Experimental Philosophy
@xphilosopher
Experimental philosophy: An interdisciplinary field that uses the collection of empirical data to shed light on philosophical issues.
New paper “Norms emerge through iterated learning” (with Rachana Kamtekar and Shaun Nichols) is out in PNAS! We develop and test an account of how injunctive norms—rules about what people ought to do—can emerge through cultural transmission. pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pn…
Counterfactual models predict that normality should influence causal judgments in a different way depending on causal structure. A fascinating paper by Ozdemir and Walker finds some hints of this pattern in 5- to 7-year old children.
Our new paper at the intersection of causal cognition and linguistics Take a sentence of the form “AGENT caused OUTCOME” Our studies suggest: Some surprising effects in intuitions about these sentences can be explained using theories from linguistics about the “agent role”
Suppose Tom loses control of his body, and his bodily motions then cause an accident. Would it be right to say “Tom caused the accident?” A new paper explores the role that language plays in these links between agency and causation! 🔗👇
Intriguing experimental philosophy study on the ordinary concept of suicide If you ask another agent to do something that will bring about your death, are you thereby committing suicide? journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11…
A popular and very old argument for the value of philosophy claims that studying philosophy cultivates important intellectual abilities and dispositions. But empirical evidence for that claim has been hard to come by. Until now! 1/4
The special open access issue on Experimental Philosophy of Religion, based on a project funded by the John Templeton Foundation @templeton_fdn, is now available. Guest editor Ian M. Church had chosen to dedicate the issue to Helen De Cruz before her passing last month. It…
Do women feel some emotions more strongly than men? Out today in Affective Science, I argue that claims like this make a notoriously subtle mistake. What is it? And what does it have to do with an astigmatic painter and thyroid medicine? A short thread... link.springer.com/article/10.100…