Online research in philosophy

Experimental philosophy is one of the most recent and controversial developments in philosophy. Its basic idea is rather simple: to test philosophical thought experiments and philosophers’ intuitions about them with scientific methods, mostly taken from psychology and the social sciences. The ensuing experimental results, such as the cultural relativity of certain philosophical intuitions, has engaged – and at times infuriated – many more traditionally minded "armchair" philosophers since then. In this volume, the metaphilosophical reflection on experimental philosophy is brought yet (...) another step forward by engaging some of its most renowned proponents and critics in a lively and controversial debate. In addition to that, the volume also contains original experimental research on personal identity and philosophical temperament, as well as state-of-the-art essays on central metaphilosophical issues, like thought experiments, the nature of intuitions, or the status of philosophical expertise. -/- This book was originally published as a special issue of Philosophical Psychology. (shrink)

In a recent paper Weinberg (2007) claims that there is an essential mark of trustworthiness which typical sources of evidence as perception or memory have, but philosophical intuitions lack, namely that we are able to detect and correct errors produced by these “hopeful” sources. In my paper I will argue that being a hopeful source isn't necessary for providing us with evidence. I then will show that, given some plausible background assumptions, intuitions at least come close to being hopeful, if (...) they are reliable. If this is true, Weinberg's new challenge comes down to the claim that philosophical intuitions are not reliable since they are significantly unstable. In the second part of my paper I will argue that and why the experimentally established instability of folk intuitions about philosophical cases does not show that philosopher's expert intuitions about these cases are instable. (shrink)

In this brief introduction, we would first like to explain how these two special issues of Philosophical Psychology ( 23.3 and 23.4 ) actually came about. In addition, we will provide an outline of their overall structure and shortly summarize the featured papers.

According to the received view, externalist grounds or reasons need not be introspectively accessible. Roughly speaking, from an externalist point of view, a belief will be epistemically justified, iff it is based upon facts that make its truth objectively highly likely. This condition can be satisfied, even if the epistemic agent does not have actual or potential awareness of the justifying facts. No inner perspective on the belief-forming mechanism and its truth-ratio is needed for a belief to be justified. In (...) my view, this is not the whole story. While I agree that introspective access to our reasons is a defining feature of justification for the access internalist, not the externalist, I will argue that even for the latter, some kind of introspective access is an epistemic desideratum. Yet, even given that I am right, the desirable might not be achievable for us. Recent psychological research suggests that we do not dispose of reliable introspection into the sources of our own beliefs. This seems to undermine the claim that we can introspectively know about the reasons upon which our beliefs are based. In this paper I will therefore additionally show why these results do not threaten the kind of introspective access desirable from an externalist point of view. (shrink)

It is widely assumed that justification is defeasible, e.g. that under certain conditions counterevidence removes prior justification of beliefs. In this paper I will first (sect. 1) explain why this feature of justification poses a prima facie problem for reliabilism. I then will try out different reliabilist strategies to deal with the problem. Among them I will discuss conservative strategies (sect. 2), eliminativist stragies (sect. 3) and revisionist strategies (sect. 4). In the final section I will present an improved revisionist (...) approach to defeaters that is able to overcome the main shortcomings of the other approaches. (shrink)

In the first part of this paper I will characterize the specific nature of rational intuition. It will be claimed that rational intuition is an evidential state with modal content that has an a priori source. This claim will be defended against several objections. The second part of the paper deals with the so-called explanationist objection against rational intuition as a justifying source. According to the best reading of this objection, intuition cannot justify any judgment since there is no metaphysical (...) explanation of its reliability. It will be argued that in the case of intuition the very demand of such an explanation is based on a category mistake. (shrink)

In this paper I will discuss Michael Williamss inferential contextualism – a position that must be carefully distinguished from the currently more fashionable attributer contextualism. I will argue that Williamss contextualism is not stable, though it avoids some of the shortcomings of simple inferential contextualism. In particular, his criticism of epistemological realism cannot be supported on the basis of his own account. I will also argue that we need not give up epistemological realism in order to provide a successful diagnosis (...) of scepticism. (shrink)

One of the most influential arguments for the coherence theory of empirical justification is BonJours a priori argument from the internalist regress. According to this argument, foundationalism cannot solve the problem of the internalist regress since internalism is incompatible with basic beliefs. Hence, coherentism seems to be the only option. In my article I contend that this argument is doomed to failure. It is either too strong or too weak. Too strong, since even coherentism cannot stop the internalist regress in (...) any legitimate way. In order to demonstrate this claim I will discuss various coherentist strategies. Too weak, since, were coherentism able to stop the regress, the argument against foundationalism would collapse. (shrink)