In Eugen Fischer & Mark Curtis (eds.), Methodological Advances in Experimental Philosophy. London, UK: Bloomsbury. pp. 43-100 (2019)
Authors |
|
Abstract |
Psycholinguistic methods hold great promise for experimental philosophy. Many philosophical thought experiments and arguments proceed from verbal descriptions of possible cases. Many relevant intuitions and conclusions are driven by spontaneous inferences about what else must also be true in the cases described. Such inferences are continually made in language comprehension and production. This chapter explains how methods from psycholinguistics can be employed to study such routine automatic inferences, with a view to assessing intuitions and reconstructing arguments. We demonstrate how plausibility ratings, pupillometry, and reading time measurements can be used to examine hypotheses about automatic inferences in speech and text comprehension. Two experiments on inferences from polysemous (perception-)verbs provide evidence of a potentially consequential ‘salience bias’. Findings help assess intuitions about unusual cases and analyse a philosophical paradox (‘argument from hallucination’). The paper thus illustrates how we can adapt psycholinguistic methods for philosophical purposes and demonstrates the methods’ philosophical usefulness.
|
Keywords | eye-tracking pupillometry automatic inferences argument analysis problem of perception argument from hallucination polysemy salience pragmatic inference |
Categories | (categorize this paper) |
Buy the book |
Find it on Amazon.com
|
Options |
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Download options
References found in this work BETA
No references found.
Citations of this work BETA
Lingering Stereotypes: Salience Bias in Philosophical Argument.Eugen Fischer & Paul E. Engelhardt - 2020 - Mind and Language 35 (4):415-439.
Does the Folk Concept of Phenomenal Consciousness Exist?Michał Wyrwa - 2022 - Diametros 19 (71):46-66.
Similar books and articles
Stereotypical Inferences: Philosophical Relevance and Psycholinguistic Toolkit.Eugen Fischer & Paul E. Engelhardt - 2017 - Ratio 30 (4):411-442.
Intuitions and Illusions: From Explanation and Experiment to Assessment.Eugen Fischer, Paul E. Engelhardt & Aurelie Herbelot - 2015 - In Eugen Fischer & John Collins (eds.), Experimental Philosophy, Rationalism, and Naturalism. Rethinking Philosophical Method. Routledge. pp. 259-292.
Intuitions' Linguistic Sources: Stereotypes, Intuitions and Illusions.Eugen Fischer & Paul E. Engelhardt - 2016 - Mind and Language 31 (1):67-103.
Verbal Fallacies and Philosophical Intuitions: The Continuing Relevance of Ordinary Language Analysis.Eugen Fischer - 2014 - In Brian Garvey (ed.), Austin on Language. Palgrave-Macmillan. pp. 124-140.
Diagnostic Experimental Philosophy.Eugen Fischer & Paul E. Engelhardt - 2017 - Teorema: International Journal of Philosophy 36 (3):117-137.
HOW MUCH DO WE LEARN ABOUT HALLUCINATIONS FROM THOUGHT-EXPERIMENTS?Joanna Helena Szelegieniec - 2015 - Hybris, Revista de FilosofíA (30):033-045.
Can Personality Traits Be Inferred Automatically? Spontaneous Inferences Require Cognitive Capacity at Encoding.J. Uleman - 1992 - Consciousness and Cognition 1 (1):77-90.
Perception as Unconscious Inference.Gary Hatfield - 2002 - In Dieter Heyer & Rainer Mausfeld (eds.), Perception and the Physical World: Psychological and Philosophical Issues in Perception. John Wiley and Sons. pp. 113--143.
Experimental Philosophy, Noisy Intuitions, and Messy Inferences.Jonathan M. Weinberg - 2016 - In Jennifer Nado (ed.), Advances in Experimental Philosophy & Philosophical Methodology. Bloomsbury Academic.
Inference and Scepticism.Jose L. Zalabardo - 2014 - In Elia Zardini & Dylan Dodd (eds.), Scepticism and Perceptual Justification. Oxford University Press.
Non-Cognitivism and Rational Inference.Mark Bryant Budolfson - 2011 - Philosophical Studies 153 (2):243 - 259.
Psychological Investigations: The Private Language Argument and Inferences in Contemporary Cognitive Science.C. D. Meyers & Sara Waller - 2009 - Synthese 171 (1):135-156.
Analytics
Added to PP index
2018-08-22
Total views
308 ( #33,621 of 2,499,684 )
Recent downloads (6 months)
23 ( #37,608 of 2,499,684 )
2018-08-22
Total views
308 ( #33,621 of 2,499,684 )
Recent downloads (6 months)
23 ( #37,608 of 2,499,684 )
How can I increase my downloads?
Downloads