Abstract
We present three experiments that explore the robustness of the authentic-apparent effect—the finding that participants are less likely to attribute knowledge to the protagonist in apparent- than in authentic-evidence Gettier cases. The results go some way towards suggesting that the effect is robust to assessments of the justificatory status of the protagonist’s belief. However, not all of the results are consistent with an effect invariant across two demographic contexts: American and Indian nationalities.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Participants complete several demographic questions when they sign up for Prolific. One is, what is your nationality? Prolific states that participants can chose only one nationality. And they leave this question to the participants to interpret. It is worth noting that recruiting participants who report that their nationality is the US or India does raise a possibility that may complicate the results presented in this paper. An anonymous reviewer observes that reporting an Indian nationality is consistent with residing in the West. This includes Indians who have long lived in the US or the UK, even during their formative years. The complication that this observation presents is reasonably clear. To the extent that our Indian sample is comprised of individuals whose psychologies have been substantially shaped by Western environments, and thus quality as WEIRD, it is reasonable to worry that our experiments are unlikely to find any cross-cultural differences. Indeed, any evidence from our experiments seeming to suggest that the authentic-apparent effect is robust across American and Indian nationalities could be because we were simply comparing, more or less, the responses of one WEIRD sample with those of another WEIRD or WEIRDish sample. We acknowledge that it is possible that the Indian-specific results reported in this paper may stem, in large part, from Indians living in the West. As such, any results that appear to indicate a cross-culturally robust authentic-apparent effect needs to be interpreted with this complication in mind (along with the fact that all the materials were presented in English, which may be masking important differences as well). With that said, the flip of the line of reasoning just presented is that any evidence of cross-cultural differences reported in the paper may be an underrepresentation of the magnitude of the difference among WEIRD Americans and less WEIRD Indians. And thus, the experiments of this paper could be seen as operating under somewhat stringent conditions insofar as building a positive case for cross-cultural differences is concerned. As we will see, such differences did emerge in Experiments 2 and 3.
An anonymous reviewer noted an ambiguity in the first confidence measure. It isn’t perfectly clear to which question this one is referring. Is it the comprehension question or the one about epistemic justification? The most natural interpretation is the latter, since it is the one that immediately precedes the confidence measure. But admittedly, some participants may have reached a different interpretation, which would introduce some degree of measurement noise in the experiment (and the next). In Experiment 3, we clarify the question.
Indirect effects are also interesting, of course. That the indirect effect of case type on knowledge scores through justification scores was not significant is somewhat surprising. In the authentic-evidence case of this experiment, the belief at issue is inferred from a falsehood, whereas, in the apparent-evidence case, it comes from a truth. This difference seems to matter to participants. A main effect of case type on justification scores did emerge. And yet the indirect pathway was not significant in any of the mediation analyses. Why is that? One possibility is that the authentic-apparent effect on knowledge is not mediated through justificatory assessments, at least not in response to the vignettes used in this experiment. But there are other possibilities as well. Simulations by Fritz and MacKinnon (2007) suggest that bias-corrected bootstrapping tests of mediation, of which PROCESS is an example, can call for rather large sample sizes to achieve a power of at least 0.80. Indeed, in some conditions, the required sample size is nearly double the size of our overall sample in this experiment. So, another possibility is that the non-significant indirect effects that emerged in this experiment are due to a lack of statistical power. We thus caution the reader against drawing any strong conclusions from the null results that we witnessed.
Another difference emerged from the nationality-specific mediation results of Experiments 1 and 2. In Experiment 1, among neither nationality did clear evidence emerge that the authentic-apparent contrast exerts an indirect influence on knowledge attributions through attributions of justification. In Experiment 2, matters are different. A simple mediation analysis revealed a significant indirect effect in the American sample but not in the Indian sample. Might the internal dynamics of the authentic-apparent contrast play out differently for Americans than for Indians, at least in response to Coin-like vignettes? The results of Experiment 2 provide some hints that the answer is, yes. This answer stems from two considerations working in concert. The first is the pattern of results just discussed: whereas a simple mediation analysis revealed, for the American sample, a significant indirect pathway from the authentic-apparent contrast to knowledge attributions via justification assessments, the same is not true of the Indian sample. The second consideration relates to the first set of ANOVA results reported in the previous section. Recall that an interaction effect between case type and nationality on justification scores emerged. The increased tendency to ascribe justification to the protagonist in the apparent- than in the authentic-evidence case was stronger among American than Indian participants. This combination of considerations suggests that, as we go from authentic- to apparent-evidence Coin-like cases, there is a stronger willingness among Americans to treat the protagonist’s belief as justified, which appears to have downstream effects on their knowledge attributions. The first leg of this indirect pathway is either not present at all in the Indian sample or it is weaker.
Future research into the mechanisms whereby contrastive probes depress rates of knowledge ascriptions is also likely to help. The explanation that will occur to many is protagonist projection. Evidently, or so the thought goes, the reason that contrastive probes tend to lead to lower rates of knowledge ascriptions is that they control for non-literal knowledge ascriptions where their content is not that the protagonist actually does know but rather only that she thinks she knows. We acknowledge that this explanation is a reasonable one. But we also hasten to add that there are other possibilities as well. One is that, rather than controlling for a response option that spontaneously occurs to many participants, contrastive probes do something closer to the opposite: they present a response option that doesn’t spontaneously occur to many when they simply consider standard probes. That could matter. For, as work on formal models of categorization makes clear, the response probabilities that these models generate will depend on the alternative categories under consideration (e.g., Nosofsky 2011).
References
Adleberg, T., M. Thompson, and E. Nahmias. 2015. Do men and women have different philosophical intuitions? Further data. Philosophical Psychology 28: 615–641.
Alexander, J., and J.M. Weinberg. 2014. The “unreliability” of epistemic intuitions. In Current controversies in experimental epistemology, ed. E. Machery and E. O’Neill, 128–145. New York: Routledge.
Beebe, J.R., and J. Shea. 2013. Gettierized Knobe effects. Episteme 10: 219–240.
Buckwalter, W. 2014a. Factive verbs and protagonist projection. Episteme 11: 391–409.
Buckwalter, W. 2014b. Gettier made ESEE. Philosophical Psychology 27: 368–383.
Colaço, D., W. Buckwalter, S. Stich, and E. Machery. 2014. Epistemic intuitions in fake-barn thought experiments. Episteme 11: 199–212.
Cova, F., B. Strickland, A. Abatista, A. Allard, J. Andow, M. Attie, J. Beebe, R. Berniūnas, J. Boudesseul, M. Colombo, F. Cushman, R. Diaz, N.N.N. van Dongen, V. Dranseika, B.D. Earp, A. Gaitán Torres, I. Hannikainen, J.V. Hernández-Conde, et al. 2021. Estimating the reproducibility of experimental philosophy. Review of Philosophy and Psychology 12: 9–44.
Fritz, M.S., and D.P. MacKinnon. 2007. Required sample size to detect the mediated effect. Psychological Science 18: 233–239.
Gettier, E. 1963. Is justified true belief knowledge? Analysis 23: 121–123.
Goldman, A.I. 1976. Discrimination and perceptual knowledge. The Journal of Philosophy 73: 771–791.
Gonnerman, C., K. Mortensen, and J. Robbins. 2018. The ordinary concept of knowledge how. In Oxford studies in experimental philosophy, vol. 2, ed. T. Lombrozo, S. Nichols, and J. Knobe, 104-115. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gonnerman, C., L. Poag, L. Redden, J. Robbins, and S. Crowley. 2020. In our shoes or the protagonist’s? Knowledge, justification, and projection. In Oxford studies in experimental philosophy, vol. 3, ed. T. Lombrozo, S. Nichols, and J. Knobe, 189–212. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gonnerman, C., K. Mortensen, and J. Robbins. 2021. KNOWING HOW as a philosophical hybrid. Synthese. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03292-4.
Hayes, A.F. 2013. Introduction to mediation, moderation, and conditional process analysis: A regression-based approach. New York: Guilford Press.
Henrich, J. 2020. The WEIRDest people in the world: How the West became psychologically peculiar and particularly prosperous. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Henrich, J., S.J. Heine, and A. Norenzayan. 2010a. Most people are not WEIRD. Nature 466: 29.
Henrich, J., S.J. Heine, and A. Norenzayan. 2010b. The weirdest people in the world? Behavioral and Brain Sciences 33: 61–83.
Holton, R. 1997. Some telling examples: A reply to Tsohatzidis. Journal of Pragmatics 28: 625–628.
Holtzman, G. 2013. Do personality effects mean philosophy is intrinsically subjective? Journal of Consciousness Studies 20: 27–42.
Ichikawa, J. J., and Steup, M. 2018. The analysis of knowledge. In The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Summer 2018 Edition), ed. E.N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/entries/knowledge-analysis/.
Kim, M., and Y. Yuan. 2015. No cross-cultural differences in Gettier car case intuition: Replication study of Weinberg et al. 2001. Episteme 12: 355–361.
Kneer, M., Colaço, D., Alexander, J., and Machery, E. (2021). On second thought: Reflections on the reflection defense. In Oxford studies in experimental philosophy, vol. 4, ed. T. Lombrozo, J. Knobe, and S. Nichols, 257-296. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Knobe, J. 2019. Philosophical intuitions are surprisingly robust across demographic differences. Epistemology & Philosophy of Science 56: 29–36.
Machery, E. 2009. Doing without concepts. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Machery, E. 2017. Philosophy within its proper bounds. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Machery, E. 2020. What is a replication? Philosophy of Science 87: 545–567.
Machery, E., C. Grau, and C.L. Pury. 2020. Love and power: Grau and Pury (2014) as a case study in the challenges of x-phi replication. Review of Philosophy and Psychology 11: 995–1011.
Machery, E., S. Stich, D. Rose, A. Chatterjee, K. Karasawa, N. Struchiner, S. Sirker, N. Usui, and T. Hashimoto. 2017a. Gettier across cultures. Noûs 51: 645–664.
Machery, E., S. Stich, D. Rose, M. Alai, A. Angelucci, R. Berniūnas, E.E. Buchtel, A. Chatterjee, H. Cheon, I.-R. Cho, D. Cohnitz, F. Cova, V. Dranseika, Á.E. Lagos, L. Ghadakpour, M. Gringerg, I. Hannikainen, T. Hashimoto, A. Horowitz, E. Hristova, et al. 2017b. The Gettier intuition from South America to Asia. Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research 34: 517–541.
Machery, E., S. Stich, D. Rose, A. Chatterjee, K. Karasawa, N. Struchiner, S. Sirker, N. Usui, and T. Hashimoto. 2018. Gettier was framed! In Epistemology for the rest of the world, ed. M. Mizumoto, S. Stich, and E. McCready, 123–148. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Nagel, J. 2014. Knowledge: A very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Nagel, J., V. San Juan, and R.A. Mar. 2013. Lay denial of knowledge for justified true beliefs. Cognition 129: 652–661.
Nolte, A., Rose, D., and Turri, J. (2021). Experimental evidence that knowledge entails justification. In Oxford studies in experimental philosophy, vol. 4, ed. T. Lombrozo, J. Knobe, and S. Nichols, 30-52. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Nosofsky, R.M. 2011. The generalized context model: An exemplar model of classification. In Formal approaches in categorization, ed. E.M. Pothos and A.J. Willis, 18–39. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Open Science Collaboration. 2015. Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science. Science 349: aac4716.
Sackris, D., and J.R. Beebe. 2014. Is justification necessary for knowledge? In Advances in experimental epistemology: Series: Advances in experimental philosophy, ed. J.R. Beebe, 175–192. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Seyedsayamdost, H. 2015. On normativity and epistemic intuitions: Failure of replication. Episteme 12: 95–116.
Starmans, C., and O. Friedman. 2012. The folk conception of knowledge. Cognition 124: 272–283.
Starmans, C., and O. Friedman. 2020. Expert or esoteric? Philosophers attribute knowledge differently than all other academics. Cognitive Science 44: e12850.
Turri, J. 2013. A conspicuous art: Putting Gettier to the test. Philosophers’ Imprint 13: 1–16.
Turri, J. 2014. The problem of ESEE knowledge. Ergo 1: 101–127.
Turri, J., W. Buckwalter, and P. Blouw. 2015. Knowledge and luck. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 22: 378–390.
Waterman, J., C. Gonnerman, K. Yan, and J. Alexander. 2018. Knowledge, subjective certainty, and philosophical skepticism: A cross-cultural study. In Epistemology for the rest of the world, ed. M. Mizumoto, S. Stich, and E. McCready, 187–214. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Weinberg, J.M. 2007. How to challenge intuitions empirically without risking skepticism. Midwest Studies in Philosophy 31: 318–343.
Weinberg, J.M., J. Alexander, C. Gonnerman, and S. Reuter. 2012. Restrictionism and reflection: Challenge deflected, or simply redirected? The Monist 95: 200–222.
Weinberg, J.M., C. Gonnerman, C. Buckner, and J. Alexander. 2010. Are philosophers expert intuiters? Philosophical Psychology 23: 331–355.
Weinberg, J.M., S. Nichols, and S. Stich. 2001. Normativity and epistemic Intuitions. Philosophical Topics 29: 429–460.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Gonnerman, C., Singh, B. & Toomey, G. Authentic and Apparent Evidence Gettier Cases Across American and Indian Nationalities. Rev.Phil.Psych. 14, 685–709 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-021-00610-0
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-021-00610-0