.L. Austin's phrase. Third, we discuss facts about the meaning of "know" that so far have been ignored in philosophy, with the aim of reorienting discussions of the relevance of ordinary language for philosophical theorizing. / Leverhulme Trust Research Project Grant (RPG-2016-193)

<p>There are various theories in the philosophy of mind/cognitive science of what kinds of knowledge, or information carrying mental states, constitute our mental concepts. Such knowledge is used in higher acts of cognition such as in categorization, induction, deduction, and analogical reasoning when we think or reason about the extension of the concept. While most concept theories have primarily focused on concrete concepts such as `chair,' `table,' and `dog,' I take such modern theories and apply them to abstract moral concepts such as `virtue,' `right action,' and `just.' I argue for a new overall pluralistic theory of moral concepts, combining several theories of concepts. This pluralistic view differs from, for example, Ayer's non-cognitivist theory that contends that our moral concepts are constituted by or just are emotions and desires. Finally, I draw further philosophical implications my conclusion may have for applied ethics, normative ethical theory, political philosophy and meta-ethics.</p> / Dissertation