Consciousness The questions of what
consciousness is, and what conditions are necessary for conscious thought have been the topic of a long-standing philosophical debate. Experimental philosophers have approached this question by trying to get a better grasp on how exactly people ordinarily understand consciousness. For instance, work by
Joshua Knobe and
Jesse Prinz (2008) suggests that people may have two different ways of understanding minds generally, and Justin Sytsma and Edouard Machery (2009) have written about the proper methodology for studying
folk intuitions about consciousness. Bryce Huebner, Michael Bruno, and Hagop Sarkissian (2010) have further argued that the way Westerners understand consciousness differs systematically from the way that East Asians understand consciousness, while Adam Arico (2010) has offered some evidence for thinking that ordinary ascriptions of consciousness are sensitive to framing effects (such as the presence or absence of contextual information). Some of this work has been featured in the
Online Consciousness Conference. Other experimental philosophers have approached the topic of consciousness by trying to uncover the cognitive processes that guide everyday attributions of conscious states. Adam Arico, Brian Fiala, Rob Goldberg, and
Shaun Nichols, for instance, propose a cognitive model of mental state attribution (the AGENCY model), whereby an entity's displaying certain relatively simple features (e.g., eyes, distinctive motions, interactive behavior) triggers a disposition to attribute conscious states to that entity. Additionally, Bryce Huebner has argued that ascriptions of mental states rely on two divergent strategies: one sensitive to considerations of an entity's behavior being goal-directed; the other sensitive to considerations of personhood.
Cultural diversity Following the work of
Richard Nisbett, which showed that there were differences in a wide range of cognitive tasks between Westerners and East Asians, Jonathan Weinberg,
Shaun Nichols and
Stephen Stich (2001) compared
epistemic intuitions of Western college students and East Asian college students. The students were presented with a number of cases, including some
Gettier cases, and asked to judge whether a person in the case really knew some fact or merely believed it. They found that the East Asian subjects were more likely to judge that the subjects really knew. Later
Edouard Machery, Ron Mallon, Nichols and Stich performed a similar experiment concerning intuitions about the reference of proper names, using cases from
Saul Kripke's Naming and Necessity (1980). Again, they found significant cultural differences. Each group of authors argued that these cultural variances undermined the philosophical project of using intuitions to create theories of knowledge or reference. However, subsequent studies have consistently failed to replicate Weinberg et al.'s (2001) results for other Gettier cases Indeed, more recent studies have actually been providing evidence for the opposite hypothesis, that people from a variety of different cultures have surprisingly similar intuitions in these cases.
Determinism and moral responsibility One area of philosophical inquiry has been concerned with whether or not a person can be morally responsible if their actions are entirely determined, e.g., by the laws of
Newtonian physics. One side of the debate, the proponents of which are called '
incompatibilists,' argue that there is no way for people to be morally responsible for immoral acts if they could not have done otherwise. The other side of the debate argues instead that people can be morally responsible for their immoral actions even when they could not have done otherwise. People who hold this view are often referred to as '
compatibilists.' It was generally claimed that non-philosophers were naturally incompatibilist, that is they think that if you couldn't have done anything else, then you are not morally responsible for your action. Experimental philosophers have addressed this question by presenting people with hypothetical situations in which it is clear that a person's actions are completely determined. Then the person does something morally wrong, and people are asked if that person is morally responsible for what she or he did. Using this technique Nichols and Knobe (2007) found that "people's responses to questions about moral responsibility can vary dramatically depending on the way in which the question is formulated" and argue that "people tend to have compatiblist intuitions when they think about the problem in a more concrete, emotional way but that they tend to have incompatiblist intuitions when they think about the problem in a more abstract, cognitive way".
Epistemology Recent work in experimental
epistemology has tested the apparently empirical claims of various epistemological views. For example, research on epistemic
contextualism has proceeded by conducting experiments in which ordinary people are presented with vignettes that involve a knowledge ascription. Participants are then asked to report on the status of that knowledge ascription. The studies address contextualism by varying the context of the knowledge ascription (for example, how important it is that the agent in the vignette has accurate knowledge). Data gathered thus far show no support for what contextualism says about ordinary use of the term "knows". of the knowing-that / knowing-how distinction, and of laypeople's intuitions about lying, improper assertion, and insincerity.
Intentional action A prominent topic in experimental philosophy is
intentional
action. Work by
Joshua Knobe has especially been influential. "The Knobe Effect", as it is often called, concerns an asymmetry in our judgments of whether an
agent intentionally performed an action. It is "one of the first, most important, and most widely studied effects" in experimental philosophy. Knobe (2003a) asked people to suppose that the
CEO of a corporation is presented with a proposal that would, as a side effect, affect the environment. In one version of the scenario, the effect on the environment will be negative (it will "harm" it), while in another version the effect on the environment will be positive (it will "help" it). In both cases, the CEO opts to pursue the policy and the effect does occur (the environment is harmed or helped by the policy). However, the CEO only adopts the program because he wants to raise
profits; he does not care about the effect that the action will have on the environment. Although all features of the scenarios are held constant—except for whether the side effect on the environment will be positive or negative—a majority of people judge that the CEO intentionally hurt the environment in the one case, but did not intentionally help it in the other. Knobe ultimately argues that the effect is a reflection of a feature of the speakers' underlying concept of intentional action: broadly moral considerations affect whether we judge that an action is performed intentionally. However, his exact views have changed in response to further research.
Experimental jurisprudence Experimental jurisprudence is an emerging topic in experimental philosophy and legal scholarship that explores the nature of legal phenomena through psychological investigations of legal concepts.
Tobia (2022) defines it as "scholarship that addresses jurisprudential questions with empirical data, typically data from experiments." may be allocated correctly. Whereas some legal theorists have welcomed X-Jur's emergence, others have expressed reservations about the contributions it seeks to make.
Predicting philosophical disagreement Research suggests that some fundamental philosophical intuitions are related to stable individual differences in personality. Although there are notable limits, philosophical intuitions and disagreements can be predicted by heritable
Big Five personality traits and their facets. Extraverts are much more likely to be compatibilists, particularly if they are high in "warmth." Extraverts show larger biases and different patterns of beliefs in the Knobe side effect cases. Neuroticism is related to susceptibility to manipulation-style free will arguments. Emotional Stability predicts who will attribute virtues to others. Openness to experience predicts non-objectivist moral intuitions. The link between personality and philosophical intuitions is independent of cognitive abilities, training, education, and expertise. and Spanish. Because the Big Five Personality Traits are highly heritable, some have argued that many contemporary philosophical disputes are likely to persist through the generations. This may mean that some historical philosophical disputes are unlikely to be solved by purely rational, traditional philosophical methods and may require empirical data and experimental philosophy. Additional research suggests that variance in philosophical tendencies is partly explained in part by differences in thinking styles (e.g., the intuitive or reflective reasoning from
Dual Process Theory), even among philosophers. For example, accepting faulty intuitions on reflection tests has predicted belief in God, and disbelieving that scientific theories are true, while correct responses on reflection tests predicts decisions to minimize harm (
a la utilitarianism) or avoid causing harm (
a la deontology) on the trolley problem. These data suggest that reasoning habits may be related to philosophical thinking. However, it has been difficult to detect a causal connection between reasoning habit and philosophical thinking. ==Criticisms==