PEA Soup

Experimental Philosophy Page

There's an excellent new resource for those interested in keeping up with, or contributing to, the wide variety of fascinating work being done in experimental philosophy.  It's the Experimental Philosophy Page, and it's set up in wiki format so anyone can edit and update it.  Currently there are over 125 papers on-board.

Moral Dimensions Meets the Empirical Data

Tim Scanlon's new book Moral Dimensions provides an elegant account according to which an agent's mental states are relevant to the question as to whether that agent is blameworthy but not to the question as to whether the agent's behavior itself is morally wrong. 

As the philosopher Kristen Bell points out to me, however, the empirical data indicate that people's actual judgments show exactly the opposite pattern. People's wrongness judgments actually depend more on the agent's mental states than their blame judgments do. 

The Inverted Experience Machine

One of the most influential arguments in the philosophical study of well-being is Robert Nozick's famous 'experience machine' thought experiment. Suppose that you had the opportunity to enter a machine that would give you the subjective experience of having an extraordinary life -- it would seem to you that you were a rock star and a great philosopher and a devoted spouse, all at the same time -- even though, all the while, you would really just be lying there inside the machine. Would you choose to plug in? Many people say no, and Nozick therefore infers that we not only value having positive subjective experiences but also having a life that is in reality a good one.

In a forthcoming paper, Felipe De Brigard challenges this conclusion by conducting an innovative series of experimental studies. At the heart of his approach is a new thought experiment, which we might call the 'inverted experience machine.'

Experimental Metaethics

Steve Campbell from Michigan kindly directed my attention to a new paper that uses the methods of experimental philosophy to investigate the objectivity-question in metaethics. This paper by Geoffrey Goodwin and John Darley is entitled 'The Psychology of Metaethics: Exploring Objectivism' (downloadable from HERE). I have a couple of questions below but I think I need to explain the paper a bit first.

'Bell's Inequality'

The philosopher Kristen Bell has discovered a puzzling new asymmetry which has come to be known affectionately as 'Bell's Inequality.' Probably the best way to explain the effect she uncovered is just to describe her original experiment.

Now YOU TOO Can Get Your Head Examined!

Thomas Nadelhoffer, et al. (from the Experimental Philosophy Blog) invite you to take a walk on the other side of experimental philosophy by being part of a survey that will compare/contrast the intuitions of philosophers and non-philosophers on a variety of topics.  Follow this link for the fun....

Call for Papers: Experimental Philosophy

The newly-created European Review of Philosophy and Psychology is calling for papers for a special issue on experimental philosophy. The editors welcome papers that report new experimental results, papers that engage in philosophical or theoretical reflection on existing results, or papers that address metaphilosophical questions about the very idea of experimental philosophy. 

Papers can either support or oppose the project of using experimental data to address philosophical issues.  Both highly empirical and highly philosophical work are very welcome. 

The deadline for submissions is September 1, 2008.

Happiness: Good or Bad?

Psychologist Wray Herbert has written an article for Newsweek about happiness. The title is “Can You Be Too Happy?” How could you be too happy? Too happy for what? Sounds crazy. Let’s take a look!

Shoemaker on Moral Responsibilty and Moral Ignorance

It is often  supposed that people are not morally responsible for their behavior when that behavior is the product of non-culpable ignorance, but the issue becomes considerably more complex when the ignorance in question is concerned only with moral truths.  Suppose that an agent knows all of the relevant non-moral facts but simply fails to know the moral truths that would allow her to figure out that a particular action is wrong.  Is she morally responsible for her action? 

Unfortunately for those who think that this question admits of an easy answer, our own David Shoemaker has just conducted a dazzling experimental study that raises some very interesting and difficult new philosophical issues here. 

First, he presented subjects with a case modeled on Susan Wolf's story of JoJo:

JoJo is the favorite son of Jo the First, an evil and sadistic dictator of a small, undeveloped country, entirely cut off from the outside world. Because of his father’s special feelings for the boy, JoJo is given a special education and is allowed to accompany his father and observe his daily routine. In light of this treatment, little JoJo, who worships his father (as most boys do), takes his father as a role model and develops values just like his dad’s. As an adult, JoJo does the same sorts of things his father did, including sending people to prison or to death or to torture chambers on the basis of whim. He does these things because he sincerely believes they are morally right, and he is aware of no reason to think otherwise. One day, a peasant sneezes as JoJo walks by, so JoJo heads over to the peasant and punches him in the face, just like his father would have done. He feels no guilt afterwards.

Other subjects were presented with a case exactly like this one except that it described  JoJo  as having all of the relevant moral knowledge.  Just as one might expect, subjects thought that JoJo was less morally blameworthy when they were told that he suffered from moral ignorance than they were when they were told that he had the relevant moral knowledge.  So far, no surprises. 

But now comes the surprising part.  In another condition, Shoemaker presented subjects with a story in which JoJo's action is morally praiseworthy:

 

JoJo is the favorite son of Jo the First, an evil and sadistic dictator of a small, undeveloped country, entirely cut off from the outside world. Because of his father’s special feelings for the boy, JoJo is given a special education and is allowed to accompany his father and observe his daily routine. In light of this treatment, little JoJo, who worships his father (as most boys do), takes his father as a role model and develops values just like his dad’s. As an adult, he does the same sorts of things his father did, including sending people to prison or to death or to torture chambers on the basis of whim. He does these things because he sincerely believes they are morally right, and he is aware of no reason to think otherwise. One day, a peasant sneezes as JoJo walks by, so JoJo heads over to the peasant to punch him in the face, just like his father would have done. As he’s pulling back his fist, though, he suddenly feels compassion and discovers that he can’t bring himself to punch the peasant, even though he still believes it’s the right thing to do. He thus backs away and lets the peasant go free, even though he believes that doing so is immoral, and he feels quite guilty afterwards.

Here again, the intuitions of  subjects who received this story could be compared with intuitions of subjects who received a story that was almost exactly the same except that JoJo had all of the relevant knowledge.  But this time, there was no difference in moral judgments.  Subjects thought that JoJo was no less praiseworthy when he didn't know he was doing the right thing as when he did know.   

In other words, there seems to be an asymmetry such that moral ignorance makes people think an agent is less blameworthy but does not make people think the agent is less praiseworthy.  I actually find myself having the very same intuitions, but it's hard to see exactly why this asymmetry is arising.  Is there some more general principle from which all of the intuitions we see here can be derived?

Happiness on MSNBC

Check out this interview on MSNBC with Psychiatrist Dr. Donald E. Rosen, conducted by MSNBC health editor Jane Weaver. I’m breaking it down FJM-style.