The series “Current Controversies in Philosophy”, harbored by Routledge, is no doubt well known by students and scholars working in the field of philosophy.

The idea is quite simple. The volume is divided into sections. Each section related to an hot topic in the field covered by the volume (among the already published volumes in the series: philosophy of mind, epistemology, metaphysics, political philosophy, virtue ethics, and experimental philosophy). Inside each section, one will find two papers, with different and contradicting opinions and theses about this topic.

The result is generally a lively, thorough, knowledgeable, and updated presentation of the state of the art. Necessarily, it is more aimed at scholars or advanced students. For the purpose is not to provide an introductory book, but rather to point to what is really hot in a field of research.

The volume on Experimental Philosophy, edited by Edouard Machery and Elizabeth O’Neill fully meets the requirements and expectations of this series. As said earlier, this series does not provide introductory books. If the reader is not already familiar with the field of experimental philosophy, she should read the two volumes of Experimental Philosophy, edited by Joshua Knobe and Shaun Nichols (Oxford University Press, 2008 for the first volume, and 2014 for the second volume), or Joshua Alexander’s introduction (Alexander 2012). There are introductions in languages other than english too (for introductions in french, see Cova 2011, Cova & al. 2012, for an introduction in german, see Grundmann & al. 2014)

After an introduction where Machery and O’Neill argue that X-phi (experimental philosophy) should benefit to traditional philosophers, metaphilosophers, and philosophers involved in a naturalistic methodology (i.e. the idea that philosophy should proceed accordingly with the methods of natural sciences), the book divides into four parts: 1) Language ; 2) Consciousness ; 3) Free Will and Responsibility ; 4) Epistemology and the Reliability of Intuitions.

Before indicating the contents of the book, I would like first to recall that X-phi is very critical on one aspect of traditional philosophy, that is, the so-called “method of cases”.

The method of cases is meant to test philosophical theories, by eliciting judgements on cases (or thought-experiments). It is a standard method in traditional (that is, pre-X-phi) philosophy, though the idea is as old as Plato and Aristotle. Plato and Aristotle constantly use the method of cases, when they are discussing conceptions of justice, free will and so on.

Confronted with the puzzle of personal identity, Locke pictures a case where two men the night man and the day man, share the same body, and so on.

Experimental philosophers think that judgements elicited by those cases should be, at least, handled with care, or even abandoned. For, some experiments, where cases where presented to “real people” tend to give very surprising answers.

Philosophers should, at least, when they make claim about “what we would think”, “what we would say”, ensure that it is the case, and that the “we” is not just a rhetorical disguise of their “I”, or of a restricted “we”: white male tenure professors, for example.

Experiments led by experimental philosophers since the beginning of the 21st century gave rise to two different kinds of controversies: internal controversies, and external controversies.

 

Internal controversies are, actually, what you may find in any other experimental science. Given an experiment X with a result R and a conclusion C, researchers in the field must ask: 1) Is the result R an artefact, or is it possible to replicate X with a result similar to R?; 2) In the case where it is highly probable that conditions of the experiment X should only give the result R, or something significantly similar, is it legitimate to argue that X/R supports the conclusion C?

Chapter 2, on consciousness, and chapter 3, on Free Will and Responsibility, present such internal controversies. They are composed of papers written by experimental philosophers, who rely on experiments to prove their point.

External controversies are between experimental philosophers and philosophers who tend to think that experiments led by experimental philosophers and who are interpreted by them as devastating for the method of cases and for traditional philosophy in general, are not that devastating after all.

External controversies take place generally between experimental philosophers, and philosophers who rely on empirical data, are engaged in fields very close to those where X-phiers operate, but are concerned with the autonomy of traditional methods.

Those skeptics (as to the revolutionary impact of X-phi) do not rely on their own experiments to prove their point, but either on classical arguments or on empirical data (from developmental and cognitive psychology, neurosciences and the like).

Controversies presented in chapters 1 (Language) and 4 (Epistemology and the reliability of epistemic intuitions) are external controversies.

The first controversy (chapter 1, language) bears on issues in philosophy of language. In 2004, Machery and colleagues (Machery & al. 2004) conducted a series of experiments. Their goal was to check whether Kripke (1980) was right to think that the causal theory of reference (CTR) was more intuitively compelling than the descriptive theory of reference (DTR). To this effect, he devised a thought-experiment, the “Gödel Case”, to elicit judgements on the reference of proper names which would be predicted by CTR, but not by DTR. The trouble is that the only participant in this experiment was Kripke himself.

Inspired by Nisbett and his colleagues’ researches on the cross-cultural differences between eastern and western styles of thought, Machery and his colleagues (2004) made the prediction that the Gödel case would elicit judgements predicted by the DTR, in the case of eastern subjects, while it would elicit judgements predicted by the CTR, in the case of western subjects. And, they were right. Of, course, results might be discussed, but, as Martì herself acknowledges, those results “reveal wide intra-cultural as well as cross-cultural variations” (p.21) among judgements about reference.

The question is, and that is the crux of the controversy of the chapter 1, between Genoveva Martì on the one hand and Edouard Machery on the other: has this variation any philosophical significance? Does it really bear on the truth of a theory of reference?

Genoveva Martì argues that, although those studies are very interesting, they do not collect input for theories of reference. She adds, too, that Kripke’s case is not an experiment devised to collect intuitions, but is about the actual use of words.

Edouard Machery, to the contrary, argues that a theory of reference should be able to predict correctly judgements about reference, and that, as long as it is impossible to understand under which conditions such predictions could be made by a theory of reference, “it remains mysterious how theories of reference are to be supported or undermined” (p.15)

Chapter 2 has a somewhat confusing title, “consciousness”. In fact, it is more about the process of attribution of mental states, especially experiential (or phenomenal) states. Although the debate on experiential states attribution is a crux of cognitive philosophy and is very important in its own right, it is still a matter of discussion whether it is relevant or not to the elucidation of the nature of phenomenal consciousness (see Talbot 2012).

These reservations being made, I must say that any philosopher interested in the philosophy of mind should take very seriously the challenge posed by experimental philosophy of consciousness. Philosophers of mind, especially when they are interested, make as if their concept of phenomenal consciousness was uncontroversial and shared universally.

Actually, it looks as if, (1) laypeople and philosophers do not have the same concept of phenomenal consciousness; (2) there is a difference between reflexive and intuitive attributions.

The first claim was experimentally sustained by Sytsma and Machery (see Sytsma & Machery 2010); the second claim was developed by Arico and his colleagues (Arico & al. 2011), and is based on a series of experiments, which were devised to support a Model of attribution of conscious experiental states: the “Agency Model”.

In all these studies, the basic study case was the attribution of experiential mental states to a robot.

The contribution to the chapter 2, by Fiala, Arico & Nichols, is a review of this literature, meant to evaluate the threat posed by some negative studies to the Agency Model.

Fiala, Arico and Nichols give a definition of this model (p.35): “According to the Agency Model, mental state attributions are governed by a dual-process cognitive system. Although the high-road process operates via slow, conscious, domain-general deliberation, the low-road process operates in a quick, automatic, domain-specific way. The low-road disposition to attribute mental states is the result of categorizing an entity as an AGENT, which is itself a consequence of representing that entity as possessing particular properties: facial features, interactive behavior, or moving in a distinctive trajectory.”

Fiala and his colleagues show that there is no threat and that all the studies contribute to a refinement of the Agency Model. They present another series of experiments to this effect, and review literature on experiments which are not based on vignettes but on the interaction with real robots (i-cat, microbugs), which contribute to render the paper even more fascinating and enjoyable.

According to the Agency Model, if the high-road is triggered, it might block the attribution of experiential states to robots (for there is a shared belief, pertaining to common sense, that robots don’t have mind). In fact, the Agency Model and the negative hypothesis of Sytsma and Machery, to the effect that laypeople do not have a concept of phenomenal consciousness, and, therefore, are not in a position to attribute experiential states, in the way philosophers would construe this idea, seem to be in conflict.

In his contribution, Systma concludes, after a thorough discussion, both at the theoretical and at the experimental level, of the contraction between the two claims (which are termed by him “negative hypothesis” and “positive hypothesis”) that the experimental and empirical evidence “continues to support Sytsma and Machery’s negative hypothesis, even as it continues to support Fiala, Arico and Nichols’ Agency Model” (p.62).

This awesome chapter is definitely a strong positive assessment of the experimental turn in the philosophy of mind. This internal controversy proves to be very fruitful, once it is resolved in accordance with Sytsma’s ecumenical conclusion.

What is at stake in the chapter 3 is the compatibility between the ordinary way of thinking about free will and what science tells us about causality and the way our behaviors, thoughts and actions may be strictly determined, that is, given a cause C, only an effect (typical in liberal versions of determinism) E may arise.

Knobe is a defender of the idea that, most of the times, our ordinary way of thinking is very different from something that could be vindicated by a scientist (see, for example Knobe 2010 for a strong statement of this position).

In his contribution to this chapter, he argues and interprets evidence to the effect that “people’s making sense of the mind conforms more to the transcendance vision. Hence, the approach that we find in contemporary cognitive science is not just a more precise or systematic way of doing the same thing we do all the time. On the contrary, the basic vision at the heart of that approach is actually incompatible with people’s ordinary way of understanding human freedom” (p.71). That is, the architecture of ordinary cognition is not compatible with a model picturing ordinary people as proto-scientists, or as implicit naturalistic thinkers. The “transcendence vision” is the view according to which “human actions (…) stand completely outside the causal order.” (p.69).

After having recalled that “one of the ongoing goals of experimental philosophy is to develop better methods to test how people are interpreting philosophical issues and which features of scenarios are driving their responses” (p.91), Nahmias and Thompson argue, to the contrary, that evidence should be interpreted as supporting the idea that the ordinary view is compatible with a naturalistic vision of free will.

They propose the idea that people have a fairly liberal view of the free will, which is “theory-lite”.

Rather, as, they claim, derives from evidence, people seem to be driven by a sort of regulatory principle: the causal competition principle: as long as brain-imaging scans do not present neurons as living their lives on theirs own, making their own decisions, people are not appalled by the perspective of a technology which allows (like in the Minority Report movie) a deterministic prediction of all our thoughts, actions, and behaviors. In fact, they are not appaled, which runs contrary to Knobe’s “transcendance vision” hypothesis.

The chapter 4 exposes an external controversy, which runs parallels to the controversy related to judgements about reference, presented in chapter 1. This is the controversy related to the reliability of epistemic intuitions.

In 1963, Edmund Gettier (1963) published a short paper containing two thought-experiments presenting cases where a belief was justified and true, though (according to Gettier and the majority of philosophers working in the field of epistemology) “we” would not speak about knowledge. Gettier’s conclusion (which was admitted by the whole philosophical community) runs to the effect that, if we rely on our epistemic intuitions, we would not count those cases as cases of knowledge.

In 2001, Weinberg, Nichols & Stich make the prediction, following Nisbett’s work (see above), that epistemic intuitions about gettier-cases would vary. Eastern subjects would be more akin to judge that one could count those cases as cases of knowledge, while western subjects would make the opposite claim. They were right.

In their contributions to this chapter, Boyd and Nagel argue, relying on a lot of empirical evidence and on reasoning, that, if the variation of epistemic intuitions is a fact, this variation is not defeating the reliability of epistemic intuitions. By and large, we are right to listen to our epistemic intuitions when it comes to classify a case as knowledge or not.

Alexander and Weinberg give a very subtle and, it seems to me, knock-down reply. Boyd and Nagel’s “reliability”, that is the fact that something is, most of the times, giving true answers, is a weak sense. They coin this sense “baseline accuracy”. But what is at stake, here, after Weinberg, Nichols and Stich’s groundbreaking paper, is not baseline accuracy, but a strong sense (one closer to the ordinary use, by the way), that is trustworthiness.

Philosophers, when they rely on their intuitions, must make sure that they are trustworthy, not only that they are giving, most of the times, true answers. For, the goal of a philosopher is to find a substantial account of knowledge, not to offer piecemeal answer to casual questions.

The fact that, decision about a case vary so dramatically should really be a concern for epistemology. No doubt epistemic intuitions are reliable. If I rely on my intuition to decide whether my associate knows the risks of an investment or does only have beliefs and opinions, I am certainly right. But if I rely on my intuitions to shape a theory of knowledge, which is meant to be true, I am certainly running into troubles.

 

REFERENCES:

 

References

Alexander, J. (2012). Experimental philosophy: an introduction. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

Arico, A., Fiala, B., Goldberg, R. F., & Nichols, S. (2011). The Folk Psychology of Consciousness. Mind and Language, 26(3), 327–352.

Cova, F., (2011) Qu’en pensez-vous? Introduction à la philosophie expérimentale, Editions Germina

Cova, F., Dutant, J., Machery, E., Knobe, J., Nichols, S., & Nahmias, E. (2012) La philosophie expérimentale, Paris: Vuibert

Gettier, E. L. (1963). Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? Analysis, 23(6), 121.

Grundmann, T., Horvath, J., & Kipper, J., hggb (2014) Die Experimentelle Philosophie in der Diskussion, Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Wissenschaft

Knobe, J. M., & Nichols, S., eds. (2008). Experimental philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Knobe, J. (2010). Person as Scientist, Person as Moralist. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 315–329.

Kripke, S. A. (1980). Naming and necessity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Machery, E., Mallon, R., Nichols, S., & Stich, S.P. (2004). Semantics, cross-cultural style. Cognition, 92(3).

Nisbett, R. E. (2003). The geography of thought: how Asians and Westerners think differently– and why. New York: Free Press.

Sytsma, J., & Machery, E. (2009). Two conceptions of subjective experience. Philos Stud Philosophical Studies, 151(2), 299–327.

Talbot, B. (2012). The irrelevance of folk intuitions to the “hard problem” of consciousness. Consciousness And Cognition, 21(2), 644–650.

Weinberg, J. M., Nichols, S., & Stich, S. (2001). Normativity and Epistemic Intuitions. Philosophical Topics, 29(1), 429–460.

 

© 2015 Christophe Al-Saleh