The Place of Expert Intuition in Philosophy

The Standard Picture of philosophical methodology includes the following claims: (A) Intuitive judgments form an epistemically distinctive kind; (B) Intuitive judgments play an epistemically privileged role in philosophical methodology; (C) If intuitive judgments play an epistemically privileged role in philosophical methodology, then their role is to be taken as given inputs into generally accepted forms of reasoning; (D) Philosophical methodology is reasonable. Negative experimental philosophers accept claims (A), (B), and (C), but challenge (D). This chapter develops a variant on the expertise defense of traditional philosophy. The defense hinges on denying (C) in the Standard Picture: philosophers do not treat their intuitions as data; they treat their intuitions as observations that can be improved through reasoning. The chapter explores both historical antecedents in the rationalist tradition, and descriptive accuracy with respect to current practice.

Saving the armchair by experiment: what works in economics doesn’t work in philosophy

Financial incentives, learning (feedback and repetition), group consultation, and increased experimental control are among the experimental techniques economists have successfully used to deflect the behavioral challenge posed by research conducted by such scholars as Tversky and Kahneman. These techniques save the economic armchair to the extent that they align laypeople judgments with economic theory by increasing cognitive effort and reflection in experimental subjects. It is natural to hypothesize that a similar strategy might work to address the experimental or restrictionist challenge to armchair philosophy. To test this hypothesis, a randomized controlled experiment was carried out (for incentives and learning), as well as two lab experiments (for group consultation, and for experimental control). Three types of knowledge attribution tasks were used (Gettier cases, false belief cases, and cases in which there is knowledge on the consensus/orthodox understanding). No support for the hypothesis was found. The paper describes the close similarities between the economist’s response to the behavioral challenge, and the expertise defense against the experimental challenge, and presents the experiments, results, and an array of robustness checks. The upshot is that these results make the experimental challenge all the more forceful.

Intuitive Expertise and Irrelevant Options

In the ‘push-dilemma,’ a train is about to run over several people and can only be stopped by pushing a heavy person onto the tracks. Most lay people and moral philosophers consider the ‘push-option,’ i.e., pushing the heavy person, as morally wrong. Peter Unger (1992, 1996) suggested that adding irrelevant options to the push-dilemma would overturn this intuition. This chapter tests Unger’s claim in an experiment with both lay people and expert moral philosophers. This allowed an investigation of the ‘expertise defense,’ which various philosophers have suggested as an answer to ‘experimental restrictionists,’ who argue that experimental philosophy undermines the trustworthiness of intuitions about hypothetical cases. Overall, the chapter finds that adding irrelevant options increases the ratings for the push-option. Moreover, the intuitions of expert moral philosophers are no less susceptible to the presence of irrelevant options than lay people’s intuitions. The chapter discusses how these findings bear on the expertise defense.

Intuitive Expertise and Irrelevant Options

In the so-called push dilemma, an out-of-control speed-train is about to run over five people and can only be stopped by pushing a heavy person onto the tracks. Most lay people and moral philosophers consider it morally wrong to kill the heavy person. Unger (1992, 1996), however, argued that adding irrelevant options to the push dilemma would overturn this intuition. In this paper, we empirically test Unger’s claim with both lay people and expert moral philosophers. Including philosophical experts allowed us to investigate the so-called expertise defense, according to which the intuitions of philosophical experts are superior to the intuitions of lay people. Overall, we found that adding irrelevant options indeed increased the ratings for the “push option”. Moreover, we found that the intuitions of expert moral philosophers were no less susceptible to the presence of irrelevant options than lay people’s intuitions. We discuss how these findings bear on the expertise defense.