Experimental philosophy is both a quickly developing field and one that is relatively new, having existed for only about two decades so far. It is characterized by its application of empirical methods to traditional philosophical questions. To be more precise, it borrows the methods of social sciences and applies them to the research of ordinary intuitions that pertain to problems in philosophy. This is done in hopes of either informing philosophers who are theoretically-minded purely about what is in fact intuitive among non-philosophers, or to cast doubt on requirement of intuitiveness in philosophical theories by demonstrating flaws and contradictions in ordinary intuitions. Oxford Studies in Experimental Philosophyoffers a collection of the latest and most relevant studies in the field. Considering its technical style and highly specialized subjects of the papers, this book is better suitable for professional philosophers and philosophy students who are interested in getting acquainted with the latest results of the experimental philosophy studies than for other curious readers.

          The book consists of three parts: the first one is dedicated to epistemology, the second one to political and moral philosophy, and the last one to questions of metaphysics, personal identity and philosophy of mind.

          In the epistemology part, Zachary Horne and Andrei Cimpian present a series of studies which demonstrate the different strengths of epistemic inferences in cases of using verb ‘know’ or noun ‘knowledge’, which brings them to the point that epistemologists should be aware of how syntactic differences may change readers’ intuitions. Next two chapters discuss epistemic closure (a principle according to which if somebody knows that p, and if they know that p entails q, then they also know that q). James R. Beebe and Jake Monaghan defend the centrality of this principle in folk epistemology, arguing that the reason for its violations is performance error. Tim Kraft and Alex Wiegmann present results showing that the stronger the entailment is, the fewer violations of epistemic closure principle occur. In the last chapter of this part of the book, Chad Gonnerman, Kaija Mortensen, and Jacob Robbins argue that the folk concept of knowledge-how is neither completely intellectualist nor completely praxist, but knowledge-how is held to be consisting of bothpropositional and practical aspects.

          In the second part, dedicated to moral and political philosophy, Jennifer Cole Wright argues for the existence of folk meta-ethical pluralism and proposes its possible pragmatic function. Derek Leben defends the intuitiveness of the ought implies can principle, at the same time pointing out its context-sensitivity. Justin P. Bruner reports the results of a study which helps to better understand the decisions made behind the Rawlsian veil of ignorance.

          In the third part, dedicated to metaphysics and mind, Alexis Wellwood, Susan Hespos, and Lance Rips investigate the analogy of Object-Substance and Event-Process, presenting findings on some intuitive commonalities. The next two chapters are dedicated to the subject of personal identity. Sara Weaver and John Turri present studies that show a lack of intuitiveness in the assumption that one person can exist only at one place. Christian Mott argues for the intuitiveness of the belief that psychological changes that happen to people as time passes make them less responsible and less deserving of punishment for their past crimes. In the last chapter Brian McLaughlin and David Rose show that phenomenal consciousness is much more easily attributed to biological than to artificial entities (i. e. robots).

          The majority of papers in this book fall into the most developed fields in experimental philosophy, which are experimental epistemology, experimental ethics, and experimental philosophy of action. The same could be said about the previous volume, in which the greater part of the book was dedicated to experimental ethics. It would be interesting to see even more diverse subjects in the upcoming volumes of Oxford Studies in Experimental Philosophy, covering some fields that are less well explored by experimental philosophers. Moreover, most of the studies in this selection use more traditional methods, more precisely, participants are presented with vignettes and asked about their intuitive judgments. Since more diverse methodology is starting to be used in experimental philosophy in recent years, it will be very interesting to see it be reflected even more in the following volumes.

          There is no doubt that this collection of papers is one of the best sources for readers to familiarize themselves with the current developments in experimental philosophy and with the newest results of very thoughtfully designed studies.

© 2019 Elzė Sigutė Mikalonytė

Elzė Sigutė Mikalonytė is a PhD student in Philosophy at Vilnius University, writing a PhD thesis in philosophy of music.