An Experimental Philosophy Manifesto

Abstract

It used to be a commonplace that the discipline of philosophy was deeply con-cerned with questions about the human condition. Philosophers thought about human beings and how their minds worked. They took an interest in reason and passion, culture and innate ideas, the origins of people's moral and reli-gious beliefs. On this traditional conception, it wasn't particularly important to keep philosophy clearly distinct from psychology, history, or political science. Philosophers were concerned, in a very general way, with questions about how everything fi t together. The new movement of experimental philosophy seeks a return to this tradi-tional vision. Like philosophers of centuries past, we are concerned with ques-tions about how human beings actually happen to be. We recognize that such an inquiry will involve us in the study of phenomena that are messy, contin-gent, and highly variable across times and places, but we do not see how that fact is supposed to make the inquiry any less genuinely philosophical. On the contrary, we think that many of the deepest questions of philosophy can only be properly addressed by immersing oneself in the messy, contingent, highly variable truths about how human beings really are. But there is also an important respect in which experimental philosophers depart from this earlier tradition. Unlike the philosophers of centuries past, we think that a critical method for fi guring out how human beings think is to go out and actually run systematic empirical studies. Hence, experimental philosophers proceed by conducting experimental investigations of the psy-chological processes underlying people's intuitions about central philosophical issues. Again and again, these investigations have challenged familiar assump-tions, showing that people do not actually think about these issues in anything like the way philosophers had assumed. Reactions to this movement have been largely polarized. Many fi nd it an exciting new way to approach the basic philosophical concerns that attracted them to philosophy in the fi rst place. But many others regard the movement as insidious—a specter haunting contemporary philosophy. We suspect that the subsequent cries for exorcism are often based on an incomplete understanding of the diverse ambitions of Experimental philosophers are certainly not the fi rst to think that important philosophical lessons can be learned by looking carefully at ordinary people's intuitions about cases. This methodological approach has a long history within the research program sometimes known as 'conceptual analysis.' It may be helpful, then, to begin by discussing the ways in which experimental philoso-phy departs from this earlier program. Of course, the most salient difference is just the fact that experimental phi-losophers conduct experiments and conceptual analysts do not. Thus, the con-ceptual analyst might write, "In this case, one would surely say . . .," while the experimental philosopher would write, "In this case, 79% of subjects said. . . ." But this is only the most superfi cial difference. Over time, experimental philos-ophers have developed a way of thinking about these issues that departs in truly substantial respects from the approaches familiar from conceptual analysis. There is no single method of conceptual analysis, but typically a conceptual analysis attempts to identify precisely the meaning of a concept by breaking the concept into its essential components, components which themselves typically involve further concepts. In an attempt to determine the meaning of a philo-sophically important concept, one often considers whether the concept applies in various possible cases. The aim of this project is to achieve ever greater levels of precision. Typically, one starts out with a nebulous sense of how to pick out the property in ques-tion. Perhaps something like this: Knowledge seems to involve some kind of counterfactual relation between people's beliefs and actual facts.

Full text

UNCORRECTED PROOF
3
1
An Experimental Philosophy Manifesto
Joshua Knobe & Shaun Nichols
It used to be a commonplace that the discipline of philosophy was deeply con-
cerned with questions about the human condition. Philosophers thought about
human beings and how their minds worked. They took an interest in reason
and passion, culture and innate ideas, the origins of people’s moral and reli-
gious beliefs. On this traditional conception, it wasn’t particularly important to
keep philosophy clearly distinct from psychology, history, or political science.
Philosophers were concerned, in a very general way, with questions about how
everything fi t together.
The new movement of experimental philosophy seeks a return to this tradi-
tional vision. Like philosophers of centuries past, we are concerned with ques-
tions about how human beings actually happen to be. We recognize that such
an inquiry will involve us in the study of phenomena that are messy, contin-
gent, and highly variable across times and places, but we do not see how that
fact is supposed to make the inquiry any less genuinely philosophical. On the
contrary, we think that many of the deepest questions of philosophy can only
be properly addressed by immersing oneself in the messy, contingent, highly
variable truths about how human beings really are.
But there is also an important respect in which experimental philosophers
depart from this earlier tradition. Unlike the philosophers of centuries past,
we think that a critical method for fi guring out how human beings think is
to go out and actually run systematic empirical studies. Hence, experimental
philosophers proceed by conducting experimental investigations of the psy-
chological processes underlying people’s intuitions about central philosophical
issues. Again and again, these investigations have challenged familiar assump-
tions, showing that people do not actually think about these issues in anything
like the way philosophers had assumed.
Reactions to this movement have been largely polarized. Many fi nd it an
exciting new way to approach the basic philosophical concerns that attracted
them to philosophy in the fi rst place. But many others regard the movement as
insidious—a specter haunting contemporary philosophy. We suspect that the
subsequent cries for exorcism are often based on an incomplete understanding
of the diverse ambitions of experimental philosophy. In this brief manifesto, we
Knob Ch01.indd 3Knob Ch01.indd 3 3/19/2008 12:37:23 PM3/19/2008 12:37:23 PM

4 Experimental Philosophy
UNCORRECTED PROOF
aim to make clear the nature of experimental philosophy, as well as its continu-
ity with traditional philosophy.
1. EXPERIMENTAL PHILOSOPHY AND CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS
Experimental philosophers are certainly not the fi rst to think that important
philosophical lessons can be learned by looking carefully at ordinary people’s
intuitions about cases. This methodological approach has a long history within
the research program sometimes known as ‘conceptual analysis.’ It may be
helpful, then, to begin by discussing the ways in which experimental philoso-
phy departs from this earlier program.
Of course, the most salient difference is just the fact that experimental phi-
losophers conduct experiments and conceptual analysts do not. Thus, the con-
ceptual analyst might write, “In this case, one would surely say . . .,” while the
experimental philosopher would write, “In this case, 79% of subjects said. . . .”
But this is only the most superfi cial difference. Over time, experimental philos-
ophers have developed a way of thinking about these issues that departs in truly
substantial respects from the approaches familiar from conceptual analysis.
There is no single method of conceptual analysis, but typically a conceptual
analysis attempts to identify precisely the meaning of a concept by breaking the
concept into its essential components, components which themselves typically
involve further concepts. In an attempt to determine the meaning of a philo-
sophically important concept, one often considers whether the concept applies
in various possible cases.
The aim of this project is to achieve ever greater levels of precision. Typically,
one starts out with a nebulous sense of how to pick out the property in ques-
tion. Perhaps something like this:
Knowledge seems to involve some kind of counterfactual relation
between people’s beliefs and actual facts.
But, over time, one hopes to arrive at a more precise analysis. For example:
S knows that p if and only if
1. p
2. S believes that p
3. Not-p → S does not believe p
4. p → S believes that p
This research program is, by all accounts, exceedingly diffi cult. The philoso-
pher toils to put together his set of necessary and suffi cient conditions for the
concept of interest, let’s say pencil. But then, when he presents his results, it
inevitably happens that some guy in the back of the room gives an example of
an object that meets all the conditions but isn’t a pencil. This sends the philoso-
pher back to his study to make some adjustments in his defi nition.
The program of conceptual analysis is a highly controversial one. Some
believe that it is making considerable progress and will eventually converge on
Knob Ch01.indd 4Knob Ch01.indd 4 3/19/2008 12:37:23 PM3/19/2008 12:37:23 PM

An Experimental Philosophy Manifesto 5
UNCORRECTED PROOF
correct analyses of certain important concepts; others feel that we have never
succeeded in analyzing anything in terms of anything else and that this failure
points to some intrinsic fl aw in the assumptions that underlie the program
itself. Regardless of how one feels about this controversy, it is important to
understand how the aim of experimental philosophy differs from that of con-
ceptual analysis.
As far as we know, no experimental philosopher has ever offered an analysis
of one concept in terms of another. Instead, the aim is usually to provide an
account of the factors that infl uence applications of a concept, and in particu-
lar, the internal psychological processes that underlie such applications. Progress
here is measured not in terms of the precision with which one can characterize
the actual patterns of people’s intuitions but in terms of the degree to which
one can achieve explanatory depth. Typically, one starts out with a fairly super-
fi cial characterization of certain patterns in people’s intuitions. Maybe some-
thing like this:
People are more inclined to regard an agent as morally
responsible when the case is described in vivid and concrete
detail than they are when the case is described more abstractly.
The goal, however, is to provide some deeper explanation of why the intuitions
come out this way. For example:
People are more inclined to regard an agent as morally
responsible when they have a strong affective reaction to
his or her transgression.
And ultimately, the hope is that one will be able to arrive at a more fundamental
understanding of people’s thinking in the relevant domain. Maybe something
like this:
People’s intuitions about moral responsibility are shaped by the
interaction of two different systems—one that employs an abstract
theory, another that relies more on immediate affective reactions.
But note that, even if we are able to construct a theory of this sort, we still
may not be able to predict people’s intuitions in all possible cases. Indeed, if
our theory is that people’s intuitions are shaped by their affective reactions to
the case at hand, we would not be able to perfectly characterize the pattern of
people’s intuitions unless we could develop a complete theory of the nature of
people’s affective reactions.
In one sense, then, it seems that the task of experimental philosophy is con-
siderably less demanding than that of conceptual analysis. As long as we can
offer an account of the internal psychological processes that underlie our judg-
ments, we do not also need to fi nd necessary and suffi cient conditions for the
application of the concept in particular cases. Some philosophers think that this
fact gives us reason for optimism. They think it amounts to trading an impos-
sible task for one in which researchers are actually making substantial progress.
Knob Ch01.indd 5Knob Ch01.indd 5 3/19/2008 12:37:23 PM3/19/2008 12:37:23 PM

6 Experimental Philosophy
UNCORRECTED PROOF
In another sense, though, the task of experimental philosophy is quite a bit
more demanding than that of conceptual analysis as traditionally practiced.
Experimental philosophers would not be content just to have an understand-
ing of the patterns of intuition one fi nds on the surface. Indeed, even if we had
a complete and perfectly accurate characterization of those patterns, we might
feel that all of the truly deep questions still remained to be answered. What we
really want to know is why people have the intuitions they do.
2. EXPERIMENTAL PHILOSOPHY AND PHILOSOPHICAL SIGNIFICANCE
With these considerations in the background, we can turn to an issue that might
at fi rst seem rather puzzling. The puzzle arises from a kind of gulf between the
evidence that experimental philosophers are actually gathering and the theories
that this evidence is alleged to support. In a typical experimental philosophy
paper, the evidence being gathered is about the percentages of people who hold
various sorts of intuitions, but the theories under discussion are not about peo-
ple’s intuitions but about substantive philosophical questions in epistemology,
metaphysics, or ethics. It may appear, at least on fi rst glance, that there must
be some sleight of hand involved here. How on earth could information about
the statistical distribution of intuitions ever give us reason to accept or reject a
particular philosophical view?
The problem only becomes more acute when one thinks about how the
approach could actually be applied in practice. Suppose, for example, that a
philosopher has thought deeply about a particular case and, after sustained
refl ection, concluded that the agent in this case is morally responsible. And now
suppose that experimental studies reveal that a majority of subjects (say, 63%)
hold the opposite opinion. How could such a result possibly have any impact
on her philosophical work? Is she supposed to change her mind just because
she fi nds herself in the minority?
Of course she isn’t. Philosophical inquiry has never been a popularity con-
test, and experimental philosophy is not about to turn it into one. If the experi-
mental results are to have any meaningful impact here, it must be in some more
indirect way. The mere fact that a certain percentage of subjects hold a particu-
lar view cannot on its own have a signifi cant impact on our philosophical work.
Instead, it must be that the statistical information is somehow helping us to
gain access to some other fact and that this other fact—whatever it turns out to
be—is what is really playing a role in philosophical inquiry.
Our aim in this section is to explain how this trick is supposed to work.
The exposition here is somewhat complicated by the fact that different projects
within experimental philosophy have used fundamentally different approaches.
Hence, it is not possible to point to a single basic viewpoint and say: “This view-
point lies at the heart of all contemporary work in experimental philosophy.”
The only way to present this material is to look separately at a number of dif-
ferent strands within the movement. Although experimental philosophy is a
young movement, there are already more strands than we can adequately cover.
Knob Ch01.indd 6Knob Ch01.indd 6 3/19/2008 12:37:23 PM3/19/2008 12:37:23 PM

An Experimental Philosophy Manifesto 7
UNCORRECTED PROOF
For instance, there has been interesting work on the meanings of words and on
cultural universals that we will not be able to treat here. Instead, our focus will
be on three strands that have proven especially infl uential.
1. Sources and Warrant
It is a commonplace that sometimes people acquire beliefs from untrustworthy
sources. Some cultural sources—some books, some news media, some people—
are manifestly unreliable. If the source of your belief that there is extraterres-
trial life is the National Enquirer, then your belief lacks adequate justifi cation.
But concerns about the sources of our beliefs are not limited to processes
that take place outside of us; they can extend to processes inside the human
psyche. Just as we might learn that a belief comes from an unreliable external
source (e.g., an unreliable newspaper), we might learn that a belief is the result
of an unreliable or distorting internal source (e.g., an unreliable cognitive pro-
cess). This leads us to the fi rst major goal of experimental philosophy. The goal
is to determine what leads us to have the intuitions we do about free will, moral
responsibility, the afterlife. The ultimate hope is that we can use this informa-
tion to help determine whether the psychological sources of the beliefs under-
cut the warrant for the beliefs.
The basic approach here should be familiar from the history of philosophy.
Just take a look at nineteenth-century philosophy of religion. At the time, there
was a raging debate about whether people’s religious beliefs were warranted,
and a number of philosophers (Marx, Nietzsche, Feuerbach, etc.) contributed
to this debate by offering specifi c hypotheses about the psychological sources of
religious faith. These hypotheses led to an explosion of further discussion that
proved enormously valuable for a broad variety of philosophical issues.
But then something strange happened. Although arguments of this basic
type had traditionally been regarded as extremely important, they came to
occupy a far less signifi cant role in the distinctive form of philosophy that rose
to prominence in the twentieth century. The rise of analytic philosophy led to
a diminished interest in questions about, for example, the fundamental sources
of religious faith and a heightened interest in more technical questions that
could be addressed from the armchair. The shift here is a somewhat peculiar
one. It is not that anyone actually offered arguments against the idea that it was
worthwhile to understand the underlying sources of our beliefs; rather, this tra-
ditional form of inquiry seems simply to have fallen out of fashion. We regard
this as a highly regrettable development. It seems to us that questions about the
sources of our religious, moral, and metaphysical beliefs are deeply important
questions and that there was never any good reason to stop pursuing them. Our
aim now is to return to these questions, this time armed with the methods of
contemporary cognitive science.
When experimental research is understood in this broader context, one
can easily see how it might have important philosophical implications. It is
not that the actual percentages themselves are supposed to directly impact our
philosophical inquiries. Rather, the idea is that these experimental results can
Knob Ch01.indd 7Knob Ch01.indd 7 3/19/2008 12:37:23 PM3/19/2008 12:37:23 PM

8 Experimental Philosophy
UNCORRECTED PROOF
have a kind of indirect impact. First we use the experimental results to develop
a theory about the underlying psychological processes that generate people’s
intuitions; then we use our theory about the psychological processes to deter-
mine whether or not those intuitions are warranted.
Of course, this sort of question becomes especially pressing in cases where
the intuitions are actually serving as evidence for a particular philosophi-
cal view. Thus, suppose we return to our hypothetical philosopher and her
question about the nature of moral responsibility. She considers a particular
case and fi nds herself inclined to think that the agent described in this case is
morally responsible. But now there is often an additional question—can the
intuition be trusted? Clearly, an intuition developed in a jealous rage is less
trustworthy than one developed after calm and careful consideration. Thus, if
our hypothetical philosopher discovers that her intuition about a case is driven
by such distorting emotional reactions, this will and should affect how much
she trusts the intuition.
Not only does it seem to us that empirical considerations can be relevant
here; it seems to us just obvious that empirical considerations are relevant.
Surely, the degree to which an intuition is warranted depends in part on the
process that generated it, and surely the best way to fi gure out which processes
generate which intuitions is to go out and gather empirical data. How else is
one supposed to proceed?
But, unfortunately, what seems obvious to one philosopher often seems obvi-
ously mistaken to another. Instead of greeting these methodological remarks as
simple truisms (which, we continue to think, is what they really are), many
philosophers have reacted by offering various sorts of objections. We focus here
on four of the most prominent.
The Expertise Objection, Version 1
“Throughout the academy, we rely on experts to advance inquiry. It would be
absurd for physicists or biologists to conduct surveys on folk intuitions about
physics or biology. Rather, physicists and biologists specialize in their domains
and advance the fi eld by exploiting their specialized knowledge. The same is
true of philosophy. Just as physicists don’t consult folk physics, so philosophers
needn’t consult folk philosophy.”
Reply: This view of academic specialization strikes us as entirely apt for some
philosophical concerns. In some areas of philosophy, the disputes fl oat free of
commonsense intuitions. If we want to know whether the representational
theory of mind is superior to connectionist alternatives, it would be ridiculous
to think that we should invest our resources mulling over what the folk think
about connectionism. That debate turns on facts about cognitive architecture,
not facts about what people think about cognitive architecture. But in many
other areas of philosophy, it’s much harder to maintain that the disputes are so
disconnected from commonsense intuitions. Indeed, for many standard philo-
sophical problems—for example, problems concerning free will, personal iden-
tity, knowledge, and morality—if it weren’t for commonsense intuitions, there
Knob Ch01.indd 8Knob Ch01.indd 8 3/19/2008 12:37:23 PM3/19/2008 12:37:23 PM

An Experimental Philosophy Manifesto 9
UNCORRECTED PROOF
wouldn’t be a felt philosophical problem. The problem of moral responsibility,
for instance, can’t be read off of the biological or psychological facts. It arises
because people think of themselves as morally responsible, and this seems at
odds with other important and plausible world views. Consider how marginal-
izing it would be to say, “We philosophers have written a lot about something
we call ‘moral responsibility,’ though our notion is completely unrelated to any-
thing ordinary people mean by their homonymous term ‘moral responsibil-
ity.’ ” Philosophical discussions of moral responsibility are captivating precisely
because they engage our everyday views of ourselves, by threatening, support-
ing, or exposing problems in those views. Like many other central philosophi-
cal notions, moral responsibility is not reserved for specialists.
The Expertise Objection, Version 2
“It’s true that we are concerned with questions about commonsense concepts.
The point is just that philosophers can use those very concepts—the ordinary
commonsense concepts that people employ every day—with a precision and
subtlety that ordinary people can’t quite achieve. For the philosophers are spe-
cially trained to draw fi ne distinctions and to think carefully; and philosophers
bring these skills to bear on uncovering the true nature of our commonsense
intuitions. As a result, philosophers have a much more tightly honed ability to
arrive at unsullied intuitions about cases than the folk.”
Reply: This version of the expertise objection argument brings up a num-
ber of fascinating issues, but we don’t see how it even begins to serve as an
objection to the practice of experimental philosophy. On the contrary, we
would love to know more about the ways in which philosophers differ from
ordinary folks, and it seems to us that the best way to fi nd out would be to
run some experiments. One could devise a series of questions and then give
those questions both to philosophers and non-philosophers, checking to see
how intuitions differed between the two groups. Although these experiments
have not yet been conducted, we have a tentative guess about how the results
would turn out. Specifi cally, our guess is that the overall pattern will be far
more complex—and far more interesting—than anyone could have predicted
from the armchair.
Furthermore, even if we discover important differences between the phi-
losophers and the folk, it would hardly follow that data from the folk are irrel-
evant. Rather, the whole pattern of the data might tell us something important
about the ultimate source of the philosophical problems. Philosophers are less
prone to certain mistakes when processing thought experiments. On the other
hand, the folk are less likely to have their intuitions biased by extensive philo-
sophical training and theoretical affi liations. As a result, if problems like free
will, moral responsibility, and personal identity fl ow from commonsense, then
to understand these problems, it would be myopic to look only at the responses
of philosophers. Rather, to understand the intuitions that are at the core of
philosophical problems, one would surely want to look at different groups to
see whether interesting patterns of similarity and difference emerge. The extant
Knob Ch01.indd 9Knob Ch01.indd 9 3/19/2008 12:37:23 PM3/19/2008 12:37:23 PM

10 Experimental Philosophy
UNCORRECTED PROOF
work in experimental philosophy already suggests that such an investigation
will reveal some very interesting patterns indeed.
The That’s-Not-All-There-Is Objection
“You are simply missing the whole point of philosophy. Philosophy isn’t just a
matter of looking at people’s intuitions and trying to understand how people
think. Rather, when we are truly philosophizing, we need to subject people’s
intuitions to criticism, looking at arguments that might show that people’s
intuitions are actually mistaken in certain cases.”
Reply: Here again, we think the point is well taken, but we can’t see how it is
supposed to be an objection to experimental philosophy. No one is suggesting
that we boot out all of the moral philosophers and replace them with experi-
mentalists, nor is anyone suggesting that we do away with any of the methods
that have traditionally been used for fi guring out whether people’s intuitions
truly are right or wrong. What we are proposing is just to add another tool to
the philosopher’s toolbox. That is, we are proposing another method (on top of
all of the ones that already exist) for pursuing certain philosophical inquiries.
Clearly, nothing in this proposal commits us to the preposterous idea that we
should stop subjecting people’s intuitions to philosophical scrutiny.
The You-Can’t-Get-Something-for-Nothing Objection
“You’ll never get anywhere if you just run a lot of experiments. Thus, suppose
you are wondering about certain questions in moral philosophy. You might
fi nd that a particular psychological process tends to yield a particular type of
intuition about those questions, but that knowledge won’t do you any good
unless you already have some information about either whether the process is
reliable or whether the intuitions are correct. And how are you going to fi gure
that out? Surely not just by running more experiments!”
Reply: We think that the key claim being made in this objection is right on
target. If philosophers gave up all other forms of thought and just spent all
of their time running experiments, it really is true that they would never get
anywhere. But what we don’t understand is how this claim is supposed to be an
objection to the practice of experimental philosophy. After all, we are not going
to give up all other forms of thought, and we therefore do have independent
reasons to adopt certain beliefs. Once experimental philosophy is understood
in this way as part of a broader philosophical inquiry, it shouldn’t be hard to see
how it could prove helpful.
The basic idea here is a straightforward one. Before we begin experimen-
tal work, we have certain beliefs both about which processes are reliable and
about which answers are correct. We can then update these beliefs in light of
the experimental data. Hence, when we learn that a particular process tends to
generate certain types of answers, we can adjust our assessment of the process
using our prior assessments of the answers. But the inference also goes in the
other direction. We can use our prior beliefs about whether a given process is
reliable to adjust our assessments of the answers it generates. Working back and
Knob Ch01.indd 10Knob Ch01.indd 10 3/19/2008 12:37:23 PM3/19/2008 12:37:23 PM

An Experimental Philosophy Manifesto 11
UNCORRECTED PROOF
forth in this way, we gradually arrive at better assessments both of the processes
and of the answers.
2. Diversity
People in different cultures have different beliefs about absolutely fundamen-
tal issues, and the recognition of this can be powerfully transforming. When
Christian children learn that many people have very different religious beliefs,
this can provoke a deep and disorienting existential crisis. For the discovery of
religious diversity can prompt the thought that it’s in some sense accidental that
one happens to be raised in a Christian household rather than a Hindu house-
hold. This kind of arbitrariness can make the child wonder whether there’s any
reason to think that his religious beliefs are more likely to be right than those of
the Hindu child. These matters are not peripheral—they strike to the heart of
issues we care about most deeply.
The philosophical import of doxastic diversity is hardly restricted to child-
hood. At the turn of the century, anthropologists provided a catalog of the strik-
ing cultural diversity in moral views. Some cultures, it turned out, thought that
one is morally obligated to eat parts of one’s deceased parents; other cultures
thought it was permissible to rape women from an enemy tribe. Such diversity
in moral norms was an important catalyst to philosophical refl ections about
the status of our moral norms, and this led to deep discussions in metaethics
and normative ethics that persist to this day.
Experimental philosophy promises to make signifi cant new contributions
in this arena. Work in experimental philosophy suggests that there is diversity
even in the most basic concepts we deploy in Western philosophy. For instance,
basic ideas about what is required for knowledge are apparently different across
cultures. This can generate a crisis akin to that of the child confronted with
religious diversity. If I fi nd out that my philosophical intuitions are a product
of my cultural upbringing, then, since it’s in some sense an accident that I had
the cultural upbringing that I did, I am forced to wonder whether my intuitions
are superior at tracking the nature of the world, the mind, and the good. These
are manifestly philosophical questions. And to determine the answers, we need
to know a great deal more about both our own intuitions and those of other
cultures. In some cases, we might fi nd that there are large swathes of universal-
ity in intuitions about philosophical cases. Where we do fi nd diversity, then, we
can ask more informed questions about the relative merits of these different
ways of thinking about the world. And just as some Christian children come to
think that there’s no rational basis for preferring Christian to Hindu beliefs, we
too might come to think that there’s no rational basis for preferring Western
philosophical notions to Eastern ones.
3. The Mind and Its Workings
Analytic philosophers have long been concerned with patterns in people’s intu-
itions about cases, but the study of these patterns has been regarded merely
as a means to an end. Hence, the philosopher might look at people’s ordinary
Knob Ch01.indd 11Knob Ch01.indd 11 3/19/2008 12:37:23 PM3/19/2008 12:37:23 PM

12 Experimental Philosophy
UNCORRECTED PROOF
intuitions about causation, but the true goal would not be to learn something
about people and their intuitions. Instead, the goal would be to reach a better
understanding of the true nature of causation, and people’s intuitions would be
considered relevant only insofar as they shed light on this other topic.
With the advent of experimental philosophy, this familiar approach is being
turned on its head. More and more, philosophers are coming to feel that ques-
tions about how people ordinarily think have great philosophical signifi cance
in their own right. So, for example, it seems to us that there are important phil-
osophical lessons to be gleaned from the study of people’s intuitions about cau-
sation, but we do not think that the signifi cance of these intuitions is exhausted
by the evidence they might provide for one or another metaphysical theory. On
the contrary, we think that the patterns to be found in people’s intuitions point
to important truths about how the mind works, and these truths—truths about
people’s minds, not about metaphysics—have great signifi cance for traditional
philosophical questions.
We are well aware that this approach is a controversial one, but we fi nd it
hard to say precisely where the controversy might lie. It seems unlikely that any-
one would literally say, for example, “I know that some researchers are trying to
investigate the most fundamental concepts that people use to understand their
world, but that whole research program strikes me as a big mistake. In my view,
these issues just aren’t all that interesting or important.” Nor does it seem plau-
sible for a person to say, “I agree that we ought to be studying people’s concepts
and the way they think, but I don’t think there is any need for experimental
research here. These are the sorts of problems one can resolve entirely from the
armchair.” But if no one would make either of these claims, how exactly can the
approach be controversial?
One complaint we sometimes hear is that philosophers should not be con-
tent merely to understand how people think, that they should also be engaged
in an effort to fi gure out whether people’s ordinary views are actually right or
wrong. The thought here seems to be that, for instance, philosophers should
be concerned not just with people’s ordinary intuitions about causation but
also with questions about what truly causes what. Clearly, this complaint rests
on a confusion. No one is suggesting that philosophers should stop thinking
about what really causes what. The suggestion is just that, whatever else we
do, we should also be looking at people’s intuitions about causation as a way
of coming to a deeper understanding of how the human mind works. In other
words, experimental philosophers are calling for a more pluralistic approach
to philosophy. The philosopher on one end of the hall can be developing com-
plex mathematical theories about the relevance of Bayesian inference to causal
modeling, while the philosopher at the other end of the hall can be developing
complex theories about how people’s causal intuitions reveal some fundamen-
tal truth about human nature. If all goes well, the two philosophers will actually
be able to help each other’s projects advance.
As far as we can tell, the only legitimate controversy here is about whether
this sort of inquiry can legitimately be considered philosophy. That is, someone
Knob Ch01.indd 12Knob Ch01.indd 12 3/19/2008 12:37:24 PM3/19/2008 12:37:24 PM

An Experimental Philosophy Manifesto 13
UNCORRECTED PROOF
might think that it is all well and good to launch an inquiry into basic questions
about human nature but that such an inquiry should not take place in a phi-
losophy department, should not be discussed in philosophy journals, should
not be featured in the philosophy section of the bookstore, and so forth.
To this objection, we respond with what we have come to call the quizzical
stare. The questions addressed in this research program strike us as so obvi-
ously philosophical that we fi nd it a little bit diffi cult to know how to respond.
To understand our confusion here, perhaps it would be helpful to think about
the questions we ourselves have actually been investigating. One of us has been
trying to fi gure out whether people’s moral judgments are derived from rea-
soning, from emotion, or from some mixture of the two. The other has been
trying to fi gure out whether the basic concepts people use to understand their
world are similar to scientifi c concepts or whether science should be regarded
as a radical departure from people’s ordinary mode of understanding. To us at
least, these questions seem to lie at the core of what is ordinarily regarded as
philosophy.
Now, it is true that some philosophers have thought that questions about
how the mind works lie outside the proper domain of philosophy, but this is
a relatively recent development. Throughout almost all of the history of phi-
losophy, questions about the workings of the mind were regarded as absolutely
central. Philosophers wanted to know whether the mind was composed of dis-
tinct parts (reason, the passions, etc.) and how these parts might interact with
each other. They wanted to know whether all knowledge came from experience
or whether we were endowed by God with certain innate ideas. They wanted to
know how exactly people come to make the moral judgments they do. The view
that questions like these lie at the core of our discipline prevailed throughout
most of the history of philosophy, and we therefore refer to it as the traditional
conception.
In the early twentieth century, the rise of analytic philosophy led to a
diminished interest in questions about how the mind works and a greater
interest in more technical questions involving language and logic. Some of
the more radical adherents of this new approach developed a particularly
extreme view about how the discipline should proceed. They suggested that
philosophers should not only begin to think more seriously about the new
sorts of questions they had recently introduced but also stop thinking at all
about more traditional questions regarding the workings of the mind. In
other words, the suggestion was that the questions that had traditionally
been taken to lie at the core of philosophy should now be regarded as falling
outside the discipline altogether.
The result is a curious approach to undergraduate education. When students
fi rst enter the program, we tell them in reverential tones about how Plato pos-
ited a number of different parts of the mind and explained various phenomena
in terms of confl ict and cooperation between them. The most thoughtful and
motivated students then fi nd themselves thinking: “What an interesting idea!
I wonder whether it’s actually true. Let’s see; I wonder what sorts of evidence
Knob Ch01.indd 13Knob Ch01.indd 13 3/19/2008 12:37:24 PM3/19/2008 12:37:24 PM

14 Experimental Philosophy
UNCORRECTED PROOF
might be relevant here. . . .” But then we are immediately supposed to put a stop
to such thoughts: “No, no, you’ve got it all wrong. If you actually start trying
to fi gure out whether the mind has different parts, you aren’t doing philosophy
at all. To truly be a philosopher, you’ve got to learn to leave those questions to
someone else.”
In our view, this is all a big mistake. There simply wasn’t anything wrong
with the traditional conception of philosophy. The traditional questions of
philosophy—the questions that animated Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, Hume,
Nietzsche, and so many others—are just as profound and important today as
they were when they were fi rst posed. If experimental philosophy helps to bring
our discipline back to these issues, we think that is cause for celebration.
3. CONCLUSION
We hope we’ve said enough to justify the initiation of the enterprise of experi-
mental philosophy. But we don’t think that such general considerations can
provide any ultimate justifi cation to sustain experimental philosophy. The real
measure of a research program depends on whether the program generates
exciting new discoveries. We invite you to read the papers and decide for your-
self. For our part, we think that experimental philosophy has already begun
to produce surprising and illuminating results. The thing to do now is just to
cast off our methodological chains and go after the important questions with
everything we’ve got.
Knob Ch01.indd 14Knob Ch01.indd 14 3/19/2008 12:37:24 PM3/19/2008 12:37:24 PM