analytic epistemology and experimental philosophy

Analytic Epistemology and ExperimentalPhilosophy

Joshua Alexander* and Jonathan M. Weinberg†

Indiana University, Bloomington

Abstract

It has been standard philosophical practice in analytic philosophy to employ intuitionsgenerated in response to thought-experiments as evidence in the evaluation ofphilosophical claims. In part as a response to this practice, an exciting new movement– experimental philosophy – has recently emerged. This movement is unified behindboth a common methodology and a common aim: the application of methods ofexperimental psychology to the study of the nature of intuitions. In this paper, wewill introduce two different views concerning the relationship that holds betweenexperimental philosophy and the future of standard philosophical practice (whatwe call, the proper foundation view and the restrictionist view), discuss some of the moreinteresting and important results obtained by proponents of both views, and examinethe pressure these results put on analytic philosophers to reform standardphilosophical practice. We will also defend experimental philosophy from somerecent objections, suggest future directions for work in experimental philosophy,and suggest what future lines of epistemological response might be available to thosewishing to defend analytic epistemology from the challenges posed by experimentalphilosophy.

1. Standard Philosophical Practice

Going back arguably at least to Frege (and, in some sense, all the way backto Socrates), it has been a standard practice in analytic philosophy to employintuitions generated in response to thought-experiments as evidence in theevaluation of philosophical claims.1 A philosopher, wishing to either establishor prosecute some philosophical claim proposes a thought-experimentintended to generate an intuition relevant to evaluating the philosophicalclaim. According to standard philosophical practice, the generated intuitionprovides evidence for the acceptance or rejection of the philosophical claim:the philosophical claim is prima facie good to the extent that it accords withthe generated intuition, prima facie bad to the extent that it fails to accordwith the generated intuition.

Examples of this practice in epistemology abound. Most famous of theseexamples is Edmund Gettier’s use of two thought-experiments to generateintuitions intended to prosecute the claim that a person knows that p just

© Blackwell Publishing 2006

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in case that person’s true belief is justified.2 Gettier’s thought-experimentsinvolve a person who has deduced a true belief q from a justified false beliefthat p and, on that basis, formed a justified true belief that q. According toGettier, despite now having a justified true belief that q, the person lacksknowledge that q. Purportedly, when we consider this case, we will havethe intuition that the person whose epistemic position is detailed in thethought-experiment does not know that q. Further, this is to count assufficient evidence against the claim that a person knows that p just in casethat person’s true belief is justified.

Seeing this role of intuitions in standard philosophical practice – asevidence for or against philosophical claims – one naturally wonders: instandard philosophical practice, whose intuitions are to be relied upon asevidence? If we suppose that everyone has the same intuitions regardingspecific thought-experiments, the question has a somewhat trivial and easyanswer: “everyone’s!” However, recent results in experimental philosophy(see section 2 below) have shown this supposition to be incorrect. As such,the question becomes more pressing and there appear to be three candidateanswers vying for our approval. First, it might be supposed that when aphilosopher relies on intuitions as evidence, she is relying only on her ownpersonal intuitions as evidence. Let’s call this view, intuition solipsism. Second,she might be relying on her own intuitions because she takes those intuitionsto be representative of the intuitions of the class of professional philosophers.Let’s call this view, intuition elitism.3 Third, she might be relying on her ownintuitions because she takes those intuitions to be representative of theintuitions of a broader class that includes non-philosophers – commonlyreferred to as “the folk.” Let’s call this view, intuition populism.4

Despite a small handful of high-profile endorsements (see endnote 5),intuition solipsism has little to recommend it. First, any plausible answer toour question should make sense of how practitioners of standard philosophicalpractice conceive of their own practice. However, there is little evidenceto suggest that philosophers take themselves to be appealing only to theirindividual intuitions.5 On the contrary, appeals to intuitions as evidence areoften formulated using locutions such as the impersonal “it is intuitive that,”the second-person-involving “it should be apparent to the reader that . . . ,”and especially the first-person-plural “our intuition is that . . . ,” or “wehave the intuition that.” (These are not usually just reporting the intuitionsof a group of authors.) Second, the standard philosophical practice ofappealing to intuitions as evidence is an argumentative practice. An authorengaging in the standard philosophical practice is not simply offering up herintellectual autobiography; she is arguing a point. If she wasn’t, it would behard to conceive what would be the point of her publishing the paper, orof anyone else’s reading and responding critically to it. Third, if the appealto intuitions is to make sense as part of an argumentative practice, then theevidentiary status of intuitions needs some foundation. In general, thisfoundation would have to arise either from the intuition’s being shared with

© Blackwell Publishing 2006 Philosophy Compass 2/1 (2007): 56–80, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2006.00048.x

Analytic Epistemology and Experimental Philosophy . 57

one’ interlocutors, or from one’s having some recognizable privilegedauthority with regard to the intuition in question. Neither type of foundationcan be determined from a solipsistic perspective. Any argument that reliedsolely on the intuitions of the author of that argument would not havesufficient evidential strength and would have little hope of convincinganyone. But, to the extent to which the philosopher is supposing that herrelevant intuitions are representative of those of a wider group, the authorshould be understood to be appealing to the intuitions of either, or both,all philosophers or all non-philosophers.

The remaining two views – intuition elitism and intuition populism –are both more plausible than the methodologically solipsistic interpretationof philosophical practice. At the very least, each allows us to make sense ofthe practice of employing intuitions as evidence as being part of anargumentative practice whose goal is to convince some other persons of thetruth (or falsity) of some philosophical claim.

One argument that is sometimes made (although rarely in print) in supportof intuition elitism is that philosophers’ intuitions are privileged on accountof the technical nature of philosophical claims under investigation in standardphilosophical practice. The philosophical claims under investigation instandard philosophical practice involve technical (philosophical) conceptsthat diverge to some degree or other from ordinary concepts.6The intuitionsof non-philosophers reflect only an understanding of ordinary concepts,whereas the intuitions of philosophers reflect understanding of these technicalconcepts. As such, the intuitions of non-philosophers are not properlyevidential in standard philosophical practice; appeal must be made to theintuitions of philosophers.

But this can’t be the correct way to interpret philosophical practice.Philosophical practice is not concerned with understanding the nature ofknowledge (or belief, freedom, moral responsibility, etc.) in some technical sense,but of knowledge as the concept is ordinarily understood outside of strictlyphilosophical discourse and practice. If it were concerned only with thetechnical sense of the concept, it would be divorced from the concerns thatled us to philosophical investigation of the concept in the first place and itsverdicts would have little bearing on those initial concerns. As such, largeand central swaths of philosophical practice must be concerned with theordinary concepts.7 But, then the reasons for appealing to the intuitions ofthe technician are gone. Of course, this doesn’t preclude appealing to theintuitions of the technician; one could appeal to the technician’s intuitionsnot qua technician, but qua member of the folk. But, it does introduce anexperimental burden: to demonstrate that the intuitions of philosophers arerepresentative of those of non-philosophers. Absent such demonstration,however, it is difficult to sustain even the suggestion that it is valuable toappeal to the intuitions of philosophers qua folk. Additionally, there is reasonto think that the intuitions of philosophers aren’t representative. ShaunNichols, Stephen Stich, and Jonathan Weinberg found that intuitions about

58 . Analytic Epistemology and Experimental Philosophy


certain thought-experiments systematically vary depending on how manyphilosophy courses one has taken.8 Nichols, Stich, and Weinberg had subjectsconsider a Brain-in-a-vat scenario. In the scenario, two college roommates– neither of whom is a Brain-in-a-vat – are discussing the Brain-in-a-vatscenario. George – one of the roommates – appeals to certain perceptionshe has in order to justify his belief that he is not a Brain-in-a-vat. Subjectswere asked whether George “really knows” or “only believes” that he isnot a Brain-in-a-vat. Nichols, Stich, and Weinberg found that subjects whohad taken two or fewer philosophy courses were more likely than subjectswho had taken three or more philosophy courses to claim that George“really knows” that he is not a Brain-in-a-vat (55% of subjects with two orfewer philosophy courses claimed that George “really knows”; 20% ofsubjects with three or more philosophy courses claimed that George “reallyknows”).

A second argument that is often made is that philosophers’ intuitions areprivileged on account of the special competency or expertise of philosophersto attend to the relevant features of thought-experiments and to the truthor falsity of philosophical claims.9 Even in cases in which philosophical claimsdo not involve technical concepts that diverge in important ways fromordinary concepts, philosophers are specially equipped to attend to therelevant features of thought-experiments and to the concepts involved inphilosophical claims. As such, the intuitions of philosophers, imbued witha sort of expertise, have more evidential value than do the intuitions ofnon-philosophers.

To argue in this way, however, philosophers must be able to offer anargument in defense of their alleged superiority. And we do not think thatthere are currently any good versions of any such argument. One mightargue, for example, that philosophers spend more time thinking about therelevant concepts than do non-philosophers and their expertise at producingcorrect intuitive judgments is a product of this sustained reflection. But,even granting that philosophers do spend more time thinking about therelevant concepts, it is not clear what conclusion can be drawn. First, thefact that intuitions continue to diverge across philosophers calls into questionthe suggestion mere reflection (regardless of length of time spent reflecting)provides a good means for weeding out incorrect conceptual understandingor incorrect intuitions. Second, in order for this argument to go through,then it must be the case that the refection is engaged in during the processof producing intuitive judgments. If the reflection is engaged is reflectionon intuitive judgments that the philosophers have already made, then thefact that philosophers spend more time reflecting on concepts doesn’t supportthe claim that this reflection assists them in producing correct intuitivejudgments. And, it simply isn’t clear which of these two is the case.

Alternately, one might argue that philosophical expertise has already beendemonstrated, if philosophers have a demonstrably better track record ofepistemic success than do non-philosophers. But the question of comparative



epistemic success remains an open question. Additionally, there is reason todoubt that any such demonstration would be forthcoming even if suchresearch were conducted. One way to measure epistemic success might bein terms of one’s ability to provide accurate predictions and explanations.But on such a measure there seems little to suggest that philosophersenjoy greater success than do non-philosophers. After all, scientists arenon-philosophers (or certainly most of them are) and scientists have such astrong track record of success when it comes to providing accuratepredictions and explanations that it seems doubtful that research willdemonstrate that philosophers have greater success. It might be suggestedthat philosophers are not in the prediction-and-explanation business, andso a more appropriate way to measure epistemic success might be in termsof success at answering open questions in one’s field. But, again, thereis little to suggest that philosophers enjoy better success than donon-philosophers. After all, mathematicians are non-philosophers (or certainlymost of them are), whose field is not particularly concerned with predictionand explanation, yet mathematicians have such a fantastic track record ofsuccess when it comes to answering open questions in their field that it againseems doubtful that research will demonstrate that philosophers have greatersuccess. So, on the assumption that philosophy is to be done by surveyingthe intuitions of the epistemically successful, we would suggest thatphilosophers may not be too near the front of that survey queue.

We don’t take the considerations just rehearsed to have provided anythinglike a knock-down argument in favor of intuition populism; such was notour project. We do take the points rehearsed against intuition elitism aboveand the failure of the intuition elitist to establish the preconditions of theirapproach to point in favor of intuition populism. Nevertheless, for ourpurposes here, we are content to leave the question open whether standardphilosophical practice is better understood in accordance with intuitionelitism or intuition populism. Whichever view is adopted, standardphilosophical practice of employing intuitions as evidence will have to attend,and respond, to the developments of experimental philosophy.

2. Experimental Philosophy

In critical response to analytic philosophy’s intuition-deploying practices, anew movement has recently emerged in analytic philosophy: experimentalphilosophy. If intuitions generated in response to thought-experimentsare supposed to be able to be used as reasons to accept or reject somephilosophical claim, then we should be interested in studying the nature ofthe relevant intuitions. Experimental philosophy takes up this challenge,applying the methods of experimental psychology to the study of the natureof intuitions generated in response to thought-experiments.

At present there are two (broadly drawn) views within the experimentalphilosophy movement concerning the relationship that holds between



experimental philosophy and the future of standard philosophical practice.One the one hand, there are those who believe that it is the results ofexperimental philosophy that should be used to provide a proper evidentiaryfoundation for certain philosophical claims and projects – call this view, theproper foundation view. On the other hand, there are those who believe thatthe results of experimental philosophy should figure into a radical restrictionof the deployment of intuitions as evidence – call this view, the restrictionistview.

The proper foundation view has been widely endorsed by experimentalphilosophers working on philosophical topics such as action theory, free-will,and moral responsibility. The view can be summarized as follows. Standardphilosophical practice involves an appeal to intuitions as evidence for oragainst particular philosophical claims. Unfortunately, practitioners of standardphilosophical practice too often rest content with the assumption that theirown intuitions are representative of those of the broader class of philosophersand/or the folk. But, resting content with such an assumption obscures thefact that claims about the distribution of intuitions are straightforwardlyempirical claims – testable predictions about how people will respond whenpresented with the thought-experiments. As such, we should be concernedwith conducting empirical research in order to determine precisely what arethe intuitions that are held by philosophers and non-philosophers alike.Only the results of such research can deliver the intuitions that can serve asevidential basis for or against philosophical claims. In this way, the properfoundation view conceives experimental philosophy as providing a necessarysupplement to standard philosophical practice.

Among the more interesting recent results heralded by proponents of theproper foundation view are those by Joshua Knobe.10 In a 2003 study, Knobefound that people’s intuitions concerning whether or not an action A isintentional depends on the moral qualities of A rather than simply onwhether or not the agent intended to do A.11 Knobe had subjects considereither of two thought-experiments that differed only in the moral significanceof the action described:

(1) The vice-president of a company went to the chairman of the board and said,‘We are thinking of starting a new program. It will help us increase profits, butit will also harm the environment.’The chairman of the board answered. ‘I don’t care at all about harming theenvironment. I just want to make as much profit as I can. Let’s start the newprogram.’They started the new program. Sure enough, the environment was harmed.(2) The vice-president of a company went to the chairman of the board and said,‘We are thinking of starting a new program. It will help us increase profits, butit will also help the environment.’The chairman of the board answered. ‘I don’t care at all about helping theenvironment. I just want to make as much profit as I can. Let’s start the newprogram.’They started the new program. Sure enough, the environment was helped.



Subjects who were considering case (1) were then asked to indicatewhether or not the chairman intentionally harmed the environment. Subjectswho were considering case (2) were asked to indicate whether or not thechairman intentionally helped the environment. Knobe found that the twothought- experiments generated two drastically different intuitions. Mostsubjects (82%) considering the first thought-experiment (in which the actionhad negative moral qualities) indicated having the intuition that theaction was intentional. By contrast, most subjects (77%) considering thesecond thought-experiment (in which the action had positive moral qualities)indicated having the intuition that the action was unintentional.12 Knobetakes these intuitions as evidence against the philosophical claim that personS’s action A is intentional just in case S intended to do A.

Another interesting recent result achieved by proponents of the properfoundation view is due to Eddy Nahmias, Stephen Morris, ThomasNadelhoffer, and Jason Turner who found that people’s intuition is thatcausal determinism is compatible with moral responsibility.13 Nahmias,Morris, Nadelhoffer, and Turner had subjects consider the followingthought-experiment:

Imagine that in the next century we discover all the laws of nature, and we builda supercomputer which can deduce from these laws of nature and from thecurrent state of everything in the world exactly what will be happening in theworld at any future time. It can look at everything about the way the world isand predict everything about how it will be with 100% accuracy. Suppose thatsuch a supercomputer existed, and it looks at the state of the universe at a certaintime on March 25th, 2150 A.D., twenty years before Jeremy Hall is born. Thecomputer then deduces from this information and the laws of nature that Jeremywill definitely rob Fidelity Bank at 6:00 PM on January 26th, 2195. As always,the supercomputer’s prediction is correct; Jeremy robs Fidelity Bank at 6:00 PMon January 26th, 2195.

Subjects were then asked to indicate whether or not Jeremy was morallyblameworthy for robbing Fidelity Bank. Nahmias, Morris, Nadelhoffer, andTurner found that most subjects (83%) responded that Jeremy was morallyblameworthy for robbing Fidelity Bank. They take these intuitions asevidence against the philosophical claim that causal determinism isincompatible with moral responsibility.

The restrictionist view has been endorsed primarily by experimentalphilosophers working in epistemology and philosophy of language. Thisview can be summarized by reference to how it differs from the properfoundation view. According to the proper foundation view, empiricalresearch should be conducted in order to determine what intuitions aregenerated in response to certain thought-experiments. The results of suchresearch, it is proposed, can then be used as a proper evidentiary foundationfor arguing for or against certain philosophical claims. By contrast, proponentsof the restrictionist view argue that empirical research into the natureof intuitions generated in response to thought-experiments, rather than



supporting the use of intuitions as evidence, challenges the suitability ofintuitions to function in any evidentiary role. Thus, for proponents of theproper foundation view, the problem with standard philosophical practiceis that proper care has not been given to determining just what are theintuitions that should be used as evidence for or against philosophical claims.By contrast, for proponents of the restrictionist view, the problem withstandard philosophical practice is that experimental evidence seems to pointto the unsuitability of intuitions to serve as evidence at all. This marks oneimportant difference between the proper foundation view and the restric-tionist view. Equally important, however, is that the restrictionist viewpresents a challenge to proponents of the proper foundation view. Proponentsof the proper foundation view, no less than proponents of standardphilosophical practice, endorse the use of intuitions as evidence. As such,many experimental results call into question not just the correctness ofemploying intuitions as evidence in standard philosophical practice, but thecorrectness of employing intuitions as evidence even in philosophical practicesuitably amended to accommodate the challenge leveled by proponents ofthe proper foundation view.

Among the more interesting recent results achieved by proponents ofthe restrictionist view are those by Jonathan Weinberg, Shaun Nichols,and Stephen Stich.14 In a 2001 study,Weinberg, Nichols, and Stich foundthat subjects in different cultural and socioeconomic groups have significantlydifferent epistemic intuitions. To take one example from their study,they had subjects consider the following version of one of Gettier’s famousthought-experiments:

Bob has a friend Jill, who has driven a Buick for many years. Bob therefore thinksthat Jill drives an American car. He is not aware, however, that her Buick hasrecently been stolen, and he is also not aware that Jill has replaced it with aPontiac, which is a different kind of American car. Does Bob really know thatJill drives an American car, or does he only believe it?

Subjects in the study were asked to indicate their intuition by circlingone of the following:

REALLY KNOWS ONLY BELIEVES

Weinberg, Nichols, and Stich found that the majority (74%) of Westernsubjects responded with the intuition that Bob lacked knowledge (ONLYBELIEVES), while the majority of East Asian (56%) and Indian (61%) subjectsresponded with the intuition that the Bob had knowledge (REALLYKNOWS).15 A different study by these authors indicated an effect based onthe number of philosophy courses subjects had taken; in essence, subjectswho had taken more philosophy courses were more susceptible to skepticalarguments than those who had taken fewer, who were willing to acquiesceto a Moore-style antiskeptical argument.16

A closely related result was achieved by Edouard Machery, Ron Mallon,Shaun Nichols and Stephen Stich.17 In a 2004 study, Machery, Mallon,© Blackwell Publishing 2006 Philosophy Compass 2/1 (2007): 56–80, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2006.00048.x


Nichols, and Stich found that subjects in different cultural groups havesignificantly different intuitions about reference. To take one example fromtheir study, Machery, Mallon, Nichols, and Stich had subjects consider thefollowing version of one of Saul Kripke’s famous thought-experiments:18

Suppose that John has learned in college that Gödel is the man who proved animportant mathematical theorem, called the incompleteness of arithmetic. Johnis quite good at mathematics and he can give an accurate statement of theincompleteness theorem, which he attributes to Gödel as the discoverer. But thisis the only thing that he has heard about Gödel. Now suppose that Gödel wasnot the author of this theorem. A man called “Schmidt” whose body was foundin Vienna under mysterious circumstances many years ago, actually did the workin question. His friend Gödel somehow got a hold of the manuscript and claimedcredit for the work, which was thereafter attributed to Gödel. Thus he has beenknown as the man who proved the incompleteness of arithmetic. Most peoplewho have heard the name “Gödel” are like John; they claim that Gödel discoveredthe incompleteness theorem is the only thing they have ever heard about Gödel.

Subjects in the study were then asked:

When John uses the name “Gödel” is he talking about:

(A) the person who really discovered the incompleteness of arithmetic?

Or

(B) the person who got hold of the manuscript and claimed credit for the work?

The answers were scored binomially, with 0 = (A) and 1 = (B). Thescores were then summed. Machery, Mallon, Nichols, and Stich found thatWestern subjects were more likely than East Asian subjects to givecausal-historical responses (mean for Western subjects = 1.13 comparedwith mean for East Asian subjects = 0.63).19 They use this, and other, datato support the claim reinforce the claim that intuitions systematically varybetween cultural groups.

The data of Weinberg, Nichols, and Stich’s and Machery, Mallon,Nichols, and Stich’s studies support the claim that intuitions systematicallyvary between cultural and socioeconomic groups. In a recently reportedstudy, Stacey Swain, Joshua Alexander, and Jonathan Weinberg found adifferent form of systematic variation: that intuitions generated in responseto one thought-experiment can vary according to whether, and which,other thought-experiments were considered first.20 Swain, Alexander, andWeinberg had subjects consider the following version of Lehrer’s TruetempCase:

One day Charles was knocked out by a falling rock; as a result his brain was“rewired” so that he is always right whenever he estimates the temperature wherehe is. Charles is unaware that his brain has been altered in this way. A few weekslater, this brain rewiring leads him to believe that it is 71 degrees in hisroom. Apart from his estimation, he has no other reasons to think that it is 71degrees. In fact, it is 71 degrees.



Subjects were then asked to indicate (using a five-point Likert scale with1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neutral, 4 = agree, and 5 = stronglyagree) to what extent they agreed or disagreed with the followingstatement:

Charles knows that it is 71 degrees in his room.

Swain,Alexander, and Weinberg found that compared with subjects whoconsidered the Truetemp Case before considering other cases (mean response= 2.8), subjects who were first presented with a clear case of knowledgewere significantly less willing (mean response = 2.4) to attribute knowledgein the Truetemp Case, and subjects who were first presented with a clearcase of non-knowledge were significantly more willing (mean response =3.2) to attribute knowledge in the Truetemp Case.21 Most interesting is thatintuitions crossed the threshold of neutrality (neutral = 3) when subjectswere first presented with a clear case of non-knowledge. Although Swain,Alexander, and Weinberg used a between-subjects design, this result suggeststhat the intuitions of individual agents may be malleable, even to the pointof applying a concept when they have been considering one set of alternatecases, but withholding it when they have been considering others.

Another form of systematic variation was discovered by Shaun Nicholsand Joshua Knobe. 22 Nichols and Knobe repeated the experiment conductedby Nahmias, Morris, Nadelhoffer, and Turner. The results obtained byNichols and Knobe go beyond those of Nahmias, Morris, Nadelhoffer, andTurner, however, in suggesting that affective content present in the narrativeof the thought-experiment might be playing a key role in generating subjects’compatibilist intuitions. They discovered that when presented with theinitial thought-experiment – which has affective content – subjects reportedhaving compatibilist intuitions; however, when presented with an abstractnarrative – in which the affective content has been controlled for – subjectsreported having incompatibilist intuitions. Their data indicates that intuitionsabout the relationship between causal determinism and moral responsibilitydepend on the presence or absence of affective content in the narrative ofthe thought-experiment. Such data indicates that intuitions about therelationship between causal determinism and moral responsibility are unstable.It is important to note that neither Nichols nor Knobe cast their results aspart of the restrictionist view. They view their results as part of a projectstudying our folk psychology. That said, however, their results are suggestivefor those experimental philosophers interested is using the results of experimentalphilosophy to challenge standard philosophical practice.

Proponents of the restrictionist view take all of this data to present asignificant challenge to standard philosophical practice. All of this data pointsto the claim that intuitions generated in response to thought-experimentsare sensitive to factors irrelevant to the content of the thought-experimentsthemselves. Weinberg, Nichols, and Stich and Machery, Mallon, Nichols,and Stich found that intuitions are sensitive to such factors as cultural,© Blackwell Publishing 2006 Philosophy Compass 2/1 (2007): 56–80, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2006.00048.x


socioeconomic, and educational background. Swain, Alexander, andWeinberg found that intuitions generated in response to thought-experimentsare sensitive to whether, and which, other thought-experiments areconsidered first. Nichols and Knobe found that intuitions generated inresponse to thought-experiments are sensitive to affective content. Standardphilosophical practice had not allowed that the facts about what knowledge(or meaning, or responsibility) is should depend on such factors. But, ifintuitions generated in response to thought-experiments systematically varyon the basis of irrelevant factors, then it is possible to use intuitions generatedin response to thought-experiments as evidence for divergent – evencontradictory – philosophical claims.23 But such instability impugns the statusof intuitions as evidentiary, making it unlikely that there would be any fixedset of intuitions about a particular thought-experiment that can stand in anysort of evidential relationship with a philosophical claim.

The upshot is that standard philosophical practice, if it is to be maintained,will have to admit that intuitions that demonstrate such variability cannotserve as an evidentiary basis for or against philosophical claims after all andrestrict the appeal to intuitions as evidence to only those intuitions that areshard by all groups. If philosophers are going to avoid the restrictionists’pessimistic claims about their practice, their options appear to be limited to:(a) finding a way of preferencing one set of intuitions over another; or (b)arguing that philosophical claims are to be relativized to such factors asethnicity, socioeconomic status, affective state, and so on. Considerationslike those rehearsed in section 1 provide reason to doubt the possibility offinding any non-magisterial way of preferencing one set of intuitions overanother. This leaves either relativism – or a restriction of the practice ofappealing to intuitions as evidence. We don’t have any knock-downarguments to show that all forms of philosophical relativism are false. In fact,we doubt that such an argument is even possible. However, our concern isnot with relativism per se, but with the ability of relativism to save standardphilosophical practice from the challenges raised by experimental philosophy.And, here we think there is a significant burden not met by a proponent ofthis line of response. First, and most important, is that the proponent of thisline of response would need more than the present data to move the responseanywhere past pure speculation. The present data is about the instability andsystematic variation of intuitions. To get this line of response off the ground,it is not just intuitions that must be shown to vary, but the relevant philoso-phical facts themselves. And, the relativist would need some independentargument to make plausible the suggestion that the relevant philosophicalfacts vary according to such things as: cultural, socioeconomic, andeducational background; and whether, and which, other thought-experimentswere considered first; and affective content. And, we doubt that there is anyplausible argument of this kind. In any case, in the absence of such anargument, we take the data to challenge the suitability of intuitions tofunction in any evidentiary role. Standard philosophical practice should



admit that intuitions that demonstrate the kinds of variability demonstratedby proponents of the restrictionist view cannot serve as evidence for oragainst philosophical claims.

3. Epistemological Responses to Experimental Philosophy

Unsurprisingly, experimental philosophy has met with some resistance fromthe more armchair-oriented philosophical community. One prominentrecent critic of experimental philosophy has been Ernest Sosa.24 Sosa observesthat experimental philosophers’ method involves asking subjects to considera thought-experiment, which consists of a short narrative, and to answer aquestion where this answer is meant to reveal what relevant intuition theyhave about the case described in the narrative. However, when reading anarrative passage, we tend to import a certain amount of information notexplicitly contained in the passage itself. He thus argues that it is not clear,for any two subjects, that they are actually responding to the same contents– it is possible that each has filled-in different details not explicit in thepassage. But if it isn’t clear, for any two subjects, that they are respondingto the same set of filled-in contents, then it is not clear what conclusion canbe drawn from any similarity or difference found to obtain between theirreported intuitions. After all, the subjects may have filled in the cases withdifferent philosophically relevant contents, and thereby have appropriatelydifferent intuitions about what are really different cases.

However threatening this line of objection may be to experimentalphilosophy, it is important to note that it is no less threatening to standardphilosophical practice. First, this line seems to threaten a kind ofmethodological solipsism. On this line, no two people can ever be sure,when talking about some imagined case that they are actually talking aboutthe same thing. Or worse, it seems just as reasonable to suppose that a subjectmight fill in the details of some imagined case differently on one occasionthan she did on another as it does to suppose that two people might fill-inthe details differently. In fact, if this line of objection is to handle thekind of data obtained by Swain, Alexander, and Weinberg (in whichintuitions about a thought-experiment varied according to which otherthought-experiments had preceded it), then it would have subjects fillingin the details differently on the basis of fairly minor and recent perturbationsin their cognitive environment and over even very shorts spans of time. Butthen subjects can never be sure when they are reflecting on the samething. The concern applies equally well whether we are considering thesubjects studied by experimental philosophers or philosophers themselves.For if we cannot know that two experimental subjects are really disagreeingwhen they have putatively divergent intuitions, it would follow that wecannot know that two philosophers are really agreeing when they haveputatively convergent intuitions. A skepticism about intuitions would bethe result. Sosa’s argument would thus score a victory for armchair



philosophy that is both Pyrrhic and Pyrrhonian. Second, and consequently,this line would reduce the standard philosophical practice of employingintuitions as evidence to the practice of a person relying only on their ownintuitions as evidence.

For reasons discussed earlier we take methodological solipsism to be thewrong interpretation of standard philosophical practice. Additionally, wedon’t take such skepticism to be warranted; and, thus, don’t take the merepossibility that any two subjects will fill-in different details to really presentmuch of a worry for proponents of either experimental philosophy orstandard philosophical practice. To really provide a challenge to eitherexperimental philosophy or standard philosophical practice, some evidenceis needed to support the plausibility of the claim that, when we consider agiven narrative, philosophers and non-philosophers do in fact import adifferent information not explicitly contained in a narrative and that philoso-phers do in fact import the same information as other philosophers. Themere suggestion that we do is insufficient. Second, this evidence must domore than indicate that we import a certain amount of information notexplicitly contained in a narrative; it must demonstrate that this informationis relevant to the intuitive judgments we make in response to thosenarratives. Without a demonstration of the latter sort, even a demonstrationof the former sort wouldn’t be relevant to either the practice of experimentalphilosophy or to standard philosophical practice.

A second line of criticism leveled against experimental philosophysuggests that the intuitions of the subjects studied in experimental philosophymay not reflect the relevant concepts.25 That is, it is sometimes argued thatany substantive variation of intuitions (either between subjects andphilosophers or between different groups of subjects) can be dismissed asresulting simply from the fact that subjects studied by experimentalphilosophers are employing different concepts (either from those employedby philosophers or from those employed by different groups of subjects).Such variation between groups doesn’t challenge standard philosophicalpractice since the variation results only from there being multiple conceptsin play.

It is not clear, however, what sense this line of criticism makes for onewishing to defend standard philosophical practice. First, any systemizationof intuitions about thought-experiments can only be valuable if we can tellwhen concepts are being used univocally across various thought-experiments.That we might explain a diversity of intuitions generated in response tosome thought-experiment in terms of a diversity of concepts only saves theevidentiary status of intuitions at the cost of there being any use in appealingto intuitions as evidence in philosophical disputes. Second, this line inheritsa substantial burden: if it is appropriate to worry that the subjects studiedby experimental philosophers aren’t using concepts univocally, why it is noless appropriate to worry that philosophers are similarly not using conceptsunivocally? Third, the response only makes sense for those who want to



privilege philosophers’ intuitions. The response basically discounts thefindings of experimental philosophy by rejecting the relevance of folkintuitions to standard philosophical practice. But, for reasons discussed above,the practice of relying only on philosophers’ intuitions as evidence facessignificant challenges of its own.

A third, and related, line of criticism leveled against experimental philosophyconcerns the extent to which the intuitions of the subjects studied in experi-mental philosophy may or may not reflect proper understanding of therelevant concepts. Standard philosophical practice, it is argued, is concernedwith reflective, robust intuitions that express complete understandings ofthe relevant concepts. The intuitions studied in experimental philosophyare superficial, reflecting incomplete understandings of the relevant concepts.Because of such differences, the results gathered about the intuitions ofsubjects studied in experimental philosophy don’t directly challenge standardphilosophical practice.

Again, however, it is not clear that such a suggestion can serve well inthe defense of standard philosophical practice. If it is legitimate to worrythat the intuitions of subjects studied by experimental philosophers reflectdefective or imperfect understanding of the relevant concepts, it is no lesslegitimate to worry that the intuitions of trained philosophers reflect similardefects or imperfections. Simply stipulating that philosophers’ intuitions areindicative of complete understanding of the relevant concepts will notdo. What is needed is a principled way of determining which intuitionsare indicative of real competence and which are indicative of defects orimperfections. Also needed is an argument (or better yet, a demonstration)to the effect that the intuitions of philosophers are of the first kind whileintuitions of subjects studied in experimental philosophy are of the second.But what might an argument of this kind look like? It would presumablybe an argument that philosophers enjoy a special intuitive competencyor expertise with certain concepts like knowledge not shared by non-philosophers.26 Only an argument of this kind would be sufficient to makeplausible discounting the intuitions of the subjects studied in experimentalphilosophy while privileging the intuitions appealed to in standardphilosophical practice. We rehearsed two versions of such an argumentabove, in the context of the debate between intuition elitism and intuitionpopulism. We considered whether the elitist could make appeals tophilosophers’ higher degree of reflection, and to their presumed greaterepistemic success than non-philosophers. And we argued that neither moveworks to secure intuition elitism. The same arguments serve to rebut anycase made for the existence of any special philosophical intuitive competence.And, without a way to make this case, we don’t think that there is a wayto make plausible discounting the intuitions of the subjects studied inexperimental philosophy.

It is also important to note that challenges like the ones just rehearsedinvolve speculating on empirical possibilities: that the intuitions of subjects



studied in experimental philosophy reflect different concepts than do thoseof professional philosophers; that, even between groups of subject, multiplyconcepts are in play with will be reflected in diverging intuitions about somethought-experiments; or that the intuitions of subjects reflect defective orimperfect understanding of the relevant concepts. But it is not sufficient torest content with mere speculation, for it confuses the dialectical burden ofproof. The growing body of work in experimental philosophy continues toshift that burden to the person who would defend standard philosophicalpractice. It might be that somewhere down the road we will come to be inpossession of empirical evidence for the truth of one (or more) of theseempirical possibilities. Such evidence might help vindicate part, or all, ofthe standard philosophical practice of relying on intuitions as evidence.But that day is not today. As such, anyone wishing to defend standardphilosophical practice in this way would have to go out and collect evidencethat the suggested empirical possibilities are actually true. And the challengeof experimental philosophy is that even a successful defense of standardphilosophical practice will have to come through the practice of doingexperimental philosophy.

A different overall strategy in response to the challenge from experimentalphilosophy has been to insist that, nonetheless, our intuitive capacities mustbe fundamentally in good standing. The most ambitious of these responsesargue that restrictionism would entail, not just the discrediting of manyphilosopher’s favorite intuitions, but the complete collapse of our epistemicposition into an unsustainable skepticism. There may be no argument forskepticism about intuitions that would not just as well impeach other crucialsources of evidence; for example, if the restrictionists are merely arguingthat we have experimental evidence of intuitions’ fallibility, then we are indeep trouble indeed, since memory and perception are both fallible as well,and we would not want to jettison those epistemic capacities.27 Some sortof a priori intuitions may be required to license even the most basic inferencesthat take us beyond the evidence of our senses, and such “hinge” propositionsas the existence of the external world which, if they are unjustified, mightresult in the entire edifice of our cognition being unjustified.28

Another aprioristic strategy is to contend that the relationship betweenintuition and intuited is profoundly unlike that of percept and perceived:in the latter, our psychological state counts as evidence because they trackthe facts that they put us in contact with, but in the former, it may be thatour psychological states at least in part constitute the facts they report on. Atthe same time, such views do not hold that all of the intuitions areconstitutive – to do so would entail that wherever two persons disagree inany of their intuitions, they must be talking past each other – but rather,that it is the totality of the intuitions involving a concept which must moreor less determine its meaning. For example, Brian Weatherson offers aversion of Lewisian semantics in which the referents of our concepts arewhatever property out there in the world is the simplest, most natural



property that does the best job of fitting our intuitive judgments in applyingit. One of the key virtues of the theory, he argues, is “it can account for thepossibility of mistaken intuitions, while still denying the possibility thatintuitions about meaning can be systematically and radically mistaken” (9).29

If Westerners and East Asians have different intuitions about the applicationof “knows,” or philosophers and non-philosophers, or even differenttime-slices of individual agents, that might be fine, so long as they all havethe best fit. And, if some of these differences in intuitions are so great thatthey approximate different natural properties, then we get a little bit ofrelativism, but of a non-crazy sort – speakers whose intuitions are thatobjectively divergent should count as talking past each other.

In addition to such a transcendental and aprioristic approaches, one canalso make a posteriori replies based on the track-record of intuition as wellas naturalistic hypotheses about the processes that produce them. GeorgeBealer has done so by appeal to the track record of our intuitive capacitieson the whole. According to Bealer,“the on-balance agreement of elementaryconcrete-case intuitions is one of the most impressive general facts abouthuman cognition” (“Intuition” 214). If one also takes intuitions to bereporting primarily on facts about our own concepts – the particularpsychological entities in our heads – then, again, it is easy to tell a storyabout how such intuitions might be mostly true. Such a story might appealto something like analyticity, as a means for explaining why they willgenerally turn out true.30 But it does not need to do so; concepts might justbe rich, tacit, empirically informed, and empirically corrigible theories ofthe categories of the world, and hence intuition’s reliability is a special caseof the general reliability of our cognition of the empirical world.31

What these latter arguments all have in common is that they aim todemonstrate that our intuitions must be generally and on balance accurate intheir deliverances. As such, they are inconsistent with what we might callan eliminationist position regarding intuitions: the view that they should bedone away with in our philosophical practice altogether. And certainly somenaturalistically minded philosophers have occasionally sounded like theywere endorsing such a position.32 But these arguments are in fact consistentwith the restrictionist, who advocates not the root and branch removal ofall intuitions, but just the pruning away of some of the more poisonedphilosophical branches. The peculiar and esoteric intuitions that are thephilosopher’s stock-in-trade represent a fairly small portion of the entirehuman intuitive capacity, and it hardly impugns the latter if the formerturn out to be untenable. (Contending that squinting in dim light is apoor way to see the world accurately would, likewise, not be to castdoubt on perception on the whole.) So the epistemologists’ responses giveus, at best, that intuitions are on average reliable, when to save thearmchair practice from the restrictionists, what they need to offer is somereason to think that philosophers’ intuitions about typical philosophical hypotheticalcases are reliable.



Importantly, the restrictionists’ experiments do not merely suggest thatphilosophers’ intuitions are fallible; they also reveal that fallibility in placesthat armchair philosophers were not at all expecting to find it.“Sure, maybethe likes of Swampman will get all sorts of weird responses,” we can imaginethem saying, “but not Truetemp!” And the Gettier cases, after all, are notburied off in some obscure corner of the epistemological literature, butrather have been at the heart of the discipline for close to half a century –epistemologists were clearly not expecting to find their intuitions aboutthose cases put into jeopardy. And so the surprise that these experimentalresults have provoked also underscores just how insensitive the philosophicalcommunity has been to these sorts of errors. The existence of errors is merefallibility, and a cause only for caution, not panic. But such errors in theabsence of any decent means for catching and correcting them is a far worsecharge, and the arguments for on-balance reliability of intuitions on thewhole simply do not apply to this concern.33

Timothy Williamson has also developed a more radical response to therestrictionist threat: rejecting the picture of philosophical practice asdepending on intuitions at all!34 He argues that our evidence, in consideringthe cases like those listed in section 1, is not any sort of mental seeming, butthe facts in the world. He compares philosophical practice to scientificpractice, where we do not take the perceptual seemings of the scientists asour evidence, but the facts about what they observed. Similarly, then, weshould construe Gettier’s evidence to be not his intellectual seeming thathis case is not an instance of knowledge, but rather the modal fact itselfthat such a case is not an instance of knowledge. We retreat from talk ofthe world to talk of percepts when we (mistakenly) attempt to accommodatethe skeptic; so, too, do we retreat to talk of intuitions only under the pressureof skeptical arguments. And since Williamson is himself antiskeptical,emphasizing the continuity between ordinary modal cognition andphilosophical cognition, he concludes we should give up thinking of ourphilosophical evidence in the thinly psychological terms of intuitions.

But we do not think that Williamson’s arguments can provide muchsolace for traditional analytic philosophers. For the results of experimentalphilosophers are not themselves framed in terms of intuitions, but interms of the counterfactual judgments of various subjects under variouscircumstances. Although the results are often glossed in terms of intuitionsto follow standard philosophical usage, inspection of the experimentalmaterials reveals little talk of intuitions and mostly the direct evaluation ofclaims. The restrictionist challenge does not need to turn on a (potentiallymistaken) psychologization of philosophers’ evidence; that it does not turnon that skeptical move hopefully helps make clear that it is not itself askeptical challenge. In terms that Williamson should be happy with, thechallenge reveals that at the present time philosophers may just not knowwhat their evidence really is. And the true extent of their evidence is not,we think, something that they will be able to learn from their armchairs.



4.The Future of Experimental Philosophy

To the extent that philosophy remains interested in developing theoriesabout such things as knowledge, belief, justification, intentionality, respon-sibility, and reference that are responsive to our ordinary epistemic, linguistic,and social practices and to our ordinary, pre-philosophical intuitions aboutsuch things, any acceptable theory will have to account for and accord withour ordinary folk understandings and our ordinary intuitive judgments.To the extent that philosophy remains interested only with specialized,philosophical practice and intuitions, it remains true that an acceptable theorymust still account for and accord with some set of understandings andintuitive judgments: in this case, those of philosophers.35 In either case, theprojects of experimental philosophy will continue to be extremely important:to determine whether intuitions are suitable as evidence and, if so, todetermine what the relevant intuitions are.

The results obtained by proponents of the proper foundation view havealready indicated ways in which standard philosophical practice has producedphilosophical theories that stray from what intuitions people actuallyhave. This signals that, for the future of experimental philosophy, it will beimportant for proponents of the proper foundation view to continue toinvestigate what the actual folk intuitions are. Only such research can helpphilosophical practice break from resting content with deliverances ofproponents of standard philosophical practice who merely speculate on whatthose intuitions are. It will also be important for proponents of the properfoundation view to continue to: (1) develop, and test, hypotheses aboutwhat factors influence peoples’ intuitive judgments; and (2) develop accountsof the relationship between our intuitions and the phenomena about whichphilosophical practice aims to provide understanding.

Equally important are the results that have been obtained by proponentsof the restrictionist view. These results have already brought under suspicionthe view that intuitions are suitable as evidence. These results are troublingand should give pause for both proponents of standard philosophicalpractice and proponents of the proper foundation view. For the future ofexperimental philosophy, it will be particularly important for proponentsof the proper foundation view to account for and respond to the challengethe restrictionist view poses. It will be no less important for proponents ofthe restrictionist view to continue to: (1) investigate what, if any, other waysintuitions are labile, systematically heterogeneous, biased, or distorted; (2)investigate whether the demonstrated unsuitability is local or global; and,(3) begin to grapple with the question of how philosophical practice is toproceed if we restrict or eliminate the use of intuitions as evidence.

Some important work has already begun on how epistemological practiceshould proceed without appeal to intuitions. This work is being carried outby Michael Bishop and J. D. Trout, Hilary Kornblith, Ram Neta, andJonathan Weinberg, among others. Bishop and Trout advance a view theycall strategic reliabilism.36 According to strategic reliabilism, epistemology© Blackwell Publishing 2006 Philosophy Compass 2/1 (2007): 56–80, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2006.00048.x


should be concerned with promoting the efficient allocation of cognitiveresources to reliable reasoning strategies and applying these reasoningstrategies to significant problems. On this view, normative epistemologicalprescriptions arise from the empirical findings of ameliorative psychology.Hilary Kornblith defends a view that might be described as radicalepistemological naturalism – treating knowledge as a natural kind to bestudied empirically.37 Both Neta and Weinberg scout ways of using EdwardCraig’s Knowledge and the State of Nature as a tool for doing post-intuitiveepistemology.38 According to Craig, the concept of knowledge has thefunction of picking out those potential informants upon whom we can relyin forming our beliefs. Drawing on this, Neta argues that epistemologicaltheory is answerable to both intrinsic features of our ordinary epistemologicalpractices and to the relation those practices bear to the rest of our lives.39

Additionally, Neta defends the view that claims that possessing anepistemological status with respect to a particular proposition is a matter ofbeing a more or less credible informant as to whether or not it is the casethat p. According to Neta, epistemological facts are then fixed by our interestsin flagging credible informants. According to Weinberg’s reconstructiveneopragmatism, we analyze concepts not by consulting intuitions about cases,but by first investigating for what purposes we have a practice of attributingthose concepts, and then considering what sorts of distinctions and normsgoverning those concepts would best serve those purposes.40 If one wishesto get at the nature of epistemic justification, for example, then the operativequestion would be: what would we include, what would we strengthen andwhat would be abandon as outmoded were we to consider a radicalreconstitution of our epistemic norms?

In addition to work on how epistemological practice should proceed ifwe eliminate the use of intuitions as evidence, the tradition of ordinarylanguage philosophy might represent a way for standard philosophical practiceto proceed if we restrict (rather than eliminate) the use of intuitions asevidence. Consider, for example, the work of J. L. Austin.41 Austin wouldagree with restrictionists that some restriction needs to be placed on theappeal to intuitions as evidence. That said, however, he was an advocate ofappealing to intuitions about ordinary language use as evidence providedthat certain restrictions were in place. Among the restrictions endorsed byAustin are: (1) that we shouldn’t appeal to intuitions generated in responseto thought-experiments whose content radically departs from ordinaryexperience; and (2) that we shouldn’t appeal to intuitions generated inresponse to thought-experiments that aren’t sketched with sufficientdetail. An Austinian model might provide for a way of securing at least someof standard philosophical practice.

A great deal of work remains both for experimental philosophers and forthose wishing to defend standard philosophical practice from their challenges.It remains to be seen whether a new standard of philosophical practice isneeded and just how radical a departure the new standard will be from the



old. Our growing sense is that a sea-change in philosophical practice isneeded and that the continued work of experimental philosophers will playa crucial role in directing the shape of the transformation. But, even ifproponents of standard philosophical practice turn out to be vindicated inthe end, at a minimum experimental philosophy will have had the verysalutary effect of forcing proponents of standard philosophical practice toset out clearly what the practice involves and why (despite the apparentexperimental evidence to the contrary) it is a good practice. By helpingeither to replace philosophers’ intuitive methods, or to clarify the basis fortheir legitimacy, experimental philosophy will ultimately be of value forradical and traditionalist alike.

Short Biography

Joshua Alexander received an M.A. in Philosophy from the Universityof Wisconsin-Milwaukee and is currently a doctoral candidate in Philosophyat Indiana University, Bloomington. His current research is focused on apriori justification and empirical revisability, naturalized epistemology, andexperimental philosophy. His dissertation is entitled “A Priori Justification,Intuition and Empirical Revisability,” and he has published in Philosophy ofScience.

Jonathan M. Weinberg is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and a memberof the Center for Cognitive Science at Indiana University, Bloomington.He received his degree from Rutgers in 2002. His current research involvesthe application of empirical methods and results to such fields asepistemology, philosophy of mind, and aesthetics, and he has published inPhilosophical Topics, Nous, Philosophy of Science, and Journal of Aesthetics andArt Criticism.

Acknowledgment

We would like to thank John Alexander, Joshua Knobe,Adam Leite, MarkKaplan, and an anonymous referee for Philosophy Compass for valuablefeedback on earlier drafts of this paper.

Notes

* Correspondence addresses: Department of Philosophy, Indiana University, Sycamore Hall 026,Bloomington, IN 47405, USA. Email: [email protected], † [email protected] For our purposes, an intuition will be taken to be an intellectual seeming of opaque origin. Forfurther discussion of what intuitions are in the sense relevant to the practice of relying on intuitionsas evidence, see the following: G. Bealer, “The Incoherence of Empiricism,” Proceedings of theAristotelian Society 66 (1992): 99–138; Bealer,“A Priori Knowledge and the Scope of Philosophy,”Philosophical Studies 81 (1996): 121– 42; Bealer, “Intuition and the Autonomy of Philosophy,”Rethinking Intuition, eds. M. DePaul and W. Ramsey (Lantham, MD: Rowman and LittlefieldPress, 1998), 201– 40; A. Goldman, “Philosophical Intuitions: Their Target, Their Source, andTheir Epistemic Status,” Grazer Philosophische Studien (forthcoming); M. Lynch, “Trusting



[email protected]

[email protected]

Intuition,” Truth and Realism: Current Debates, eds P. Greenbough and M. Lynch (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 2005, 227–38); J. Pust, Intuitions as Evidence (New York: Garland Press, 2000);E. Sosa, “Intuitions: Their Nature and Epistemic Efficacy,” Grazer Philosophische Studien(forthcoming).2 E. Gettier, “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?” Analysis 23 (1963): 121–3. Other prominentexamples of the use of intuitions as evidence in epistemology include: BonJour’s Clairvoyance Case,Cohen and Lehrer’s New Evil Demon Case, DeRose’s Bank Cases, Dretske’s Painted-Mule Case,Ginet and Goldman’s Fakebarn Case, Lehrer’s Truetemp Case and Nogot/Havit Case, and Lehrerand Paxson’s Tom Grabit Case. See, L. BonJour, The Structure of Empirical Knowledge (Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Press, 1985); S. Cohen and K. Lehrer, “Justification, Truth, andCoherence,” Synthese 55 (1983): 191 – 207; K. DeRose, “Contextualism and KnowledgeAttribution,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 52 (1992): 913 –29; F. Dretske, “EpistemicOperators,” Journal of Philosophy 67.24 (1970): 1007– 23; A. Goldman, “Discrimination andPerceptual Knowledge,” Journal of Philosophy 73 (1976): 771–91; K. Lehrer, Theory of Knowledge(Boulder, CO:Westview Press, 1990) and “Knowledge,Truth, and Evidence,” Analysis 25 (1965):168 –75; K. Lehrer and T. Paxson, Jr., “Knowledge: Undefeated Justified True Belief,” Journal ofPhilosophy 66.8 (1969): 225–37.3 George Bealer is often cited as representative of the proponent of this view. See endnote 1 forreferences to the relevant papers by Bealer. Michael Devitt,Terry Horgan, David Henderson, andAntti Kauppinen have also expressed (to one degree or other) support for the appeal to philosophers’intuitions. See, M. Devitt, “Intuitions,” (forthcoming) in a volume edited by M. Dumitru basedon the International Symposium on Current Issues in Analytical Philosophy the PhilosophicalFoundations of Cognitive Science in Bucharest, May 2003; also in the Proceedings of VI InternationalOntology Congress,“From the Gene to Language: the State of the Art” in San Sebastian, September2004. See also, T. Horgan and D. Henderson, “The A Priori Isn’t All That It’s Cracked Up ToBe, But It Is Something,” Philosophical Topics 29 (2002): 219 –50; A. Kauppinen, “The Rise andFall of Experimental Philosophy,” unpublished manuscript;T. Williamson,“Armchair Philosophy,Metaphysical Modality and Counterfactual Thinking,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 105(2005): 1–23.4 Frank Jackson is often cited as representative of the proponent of this view. See, F. Jackson, FromMetaphysics to Ethics: A Defense of Conceptual Analysis (Oxford: Oxford University Press,1998). Although Jackson is a proponent of the suggestion that when philosophers appeal tointuitions as evidence, we should appeal to the intuitions of the folk, most experimental philosopherswould find fault with Jackson’s suggestion that, in order to determine what the intuitions of thefolk actually are, all philosophers need to do is conduct informal polls of their students. See, forexample, S. Stich and J. Weinberg, “Jackson’s Empirical Assumptions,” Philosophy andPhenomenological Research 62.3 (2001): 637 –43. Hilary Kornblith has recently expressed similarcriticism of Jackson’s methodology. See, H. Kornblith, “Naturalism and Intuitions,” GrazerPhilosophische Studien (forthcoming).5 This is not to say that no philosopher conceives of his or her project in this way. For example,Hilary Kornblith has recently noted that David Lewis writes as if he conceives of himself as doingjust this when he writes that he discovered his own intuitions about counterfactuals and thenattempted to construct a theory which successfully captured those intuitions. See, Kornblith,“Naturalism and Intuitions.” See also, D. Lewis, Counterfactuals (Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Press, 1973). Alvin Goldman has also recently proposed that the proper object ofphilosophical study is personal psychological concepts and the intuitions that reflect such concepts.Most interesting for proponents of experimental philosophy is the claim Goldman goes on tomake in response to the objection that personal psychological concepts (and corresponding personalintuitions) can’t be what philosophy is after. Goldman claims that the only thing that will allowphilosophical analysis to move beyond personal psychological concepts and personal intuitions isexperimental research into whether there is substantial agreement across individuals’ personalpsychological concepts. And this just is one of the certain objects of study conducted in experimentalphilosophy! Additionally, Goldman thinks that the experimental results of Weinberg, Nichols,and Stich (see Section 2) provide significant reason to doubt that a move from personal psychologicalconcepts (and intuitions) to shared psychological concepts (and intuitions) is possible. See, Goldman,“Philosophical Intuitions.”



6 Barry Stroud takes something like this position. See B. Stroud, Understanding Human Knowledge(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). For an interesting, critical evaluation of Stroud’s position,see A. Leite,“Epistemological Externalism and the Project of Traditional Epistemology,”Philosophyand Phenomenological Research (forthcoming).7 Shaun Nichols and Henry Jackman make similar points. See S. Nichols, “Folk Concepts andIntuitions: From Philosophy to Cognitive Science,” Trends in Cognitive Science 8.11 (2004): 514–8;H. Jackman, “Ordinary Language, Conventionalism and a priori Knowledge,” Dialectica 55.4(2001): 315–25. Provided what has just been said, populism might seem to be open to the followingkind of objection: While populism is plausible for a concept like knowledge, isn’t plausible for aconcept like tautology. For a concept like tautology, it seems inappropriate to be concerned withthe ordinary sense of the concept. Additionally, there seem to be concepts even in epistemology(warrant, for example) for which it would seem similarly inappropriate to be concerned with theordinary sense of the concept. It seems rather uncontroversial that for a concept like tautology, weought to defer to expert intuitions. Furthermore, that is probably just what philosophers do. Thatsaid, it is important to keep two things in mind. First, experimental philosophers don’t takethemselves to be challenging this practice. Second, concepts like knowledge, belief, freedom, moralresponsibility, etc. are not of a piece with tautology.8 S. Nichols, S. Stich, and J. Weinberg, “Metaskepticism: Meditations in Ethno-Epistemology,”The Skeptics: Contemporary Essays, ed S. Luper (Burlington,VT: Ashgate Press, 2003): 227–47. Inaddition to this paper, two others deserve special mention. Michael Bishop and J. D. Trout arguethat the special education and highly specialized set of skills possessed by philosophers countsagainst the plausibility of taking philosophers’ intuitions to be representative of folk intuitions.See, M. Bishop and J. Trout, Epistemology and the Psychology of Human Judgment (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 2005). Mark Kaplan also argues against the claim that philosophers have somespecial claim to expertise. Kaplan’s concern is with the use put to this claim to discredit the probityof ordinary language as a source of evidence in epistemology. See, M. Kaplan, “To What Mustan Epistemology be True?” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 61 (2000): 279–304.9 Timothy Williamson, for example, seems to hint towards such an argument: “It would not beat all surprising if the reliability of a person’s application of concepts such as knowledge andjustification to particular cases can be improved by training (compare the training of lawyers inthe careful application of very general concepts to specific cases).” See,T.Williamson,“ArmchairPhilosophy, Metaphysical Modality and Counterfactual Thinking,” Proceedings of the AristotelianSociety 105 (2005): 31.10 It is important to note that Knobe is not, himself, a proponent of the proper foundation viewsince he actually takes himself to be doing something different; namely, just studying our folkpsychology.11 J. Knobe,“Intentional Action and Side Effects in Ordinary Language,” Analysis 63 (2003):190–3.12 The result is highly statistically significant. χ2(1, N = 78) = 27.2, p < 0.001.13 E. Nahmias, S. Morris, T. Nadelhoffer, and J. Turner, “Surveying Free Will: Folk Intuitionsabout Free Will and Moral Responsibility,” Philosophical Psychology 18.5 (2005): 561–84. Similarresults were obtained by Rob Woolfolk, John Doris, and John Darley. See R. Woolfolk, J. Doris,and J. Darley,“Attribution and Alternate Possibilities: Identification and Situational Constraint asFactors in Moral Cognition,” Cognition (forthcoming).14 J. Weinberg, S. Nichols, and S. Stich, “Normativity and Epistemic Intuitions,” PhilosophicalTopics 29 (2001): 429–60.15 The results were highly statistically significant. In the case where Westerners were comparedwith East Asians, p = 0.006414; in the case where Westerners were compared with Indians, p = 0.002.16 See endnote 8 for reference.17 E. Machery, R. Mallon, S. Nichols, and S. Stich, “Semantics, Cross-Cultural Style,” Cognition92.3 (2004): B1–B12.18 See S. Kripke, Naming and Necessity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980).19 The result is highly statistically significant, p < 0.05.20 S. Swain, J. Alexander, and J. Weinberg, “The Instability of Philosophical Intuitions: RunningHot and Cold on Truetemp,” The 32nd Annual Meeting of the Society for Philosophy andPsychology,Washington University, St. Louis, June 2006.21 The result is highly statistically significant, p = 0.048.



22 See S. Nichols and J. Knobe,“Moral Responsibility and Determinism: The Cognitive Scienceof Folk Intuitions,” Nous (forthcoming).23 It might be objected that the Nichols and Knobe results don’t neatly fit this picture. Accordingto this objection, affective content is a relevant factor in making judgments about moral responsibilityand the ability to pick-up on affective content is part of an agent’s competency in making suchjudgments. However, even if affect-based variation is not automatically pernicious to standardphilosophical practice, the fact that this affect-based variation comes as a surprise to practitionersof standard philosophical practice does point to a significant flaw in the practice. To put it mildly,that a practice is not good at identifying where and how variations arise surely tells against thepractice.24 E. Sosa,“A Defense of the Use of Intuitions in Philosophy,” Stich and His Critics, eds. M. Bishopand D. Murphy (forthcoming).25 This line of criticism has been suggested by Alvin Goldman, Frank Jackson,Antti Kauppinen,and Ernest Sosa. See, A. Goldman, “Replies to the Contributors,” Philosophical Topics 29 (2001):461–511; F. Jackson, “Responses,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 62.3 (2001): 653 –64;Kauppinen,“Rise and Fall of Experimental Philosophy”; and, E. Sosa,“Experimental Philosophyand Philosophical Intuition,” Philosophical Studies (forthcoming).26 Of course, philosophers do have competencies and expertise not shared by non-philosophers– e.g., whose judgments are you going to trust on what is or is not a transcendental argument, oran instance of Humean skepticism? See, for example, endnote 7 above.27 This point has been argued for by Ernest Sosa and George Bealer. See, E. Sosa, “MinimalIntuition,” Rethinking Intuition, eds. M. DePaul and W. Ramsey (Lantham, MD: Rowman andLittlefield Publishing, 1998): 257–70; and, E. Sosa, “Experimental Philosophy and PhilosophicalIntuition,” Philosophical Studies (forthcoming). See also endnote 1 for reference to the relevantpapers by Bealer.28 This point has been argued for by Laurence BonJour and Michael Lynch. See, L. BonJour, InDefense of Pure Reason (Cambridge University Press, 1998). See also endnote 1 for reference to therelevant paper by Lynch.29 Brian Weatherson, “What Good Are Counterexamples?” Philosophical Studies 115.1 (2003):1–31. Other proponents of the constitutivity approach include Alvin Goldman (see endnote 1 forreference) and Henry Jackman. See, H. Jackman,“Intuitions and Semantic Theory,” Metaphilosophy(forthcoming).30 This point is argued by Terry Horgan and David Henderson. See endnote 3 for relevantreference.31 Michael Devitt argues for this point. See endnote 3 for relevant reference.32 See, for example, Robert Cummins,“Reflection on Reflective Equilibrium,”Rethinking Intuition,eds. M. DePaul and W. Ramsey (Lantham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishing, 1998).Something like this position can also be found in the paper by Jonathan Weinberg, Shaun Nichols,and Stephen Stich, we must admit.33 We can thus see what is insufficient about Sosa’s argument when he contends, against the resultsreported by Swain, Alexander and Weinberg, that “[t]he upshot is that we have to be careful inhow we use intuition, not that intuition is useless.”With perception, we have a rich set of folkpractices, shaped further by psychological scientific discoveries, that enable us to be careful. Butwith intuition, beyond a few nearly worthless bromides like “think hard about the case” or “don’tintuit when you’re three sheets to the wind”, we don’t know (yet) what it would take to becareful. But one possible positive application of experimental philosophy for the practicing analyticphilosopher may be to help learn just what types of measures are called for, in practicing safeintuition. See, E. Sosa,“Experimental Philosophy and Philosophical Intuitions”, op. cit.34 T. Williamson, “Philosophical ‘Intuitions’ and Scepticism about Judgment,” Dialectica 58.1(2004): 109–55.35 And, where appropriate, other specialists operating with the same technical concept, such asmathematicians.36 See endnote 8 for reference to the relevant work by Bishop and Trout.37 See, H. Kornblith, Knowledge and It’s Place in Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002);Kornblith, “Appeals to Intuition and the Ambitions of Epistemology,” Epistemology Futures, ed.S. Hetherington (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 10–25. And work cited above inendnote 5.



38 E. Craig, Knowledge and the State of Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).39 R. Neta, “Epistemology Factualized: New Contractarian Foundations for Epistemology,”Synthese (forthcoming).40 J. Weinberg, “What’s Epistemology for? The Case for Neopragmatism in NormativeMetaepistemology,” Epistemology Futures, ed. S. Hetherington (Oxford: Oxford University Press,2006): 26–47.41 J. L. Austin, Philosophical Papers, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979); Austin, Sense andSensibilia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962). We thank our colleagues Mark Kaplan andAdam Leite for pointing out this potential use of ordinary language philosophy.

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