Mark Phelan

Two key questions dominate the experimental philosophy of mind literature: Do ordinary people possess a concept of phenomenal consciousness? What features of an entity lead people to attribute phenomenally conscious (and non-phenomenally conscious) mental states? Five responses to one or both of these questions are discussed: 1) an Embodiment View, which claims that agents capable of phenomenal consciousness are thought by the folk to possess a certain kind of biological body; 2) a Valence View, which emphasizes the importance of considerations of affective valence in mental state attribution; 3) a “Naïve” View, which claims that pains and colors are just thought by the folk to be physically localized properties; 4) a Functionalist View, which argues that functionalist considerations predominate ordinary peoples attributions of all varieties of mental states; and 5) a Dual-Systems View, which claims that all of the other views are investigating rational mental state attributions and have missed the significant part of the story involving automatic mental state attributions. Experimental philosophical evidence for and against each response is considered. The chapter concludes with some brief remarks about other projects in the experimental philosophy of mind.

Philosophers have tended to construe friendship as an intimate relationship involving mutual love, and have focused their discussions on this ‘true’ form of friendship. However, everyone recognizes that we use the word ‘friend’ and its cognates to refer, non-ironically, to those with whom we share various relationships that are not terribly intimate or which do not involve mutual love. I argue that there exists no general reason to restrict our philosophical focus to ‘true’ friendships, and allege that we can gain important insights if we broaden our perspective to include lesser friends. I contend that friendships, in the broad sense (encompassing both ‘true’ and lesser forms), are necessarily relationships that are the product of significant collaborative norm manipulation. And I argue that understanding friendship in this way helps explain important features, including the difference between friendships and familiar relations, the non-fungibility of friends, and why friendships are often in flux.

Many moral philosophers have assumed that ordinary folk embrace moral objectivism. But, if so, why do folk embrace objectivism? One possibility is the pervasive connection between religion and morality in ordinary life. Some theorists contend that God is viewed as a divine guarantor of right and wrong, rendering morality universal and absolute. But is belief in God per se sufficient for moral objectivism? In this paper, we present original research exploring the connections between metaethics and particular conceptions of God among religious participants. Study 1 shows that, when controlling for religiosity, age, and belief in God's loving characteristics, it is belief in God's punishing characteristics (specifically, the existence of Hell) that uniquely predicts rejection of moral relativism. Study 2 shows that followers of Abrahamic faiths are more likely to endorse moral objectivism when thinking of the Divine, regardless of loving or punishing characteristics. And Study 3 shows that priming for moral objectivism makes theists more likely to endorse God's punishing characteristics. A general picture is suggested by these data. For Abrahamic theists, God's particular characteristics are not germane to the question of whether his moral commandments are real and objective. And while theists strongly endorse God's loving characteristics, focusing on the objective nature of morality can highlight God's punishing nature, reminding theists that objective morality requires a divine guarantor of justice to enforce it.

In the past several decades, psychologists and linguists have begun experimentally investigating linguistic pragmatic phenomena. They share the assumption that the best way to study the use of language in context incorporates an experimental methodology, here understood to comprise controlled studies and careful field observations. This article surveys some key projects in experimental pragmatics and relates these projects to ongoing philosophical discussions.

Abstract Philosophers have alleged that paraphrases of metaphors are inadequate. They have presented this inadequacy as a datum predicted by, and thus a reason to accept, particular accounts of 'metaphorical meanings.'But to what, specifically, does this inadequacy claim amount? I argue that, if this assumption is to have any bearing on the metaphor debate, it must be construed as the comparative claim that paraphrases of metaphors are inadequate compared to paraphrases of literal utterances.

Abstract: I offer a critique of a general argument put to many uses by Jerry Fodor and colleagues. I show the argument to rest on an unclear premise: the compositionality premise, which holds that the meaning of complex representations is derived from the simple representations that compose them. The premise admits of a weak and a strong interpretation. I offer evidence that Fodor and his allies require the strong interpretation. I demonstrate that we only have reason to accept the weak interpretation.

The third and oldest of my 'papers' on aesthetic adjectives. Comments on original work by Shen-yi Liao and Aaron Meskin. This contains a unique experiment (discussed in Liao and Meskin's paper when it was published), and marks my initial interest in this project.

Must aesthetic adjectives, such as ‘beautiful’ and ‘sublime,’ be interpreted relative to a comparison class (e.g., “beautiful for a Kinkade”) or do they admit of absolute values and independent interpretation? Recent research suggests that some aesthetic adjectives—‘beautiful’ and ‘elegant’—behave like relative adjectives according to some diagnostics, but like absolute adjectives according to others. I argue that ‘beautiful’ and ‘elegant’ return confusing results because they are anomalous multidimensional aesthetic adjectives. Other central aesthetic adjectives (I focus on ‘sublime,’ ‘poetic,’ and ‘tragic’) pattern straightforwardly with absolute adjectives. For this reason ‘beautiful’ and ‘elegant’ constitute poor samples against which to draft an account of the semantics of aesthetic adjectives. Ultimately, the balance of evidence suggests that aesthetic adjectives are absolute gradable adjectives.