On p. 14 you discuss reasons why trying to probe folk intuitions in a systematic and controlled way might sometimes be preferable to inventing our anthropology and psychology from the armchair. As far as I can tell, the importance of folk intuitions is magnified when it comes to the kind of political philosophy your are engaged with since at least one of the goals of your work (and similar work) ought to be public policy related. So, if you don’t know what people’s baseline intuitions are, you can’t know how and whether your political theories concerning distribution and justice will have any traction in the public domain. Given that policies in a democratic society are supposed to loosely track the opinions of the majority, it is clear to me that the kind of surveys you ran are both appropriate and important. And in the event that the data supports Matt’s dismissive attitude toward the “untutored” intuitions of lowly non-philosophers, you would then need to (a) come up with effective ways of informing and shaping public opinion in order to ensure that your pet political theory has a fighting chance on the democratic stage, (b) come up with an argument for circumventing basic principles of democracy in order to create a more just society, or (c) warm up to the unsettling fact that the beautiful crystalline clarity of one’s vaunted political theory is ultimately useless when it comes to worldly affairs. But before any of these avenues can be fruitfully pursued, more empirical spadework would need to be done. So, kudos to you for making a contribution to this enterprise…

The kind of work you did for this paper could be relevant to other projects as well. For instance, you might think that one job for political philosophers is simply to analyze the folk concept of justice. For this project, the kind of empirical work you did is paramount for success. Of course, some may say they don’t care at all about analyzing what the folk concept of justice is–what they want is to know what justice really is. But even if one were to treat justice as some kind of natural kind, one would still need to delve into the data from primatology, anthropology, evolutionary psychology, game theory, developmental psychology, and, now, cognitive neuroscience to get a sense of where our sense of justice and fairness comes from and what role it played in fostering our hyper-sociality. And to the extent that skeptics of experimental philosophy such as Matt think that research from these domains is germane to political philosophy, then there own skepticism is undermined to the extent to which experimental philosophers are themselves starting to work hand in hand with researches in these fields. The idea that experimental philosophy is limited to surveys represents a kind of empirical shortsightedness that many of our critics as well as some experimentalists themselves have suffered from in the past. But more on that later…

p.s. Sorry I am so late to respond to this thread!

I’m sorry to be so late in replying to this - I’ve been traveling.

First, I think that you make some good points about methodology. Much of the methodology in experimental philosophy could certainly be improved (I’m actually working with a graduate student in economics here now on the topic and, so, hope to redo and improve upon the experiment I mention in the paper eventually). But, I think that even with survey data we can often get some idea about how people are thinking about distributive justice.

Regarding the relevance of experimental philosophy to theory: First, I should say that I do not have well-developed views on the relevance of empirical work on intuition to philosophy generally. I expect it may be relevant in many ways. In the paper, I use experimental evidence primarily because Miller appeals to such evidence to support his principle (Oppenheimer etc.). I try to show that neither the existing evidence Miller provides nor the new experiment I present supports his principle.

Here is another excerpt from the paper that may be relevant to this point:

It is not clear when appealing to intuitions is appropriate in ethical theory. There are different views on the matter. Some believe that an author need only account for his or her own intuitions. Others only believe that the intuitions of the philosophical community matter. Still others agree with Miller that good theories will rely upon ‘folk’ intuitions shared by all (or at least those not corrupted by too much philosophical theory). Philosophers should probably be concerned about the intuitions of different people for different purposes. Some philosophers (or most), having thought about certain philosophical issues, may have better intuitions than the philosophically uninitiated on these philosophical topics. It may be obvious to ethicists (but not to others) that accepting a particular proposition on the basis of intuition will require one to accept other propositions that have more unintuitive consequences. Ethicists, for instance, may be less likely than others to say morality is reducible to the law because they realize that this will commit them to the view that slaveholders in the antebellum Southern United States were acting morally. Sometimes, however, it is more plausible that philosophers’ intuitions about particular cases have been corrupted by their other theoretical commitments. Those who believe that there are only quiddities, for instance, might not think that there are individuals who can act well or poorly. What intuitions matter probably also depends a bit on what one is trying to show and to whom. If one is involved in a purely philosophical debate on a particular point appealing to philosopher’s intuitions on that point may be sufficient. Here we are involved in a much broader debate about how institutions should fulfill need. In the absence of reason to think some people’s intuitions matter more than others’ it seems reasonable to appeal to empirical evidence regarding folk intuitions here. We must just remain open to revising our results if it turns out that some people’s intuitions about meeting need are better than others’.

Thanks! -Nicole

If I’m framing an experiment about choice behaviour that tries to get a handle on implicit normative commitments/beliefs/constraints, then I want to frame *actual choices* in my design and implementation, not a long multiple choice question with complex hypotheticals.

But I will certainly read the paper with interest, Nicole (although largely anticipating some good philosophical argument). On the empirics: I expect you engage with some of the extant experimental work in the social sciences on just these sorts of questions (e.g. Frohlich and Oppenheimer)?

I think I share Matthew’s generic scepticism with experimental philosophy, at the very least for normative questions: if I argue that we ought to do A or affirm P, and you show that an appropriately representative sample of people are not, other things being equal, inclined to do A or affirm P, then that’s a practical problem, to be sure, presuming (plausibly) that I want my philosophy to affect actual citizen behaviour or policy decisions. In that case I may have to think about why the actions or principles I endorse are so unpopular. It might even lead me to reformulate, revise, or even reject my view. But notice that, even in those cases, the actual reformulation, revision, or rejection of A or P — while motivated by facts about the world — are properly understood as being brought about by further philosophical reflection and argument. And anyway, we might simply conclude that most people are unreflective and don’t see the obvious virtues of my rigorous arguments for A or P.

Thanks for posting your thoughts and sorry for the delay (I’ve been traveling). It is interesting to see how people are reasoning about the experiment since we did not ask people for the rationale they relied upon in generating their results.

Best, -Nicole

Best, -Nicole

So glad you asked! I hope that you’ll check out my paper and see all of the cool things you can do with results like these. What I do is show that some of the claims David Miller makes in a chapter of his book aren’t supported by the data (he relies on similar experimental evidence to make his argument). I also suggest that the experiment shows that people do not seem to accept a utilitarian, equal division, or what I call “strict priority” principle for meeting needs (this last principle suggests helping the least-well-off until they are no longer least-well-off and then splitting the remainder). The experiment may also provide some indirect support for my alternative principle. There is, of course, a great deal of “regular” philosophical argument involved. But, I’d love to hear what you think if you check it out. I’ll try to get it up tomorrow here: http://www.hss.cmu.edu/philosophy/hassoun/faculty-hassoun.php.

There are of course many ways one might question the experiment or data. Perhaps there is reason, as you suggest, to think people’s informed judgments will be different. If you read the paper and think so then perhaps you could even run a better experiment. I’m thinking about re-running something similar with some improvements myself!

Best, -Nicole

Ethics Etc. have also had a reading group on Anthony Appiah’s book, Experiments in Ethics, for anyone interested in that.

I have to say that I cannot make heads or tails of the significance of this data. In fact, I also cannot see what this experiment is testing.

In general, I wonder what possible value ANY experimental philosophy could have for political philosophy (or philosophy, in general). I understand that data from other disciplines can be useful, but even here it is surely a rather contested matter what data would be useful and what significance that data would have.

This is part of a broader question about the methodology of political philosophy - a difficult question about which I am not prepared really to say anything beyond expressing a very robust skepticism about the methodological value of “experimental philosophy.”

In short, what value does data like this have to political philosophy beyond suggesting that these particular attitudes are the unreflective responses some Westerners adopt when these particular problems are posed to them by college researchers.

My guess is that after watching a 5 minute discussion between two people discussing needs, the answers might be different. But, even if this is the case: so what?

-Matt