A New Perspective Concerning Experiments on Semantic Intuitions

Australasian Journal of Philosophy 89 (2):315-332 (2011)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Machery, Mallon, Nichols, and Stich [2004; forthcoming] use experimental methods to raise a spectre of doubt about reliance on intuitions in developing theories of reference which are then deployed in philosophical arguments outside the philosophy of language. Machery et al. ran a cross-cultural survey asking Western and East Asian participants about a famous case from the philosophical literature on reference (Kripke's G del example). They interpret their results as indicating that there is significant variation in participants' intuitions about semantic reference for that case. We argue that this interpretation is mistaken. We detail a type of ambiguity found in Machery et al.'s probe but not yet noted in the response literature. We argue that this epistemic ambiguity could have affected their results. We do not stop there, however: Rather than rest content with a possibility claim, we ran four studies to test the impact of this ambiguity on participants' responses. We found that this accounts for much of the variation in Machery et al.'s original experiment. We conclude that in the light of our new data, their argument is no longer convincing

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,593

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Cultural Variations in Folk Epistemic Intuitions.Finn Spicer - 2010 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 1 (4):515-529.
Against Arguments from Reference.Ron Mallon, Edouard Machery, Shaun Nichols & Stephen Stich - 2009 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 79 (2):332 - 356.
Experimental Semantics.Michael Devitt - 2010 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 82 (2):418 - 435.
If Folk Intuitions Vary, Then What?Edouard Machery, Ron Mallon, Shaun Nichols & Stephen P. Stich - 2012 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 86 (3):618-635.
Theories of Reference and Experimental Philosophy.James Genone - 2012 - Philosophy Compass 7 (2):152-163.

Analytics

Added to PP
2009-01-30

Downloads
1,409 (#7,138)

6 months
13 (#118,494)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author Profiles

Justin Sytsma
Victoria University of Wellington
Jonathan Livengood
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Citations of this work

Knowledge entails dispositional belief.David Rose & Jonathan Schaffer - 2013 - Philosophical Studies 166 (S1):19-50.
Intuition.Joel Pust - 2017 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Experimental Attacks on Intuitions and Answers.John Bengson - 2012 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 86 (3):495-532.

View all 48 citations / Add more citations

References found in this work

Naming and Necessity: Lectures Given to the Princeton University Philosophy Colloquium.Saul A. Kripke - 1980 - Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Edited by Darragh Byrne & Max Kölbel.
Naming and Necessity.Saul Kripke - 1980 - Philosophy 56 (217):431-433.
Naming and Necessity.S. Kripke - 1972 - Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 45 (4):665-666.
Naming and Necessity.Saul Kripke - 1980 - Critica 17 (49):69-71.
Naming and Necessity.Saul Kripke - 2003 - In John Heil (ed.), Philosophy of Mind: A Guide and Anthology. Oxford University Press.

View all 14 references / Add more references