By and large, metaethicists have focused on descriptive questions about the nature of our moral discourse. For instance, is it in the business of stating facts, or of expressing affective states? If the former, are there such facts? If the latter, how is this reconciled with the role that moral language plays in reasoning?…

There is one clear exception. Some who are interested in error theory have shifted their attention from the descriptive question to a prescriptive/ practical one–namely, “Are we to retain moral language? And if so, how are we to treat it?” (I give the practical variant since it might be thought problematic for an error theorist to ask a question framed in terms of “should.”) The reason for this shift is that the prescriptive/practical question seems quite pressing in the case of error theory. Error theory seems to force the question. The two most prominent answers discussed by error theorists, to my (limited) knowledge, are eliminativism and moral fictionalism (of the prescriptive variety).

Most other descriptive metaethical views do not seem to force the question in the same way. If, say, cognitivist-realism is true, it seems natural to many to accept moral language for what it is, and go about one’s business. The same goes for descriptive expressivism.

Yet, it strikes me that the prescriptive/practical question is intelligible on any descriptive metaethical view (provided, of course, that the descriptive metaethical story in question leaves room for some kind of divergence from our actual practices). I take it that eliminativism (the view that we should give up moral talk altogether) is a live option on all of the leading descriptive metaethical stories. And I expect that prescriptive expressivism is a live option on all of the leading descriptive metaethical stories. (Granted, some prescriptive views do not seem to be live options for certain descriptive views. Cognitivist-realism and prescriptive moral fictionalism seem incompatible.)

If it is intelligible to address the prescriptive question no matter what one’s descriptive commitments are, and if prescriptive expressivism can be intelligibly combined with any plausible descriptive view, this opens up an interesting possibility. Perhaps all roads lead to prescriptive expressivism. In other words, perhaps prescriptive expressivism is the leading prescriptive option, irrespective of whether one is a descriptive moral fictionalist, a cognitivist-realist, a descriptive expressivist, an error theorist, an indeterminacy theorist (i.e. one who thinks the semantic story is indeterminate), etc.

But what is prescriptive expressivism? A rough proposal is this: it is the view that recommends treating ourselves and others as if they are expressing commitments to norms. This, I take it, is something like pretending that we and others are doing this (which is distinct from the prescriptive moral fictionalist’s activity). (Of course, perhaps we don’t need to pretend in our own case. Perhaps, in our own case, we are able to effectively express commitments with our moral talk. I’m not sure and would be interested to hear thoughts about that.)

That’s all for now. I’m curious to know if there are problems with what I’ve said or if anyone has different ideas about what prescriptive expressivism might involve.

Later Addition (10/6/09):

Discussion with Don Loeb has alerted me to what seems an important distinction to make, which I hadn’t been appreciating:

A self-directed prescriptive metaethical view is a view about how to (or, how one ought to) modify and/or treat one’s own use of normative language.
An other-directed prescriptive metaethical view is a view about how to (or, how one ought to) treat other people’s use of normative language.

My talk of “prescriptive expressivism” above was gesturing at a combination of self-directed and other-directed prescriptive expressivism.

I’d be quite interested to hear people’s thoughts about this distinction.

I want to make a distinction between mental activities and mental states.

As I only have some vague ideas, it is easier to point to some examples. Some examples of mental activities: counterfactual reasoning, doxastic deliberation, planning, daydreaming, dreaming, playing a pretend game. Some examples of mental states: beliefs, desires, imaginings, emotions, perceptions. My sense is that there really is something different about the former cluster compared to the latter. Any suggestions on how that distinction might be made more precise?

In what is meant to be  “a contribution of major importance to a unified theory of probability and utility” Jeffrey (The Logic of Decision) says about Bayesian decision theory that

Indeed, it is because logic and decision theory are woefully inadequate as descriptions that they are of interest as norms. (p.167)

Now,  here’s a worry I presented yesterday in the seminar and that I’d like to present again, so that other people may consider it and that the ones that heard it can see why it’s worrisome. There are, at least, two questions the claim above prompts:

1) If theory T is woefully inadequate as a description of phenomena F, and yet it is meant to be a normative theory of F, couldn’t it be that it makes absurd demands about F?

2) If it is in virtue of theory T’s woeful descriptive inadequacy towards F that T is an interesting normative theory of F, wouldn’t it be the case that false descriptive theories turn out to be interesting normative theories?

Here are some examples that illustrate both worries. Consider the following theory about human decision making behavior called ‘T1′

T1: For any subject and any decision D at any time t, subject S should fly up into the sky at time t2 if S reaches decision D at time t1.

T1 is woefully inadequate as a description of human decision behavior. If we accept Jeffrey’s diagnosis about  Bayesian Decision Theory, it is in virtue of this inadequacy that T1 is an interesting normative theory of decision making! But you may object, of course, that we have independent reasons to reject T1. The demands that it presents just don’t make sense at all! Point taken. But it will not get us out of trouble.

Consider the ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ principle which seems, to my mind, to offer a very sensible limitation on ANY normative theory: if subject S ought to do X in context C it must be the case that S is able in C to do X. Now suppose that, for some or other reason, whenever humans are in real decision making contexts (e.g., when they are decision where to go for dinner, or whether to watch a movie or do a reading) as opposed to consciously working out in a formal epistemology seminar, they cannot, because of their cognitive architecture, compute an algebra. Decision theory will still claim that humans should distribute their credences over some or other algebra. So it seems that Decision Theory will be claiming that humans ought to do what they cannot do. That seems absurd. Decision Theory should be a bit more informed about human psychology.

So far so good for the first worry. The second one is just as bad (if not worse). Suppose we accept Jeffrey’s claim that it is precisely because a theory T is woefully inadequate as a description that it is interesting as a normative theory. If so, then we seem to get the following argument:

P1 Theory T is woefully inadequate as a description of F.

P2 If T is woefully inadequate as a description of F then T is an interesting normative theory of F.

C Theory T is an interesting normative theory of F.

Now consider theories that give woefully inadequate descriptions of the phenomena they intend to theorize about. Here’s a big group of such theories: the false ones. Consider, in particular, Aristotle’s physics and astronomy. They are both woefully inadequate theories of the behavior of physical objects and planets. So we may run the argument:

P1 Aristotle’s astronomy is woefully inadequate as a theory of the behavior of planets.

P2 If Aristotle’s astronomy is woefully inadequate as a theory of the behavior of the planets, then it is an interesting normative theory of the behavior of the planets.

C Aristotle’s theory is an interesting normative theory of the behavior of the planets.

Now that does seem like a bad result, doesn’t it? That’s why we should worry about Jeffrey’s claim that

Indeed, it is because logic and decision theory are woefully inadequate as descriptions that they are of interest as norms.

The fact that a given theory T about phenomena F delivers a woefully inadequate description of F gives no good reason to take it to be an interesting normative theory of F. Jeffrey is simply wrong about this. And if he is right about decision theory being so woefully inadequate, then we should worry a bit about its theoretical value. In general, I think, all normative theories should worry about being so woefully inadequate!

The title principle seems obvious enough. Which makes it all the more puzzling that most normative political theorists ignore it in practice. Why is this? What are the implications?

Let me elaborate. Consider the global poverty literature. Two classes of prescriptions are made here. Examples from the first class — call them “general prescriptions”, for lack of imagination — include:

While I think diagnosis of a sort precede these sorts of prescriptions, this might be more controversial then the principle I had in mind when I wrote the title to this post. Anyway, these aren’t the sorts of prescriptions referred to in the title.

Call the second class of prescriptions “specific prescriptions” (again, for lack of imagination). Examples include:

It’s this second class of prescriptions that I’m interested in. It’s this second class of prescriptions that must be preceded by diagnosis.

Diagnosis is the practice of explaining an outcome by identifying the causal process generating it. The sort of diagnosis with which many of us are most familiar is medical diagnosis. The aim of medical diagnosis is to identify the causal process producing the medical abnormality. Most obviously, this requires finding a causal process that can explain the medical symptoms. But (as any dutiful viewer of House will know), the symptoms aren’t the only relevant data points. The symptoms that are absent can be just as informative as the symptoms that are present. The point is this: medical diagnosticians seeks to identify the causal process generating the data so that they can identify the places in the causal chain where intervention is most likely to be effective, as well as identify the intervention possibilities most likely to be successful.

Similarly, one would think that identifying the causal process generating problematic social outcomes we observe — like global poverty — would be a key step in the task of proposing intervention. Once we’ve identified our general duties — suppose we have an obligation to alleviate global poverty — it would be helpful to know what causes global poverty so that we can figure out how to most effectively discharge our general duties. Indeed, the point seems obvious and is likely obvious to most political philosophers. Yet, the practice of political philosophers shows, at worst, a startling disregard for the importance of the diagnostic task, at best, a naïveté about what is required of a diagnosis.

To avoid making this too long, I’ll give an example of each sort of flaw and say a few things about what is required of a diagnosis. The examples:

Peter Singer has, for nearly 40 years, been a prominent advocate of charitable donations to NGOs. Specifically, he recommends that residents of affluent countries give a modest percentage of their income to aid organizations according to a sliding scale based on income. (See ch. 10 of Singer 2009 for details.) This prescription is motivated by Singer’s oft-cited “drowning child” thought experiment: You’re on your way to an important meeting wearing a nice suit and shoes; you see a child drowning in a shallow pond; the child’s life is vastly more important than your suit and shoes; you ought to wade into the pond and save the child.

A key feature of Singer’s motivating thought experiment is the absence of background context. Most importantly, we don’t know how the child came to be drowning in the pond in the first place. Such information might be unnecessary when determining whether we should wade into the pond to pull out the child because it doesn’t matter how the child got there; it’s immediately obvious that the way to save the child is to pull her out of the pond. But global poverty is not nearly so easy to figure out. And this is where the analogy to the drowning child breaks down. The drowning child scenario is an emergency; most cases of global poverty are chronic. Emergencies are relatively easy to solve: if possible, remove the immediate threat. Chronic cases are much more difficult to solve. They’re like weeds in a garden: to prevent them from coming back, we need to pull them out by the roots. Thus, if we are to figure out how to prevent global poverty, it matters how people became impoverished. Singer’s failure to recognize this means he is effectively shooting first and aiming later (if at all) with his prescriptions. Sure, some might hit, but this seems a terribly ineffective way of treating an illness.

Leif Wenar (2008) proposes that we alleviate global poverty by enforcing international property rules. Affluent countries should cease importing resources (such as oil and mining products) from corrupt and authoritarian rulers (who have no legal right to sell these resources without their constituents’ consent), place tariffs on imports from countries who purchase resources from such states (as, e.g., China does from Sudan), and place the revenue generated by the tariffs in a “Clean Hands” trust fund, whose contents are to be returned to the citizens of states like Sudan once they establish a democratic government. Wenar’s proposal is based on the following diagnosis of global poverty. Social scientists have noted a correlation between natural resource abundance and negative development outcomes (the so-called “resource curse”). This correlation seems to be explained by three “causal pathways”: authoritarianism, increased civil war incidence, and low economic growth rates. Each of these are statistically correlated with both resource abundance and negative development outcomes. Thus, according to Wenar, if we can break the connection between resource abundance on the one hand and authoritarianism, civil war, and low growth on the other, we should be able to break the connection between resource abundance and negative development outcomes. Resource income can then be invested in development and poverty will be overcome in resource abundant countries, which is where a significant percentage of the global poor reside.

Wenar should be praised for doing his social science homework. But identifying a series of correlations doesn’t amount to an adequate diagnosis. The correlations identified by Wenar aren’t “causal pathways”, so they don’t explain the resource curse. They are simply additional correlations that themselves require explanation. An adequate diagnosis would explain the data; it would identify the causal process that connects resource abundance with authoritarianism, civil war, low growth, and poverty. Wenar’s diagnosis is akin to delineating which symptoms are correlated with which diseases. This can be useful if these correlations lead to further insight about the operative causal processes. The correlations identified by Wenar give only limited such insight. But without this further insight, we’re left treating symptoms.

I’ve already hinted at what I think counts as an adequate diagnosis. Before we make specific prescriptions about how to best discharge our general duties, we need to identify the causal processes generating the outcomes we seek to address. There are some things to be said here about appropriate engagement with and application of social scientific research, but we can leave further discussion of the details to the comments thread.

Two further things we can take up in comments:

First, why do normative theorists neglect the diagnostic task? My guess is that is has something to do with an appeal to some notion of the “appropriate division of labour”, where diagnosis is farmed out to social scientists. I think this is untenable, but we can talk about it.

Second, what are the implications for philosophers’ proposals of neglecting the diagnostic task? I think it puts us in the position of a blindfolded archer: a desire to shoot but no idea where to aim. Unfortunately, our blindfolds haven’t prevented us from shooting. Not surprisingly, this dramatically reduces the chances of making effective prescriptions.

Would you be worse-off with respect to well-being if your spouse didn’t really love you, but only seemed to? Lots of people think you would be and are therefore persuaded that well-being/welfare must consist of something more than pleasure, happiness, or other mental states.

For example, Shelly Kagan’s “Deceived Businessman” believes he has a faithful, loving spouse but has an adulterous spouse who secretly despises him. Kagan argues that since the businessman is blissfully unaware of his spouse’s deceptions, mental state theories of well-being cannot distinguish between the deceived businessman and his doppelganger whose identical beliefs about his circumstances are true. Kagan concludes, “In thinking about this man’s life, it is difficult to believe that it is all a life could be, that this life has gone about as well as a life could go. Yet this seems to be the very conclusion mental state theories must reach! … So mental state theories must be wrong” (see Kagan’s Normative Ethics, p. 35).

OK, how about this: In 25%-Zombie world, every fourth person is a zombie, and every fourth spouse is a zombie. The non-zombie denizens of 25%-Zombie world know that every fourth person/spouse is a zombie who behaves exactly like (and is indistinguishable from) a normal person but feels nothing and doesn’t love anyone. (Never mind how they know this. It’s true, they believe it, et cetera.) I think the non-zombies would find it disconcerting that there were so many zombies around, but most would eventually get over it, marry someone, and assume that some other sucker had the zombie spouse. Many of the non-zombies would be wrong about this, but neither they (the non-zombies with zombie spouses) nor anyone else would ever know which spouses were zombies.

I don’t think the non-zombies with zombie spouses would, on average, be any worse off with respect to well-being than non-zombies with non-zombie spouses. (Of course, they’d all be worse off than average spouses in our world, since we don’t have to worry about whether our spouses might be zombies, but this worse-off-ness would apply to all married non-zombies in 25%-Zombie world, whether or not they were married to zombies.) What do you think? If you agree with me, do you think this constitutes a counter-example to thought experiments like Kagan’s Deceived Businessman? I sure do, but you might have guessed that.

I think that in our world, disloyal or unloving spouses usually are distinguishable from faithful, loving spouses because the former don’t feel and display the same respect and love for their spouses as do the latter. So deceived spouses typically suffer tangible, discernible harms to well-being that undeceived spouses typically do not suffer. However, if unloving spouses were completely indistinguishable from loving ones (e.g., because they were zombies or superb deceivers who never came out of character), I don’t think the unloved spouses would suffer any harms to well-being. Their situation might “look worse” to epistemically privileged readers of thought experiments since we know, e.g., that Donna’s husband is unfaithful or that Jack’s wife is a zombie, but that strikes me as a purely aesthetic matter — something that doesn’t look quite right from “the view from nowhere” — rather than anything to do with well-being.

Some experimental philosophy are apriori, so I claim. (More carefully, the conclusions that these projects draw are apriori.) On the face of it, this claim is rather implausible. If there is one thing that is most distinctive about experimental philosophy, it is the empirical methods that it borrows from psychology, cognitive science, and other allied fields. I want to argue that, however, in order to address a common objection against experimental philosophy, proponents would do better to concede the apriority of some projects that employ experimental methods. Fortunately for them, this concession can be made because there is an important distinction to be drawn between empirical/rational and aposteriori/apriori. The upshot is that both proponents and detractors would do well to note that experimental philosophy come in both apriori and aposteriori varieties.

Here is a rough taxonomy of projects that fall under the “experimental philosophy” umbrella. First, there are projects that are not survey based, but instead involve some observation on the experimenter’s part. Josh Greene’s fMRI works are paradigmatic examples. I think it’s uncontroversial that these are aposteriori. Second, there are “debunking” survey-based projects. These projects often argue against traditional philosophy claims from diversity of opinions. The cross-cultural studies on direct reference and knowledge are paradigmatic examples. I think these are aposteriori too, though I am relatively less confident. Third, there are “positive” survey-based projects. From people’s response to cleverly-designed thought experiments, experimenters draw conclusions about folk concepts. Of this kind of projects, Josh Knobe’s works on the moral component of intentionality are paradigmatic examples. In this post, I will argue that this last kind of experimental philosophy projects are apriori.

The common objection against experimental philosophy is that the responses that they get from ordinary people, which they call “intuitions”, are nothing relevantly like philosophers’ intuitions. Perhaps the folk do not have the relevant concepts employed in philosophical discourse. Perhaps the folk do not offer their considered, reflected judgments as philosophers do. If this objection succeeds, then experimental philosophy ought not have the impact on current philosophical practice that its proponents claims that it should. These so-called “intuitions” are simply not what philosophers ought to admit as evidence for their inquiries—in the same way that the fact that people sometimes say “I don’t believe God exists, I know it!” ought not count as evidence for knowledge not requiring belief.

Now, I find this common objection against experimental philosophy rather unconvincing, but I won’t debate that here. Instead, I want to simply note a dialectical point. To successfully respond to this objection, experimental philosophers need to do enough to show that the responses they get from ordinary people are relevantly like philosophers’ intuitions. The crucial point, then, is this: philosophers’ intuitions are apriori. If ordinary people’s responses are not, then that would seem like a relevant difference. To be more explicit, we can say that the content of ordinary people’s responses are apriori. Of course, experimental philosophers’ collections of those responses, or what we might call their observations of ordinary people’s responses, are empirical and aposteriori.

As far as I understand, the conclusions that positive survey-based experimental philosophy projects draw are essentially reports of ordinary people’s intuitions. The following parallel suggests this understanding. One the one hand, a traditional philosopher finds that Smith does not have knowledge in Gettier’s Case I thought experiment, and draws the conclusion that knowledge requires some component beyond justified true belief. On the other hand, an experimental philosopher notes that people find that the chairman intentionally performed an action in the harm condition but not in the help condition, and draws the conclusion that intentionality has a moral component. The latter conclusion follows from ordinary people’s intuitions to Knobe’s thought experiments in the same way that the former conclusion follows from philosophers’ intuitions to Gettier’s thought experiments.

Now consider a distinction that Carrie Jenkins draws between empirical/rational, which are about how concepts are grounded, and aposteriori/apriori, which are about justification or warrant of a belief. She defines the term as follows (119):

(1) A way of knowing a proposition p is empirical iff it involves some epistemic use of the senses. A use of the senses is epistemic iff the role of the senses is not just that of awakening or preparing the mind so that it is ready to know things, but rather the senses play a key role in actually supplying us with the knowledge in question.

(2) A way of knowing a proposition p is a priori iff it is epistemically independent of empirical evidence; that is, there is no epistemic reliance upon any of the following: (a) immediate experiential knowledge of p; (b) inductive empirical confirmation of p; (c) inference to, or deduction of, p from propositions which are known in one of the above ways.

Hence, there could be beliefs that are empirical and apriori, if the following is satisfied: the senses play an important role in grounding the concepts relevant for the belief, but the belief itself involves only an internal examination of those concepts. (Thanks to Carrie for comment below.) Our concept of intentionality needs to be sensitive to the world, and one way for it to be grounded is being sensitive to people’s attributions of intentionality. What observations of ordinary people’s responses to the thought experiments is allow this sort of epistemic grounding, of our concept of intentionality. In that sense, the method of positive survey-based experimental philosophy is an empirical one. However, the epistemic evidence that supports the conclusion does not come from the observations of ordinary people’s responses. Instead, it comes from the content of those responses, which, if they are to be relevantly like philosophers’ intuitions, are apriori. Hence, the kind of experimental philosophy that I characterize as positive and survey-based could be reasonably called both empirical and apriori.

(Williamson seems to have a similar point in mind as Jenkins when he dramatically claimed that there is no genuine distinction between the apriori and the aposteriori. However, I think that Jenkins’s way of putting it allows us to see a useful distinction while recognizing it as being different from the empirical/rational distinction.)

If what I have said is right, then there is an important distinction for both proponents and detractors of experimental philosophy to recognize. While all experimental philosophy projects are empirical, some are aposteriori but others are apriori. Debating methodologies of philosophy should involve more than debates about methods. The status of epistemic evidence matters too.

—

I should confess that, although I’ve taken a rather confident tone, I’m quite unsure about the conclusions I draw in this post. I would be really curious in hearing what other people think. Moreoever, have similar things been said elsewhere? The “psychologizing of evidence” discussion appears relevant, but I don’t know much about it. I did notice that in his 2007 critique of experimental philosophy, Sosa has a footnote about how the debunking projects are different from the positive projects, in terms of their attitudes toward philosophical intuitions.

Update 08/02/2009: See also Jonathan Ichikawa’s Bibliography on Intuition, especially the section on “non-skeptical experimental philosophy”. The skeptical/non-skeptical distinction may be more apt than the distinction I’ve tried to draw in this post.

I am teaching a class on epistemology and metaphysics. We are reading the paper where Alvin Goldman first proposed reliabilism, “What is Justified Belief?”. Upon re-reading, there is a part of his discussion that I just find puzzling, and not at all what I expected given the caricature in my head that reliabilism is the prototypical externalist theory.

In section III, Goldman considers a case that I think is quite similar to the clairvoyant case that people tend to bring against reliabilism:

Suppose that Jones is told on fully reliable authority that a certain class of his memory beliefs are almost all mistaken. His parents fabricate a wholly false story that Jonese suffered from amnesia when he was seven but later developed pseudo-memories of that period. Though Jones listens to what his parents say and has excellent reason to trust them, he persists in believing the ostensible memories from his seven-year-old past. Are these memory beliefs justified? Intuitively, they are not justified. But since these beliefs result from genuine memory and original perceptions, which are adequately reliable processes, our theory says that these beliefs are justified.

Goldman then goes on to consider various revisions to account for this unintuitive result. At some point he even admits that the problem raised by this cases suggests a fundamental change to the reliabilist theory is necessary, and sketches one such change.

What puzzles me is not his concession that the result in the case is unintuitive, but his further concession that a fundamental change is necessary. Isn’t the standard externalist response just to bite the bullet? That is, I thought externalists would say simply: yes, although it is unintuitive, in fact there are things we know that we don’t know we know and even things we know that we think we don’t know. So it is strange that Goldman is moved by the example to make a big concession. This fact leads me to think that, at least at the time when he first proposed reliabilism, Goldman might have been a closet internalist.

A recent post by Brian Weatherson over at the Arche Methodology Project Weblog raises an interesting idea: can philosophical thought experiments be treated as a genre like, say, science fiction? This idea is also explored in Jonathan Weinberg’s article “Configuring the Cognitive Imagination” in New Waves in Aesthetics. Weinberg spells out the idea, without endorsing it, on page 214:

Yet, what if philosophical thought experiments were a genre—at least in the sense that engaging in them successfully requires mastery along the same lines as I have sketched for the mastery of literary genres? There are rules to engaging properly with a hypothetical scenario, after all. To make just some of the more obvious generalizations about our imaginative practices with thought experiments: one should embellish as little as possible; generally it is a practice conducted in an affectively `cool’ manner; and our inferential systems must often be brought to bear in this particular sort of imaginative project as well. And there are surely other, and more subtly articulable, rules for the proper performance of thought experiments still to be detailed.

While I was initially attracted to the idea—especially given my interest in imagination, fiction, and genre—I now think that it won’t do, on the more interesting interpretation. Roughly, the idea is to treat philosophical thought experiment as a genre relevantly similar to other genres of fiction. I have two worries with the idea, interpreted thus. In this post, I’ll press the first worry: we engage with philosophical thought experiments relevantly differently from the way we engage with fictions in other genres.

There are two ways to interpret the idea of treating philosophical thought experiment as a genre. The less interesting interpretation is just noting that there are some descriptive norms shared by the various philosophical thought experiments. If one has a decently permissive notion of what constitutes a genre, it would be hard to see the interest of this interpretation. Look! Austen novels constitute a genre, novels with Mr. Darcy being a main character constitute a genre, etc. Genres are easy and cheap to get.

The more interesting interpretation is that, not only are there descriptive norms shared by the various philosophical thought experiments, but that we engage with thought experiments in relevantly similar ways as we engage with fictions in other genres, such as science fictions. In other words, with respect to how we engage with them, the idea is to treat philosophical thought experiment as a genre relevantly similar to other genres of fiction. This more interesting interpretation is the one suggested by Weinberg and, I believe, intended by Weatherson.

To see why it is a further claim, of the more interesting interpretation, that we engage with philosophical thought experiments in relevantly similar ways as we engage with fictions in other genres, consider the case of the encyclopedia genre. I take it that most people would grant encyclopedia status of a genre: it is a grouping of works with well-defined conventions and is well-accepted in our society. However, we clearly do not engage with encyclopedias in relevantly similar ways as we engage with fictions in other genres. For example, whereas we tend to believe what is said and implied in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, we tend to imagine what is said and implied in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Even if we do derive some knowledge from engaging with The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, we clearly do not do so in relevantly similar ways as we derive knowledge from The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Hence, different genres could have importantly different modes of engagement. (This is a point that I think Weinberg would agree with.) Combined with the fact that genres are easy and cheap to get, the more interesting interpretation must include a further claim that we engage with them in relevantly similar ways as we engage with fictions in other genres. And that is the substantial claim that I will challenge.

To reiterate, the issue is with modes of engagement, not with fiction versus non-fiction, in the sense of stories’ correspondences with reality. There are non-fictions, such as memoirs, that we engage in relevantly similar ways as we engage with other fictions. However, philosophical thought experiments appear to be different. With philosophical thought experiments, we typically are primarily in the business of judging—judging whether the scenario presented is indeed possible, or judging whether the relevant modal claims are actually true. We do imagine, but only in the service of judging. On the other hand, when reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, we typically imagine the scenario therein without even thinking about judging whether they are possible. (We might incidentally make other judgments, however, such as how gripping the plot is or how complex a character is.) Although we might make an analogous judgment about the story’s plausibility, or whether it conforms to the genre’s conventions, we tend to do so only when something has gone wrong, or only when we judge the story to be implausible. Such judgments certainly are not typically required in our engagements with fictions. That is a relevant difference: philosophical thought experiments require us to judge and require us to draw real-world conclusions, but fictions do not. In fact, that is what makes thought experiments useful in philosophical inquiry.

Let me try to put the point differently. Different genres not only have different rules of import, or principles of generation, but they also have different rules of export. Philosophical thought experiments require exports that are relevantly different from what fictions of other genres typically require. The requirement to export information about possibility makes engaging with philosophical thought experiments relevantly unlike engaging with fictions in other genres. In this respect, I am inclined to agree with Williamson that philosophical thought experiments are more like, or are species of, cases of counterfactual reasoning, which also typically require judgments and drawing real-world conclusions.

The foregoing discussion explains my first worry against the idea of treating philosophical thought experiment as a genre: we engage with philosophical thought experiments relevantly differently from the way we engage with fictions in other genres. Even if this first worry can be assuaged, there remains a more fundamental worry. My second worry is that treating philosophical thought experiment as a genre does not obviously help in vindicating a non-skeptical epistemology of intuitions. Spelling out that worry and making some positive suggestions, however, will have to wait.

You are hiyo by the 90th installment of the Philosophers’ Carnival!  This edition of the Carnival is hosted here at the University of Michigan Graduate Student blog Go Grue!.

Booth 1: Wittgensteinian Investigations-Flavored Popcorn
In the first booth, we have a treat for the Wittgenstein lovers.  Adam See discusses Witty’s views on language in Wittgenstein on the Essence of Grammar (Adam See).

Booth 2: Lots of Talk about Universalism
The discussion at the next booth has been going for a while before we got there.  Fortunately, the wonders of the electronic carnival preserve the story.  To find out what all the fuss is about, check out A.P. Taylor’s A Quick Libertarian Argument for Universalism.  (Larry Navin responds to Taylor’s style here: Looking at syllogisms from both sides, now.)

(Projection) Booth 3: An X-Phi Video
Tired of reading? Well, experimental philosophy has a solution for you: watch this video blog post that illustrates a new experimental study based on an example from Aristotle at the Experimental Philosophy blog.  Unfortunately for your tired eyes, you’ll have to (and want to) read the comments.

Booth 4: A Throw Back to When Everything Made Sense
Next up, Kenny Pearce asks us to think about Locke’s and Berkeley’s account of common sense in Locke, Berkeley, and ‘Common Sense’.

Booth 5: Sing(er) Me a Song Mr. Ethicistman
The next booth contains another fine post by Terrance Tomkow entitled “The Good, The Bad and Peter Singer” where Tomkow discusses (i.e. rips into) Peter Singer’s new book and his long-standing views, all while being hovered over by a picture of Singer coddling some carrots.

Booth 6: Philosophy Short and Tweet
Over at TAR, Carrie Jenkins gives the results of the Philosophy Short and Tweet competition, where winners must argue their points in 140 characters or less.  Congrats to Go Grue!’s very own Dustin Locke for bringing home the prize for Cryptic Minimalism.

(Meta)Booth 7: The Booth of Many Other Booths
In the next booth, they’re selling group blogs.  Recently, these are in high supply!  In case you’ve missed them, here’s a few new group blogs:

It’s Only A Theory (General Philosophy of Science)
Choice & Inference (Formal Epistemology and Decision Theory)
Matters of Substance (Metaphysics)

Booth 8: Formally Speaking, These Posts are Great
Speaking of Choice & Inference, there are many great discussions of Formal Epistemology there.  Some of those include Rachael Briggs discussing Causal Modeling and Counterfactuals and Jonah Schupbach discussing A Connection between Bayesian and Mainstream Epistemology. If formal epistemology is up your alley, don’t forget to join us at the Second Formal Epistemology Festival aka “2FEF” at the end of May.

Booth 9: Intensionality with ADHD
In the last booth, to serve as an exceptionally exciting send-off, over at Matters of Substance, Dan Nolan has a very interesting discussion of hyperintensionality: The Age of Hyperintensionality

That’s all for this edition of the Philosophers’ Carnival!

Posted on May 4, 2009 by Daniel J. Singer

In recent work Joshua Greene argues that when we realize that many of our characteristically deontological moral judgments arise from emotional reactions rather than deontological reasoning, we will lose our confidence in these deontological judgments.  In contrast, when we learn that many utilitarian judgments arise from cognitive processes that engage in cost/benefit analysis, then this vindicates these judgments.  And (to simplify Greene’s reasoning) the conclusion of all this  is that we should become utilitarians.

For example, when people consider the trolley case they usually make utilitarian judgments, since this case is not so emotionally loaded.  But, when we consider the footbridge case, in which we have to physically push somebody in front of the runaway train, then we make a deontological judgment to the effect that the end does not justify the means.  This judgment, Greene argues, is caused by an emotional reaction rather than deontological cognitive processes.  

If we look at the empirical literature on moral judgment, we also learn that psychopaths and people with lesions in the emotional centers of their brains are more likely to make utilitarian moral judgments.  These people tend to directly conclude that we should push the fat man in front of the train.  And, if asked to evaluate a scenario in which we could say our own lives only by smothering some baby, then these people quickly judge that we should do it, whereas others with normal emotional capacities have to think carefully about this before reaching a conclusion.

I was just curious about what people think about the following observation. Utilitarianism, as this last observation helps us to see, is in one way the morality of psychopaths.  This observation may lead us to doubt whether empirical research on moral judgment really does debunk these deontological judgments in the way that Greene and others think it does.  I agree that the evidence he appeals to undermines the idea that what he calls characteristically deontological judgments usually derive from moral reasoning.  But, does it really give us reason to think that, because of this, we should not trust/rely on these intuitions in our moral thinking?

It might seem a little silly to say that utilitarianism is the morality of people with brain damage or of psychopaths, and since we don’t want to be like such people, we shouldn’t be utilitarians.  But, it is interesting, I think, to think about that piece of data when considering the kinds of arguments that people like Greene give.  Thoughts?