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109Pereboom and premises: Asking the right questions in the experimental philosophy of free willConsciousness and Cognition 22 (1): 53-63. 2013.Sommers (2010) argues that experimental philosophers of free will have largely been asking the wrong question – the question whether philosophically naïve individuals think that free will and moral responsibility are compatible with determinism. The present studies begin to alleviate this concern by testing the intuitive plausibility of Pereboom’s (2001) four case argument. The general pattern of responses from two experiments does not support Pereboom’s predictions. Moreover, those who were hig…Read more
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21Experimental PhilosophyAnalyse & Kritik 31 (2): 201-219. 2009.Experimental philosophy is a new approach to philosophy that incorporates the experimental methodologies of psychology, behavioral economics, and sociology. Experimental philosophers generally maintain that, in addition to traditional philosophical practices, these ways of gathering evidence can be instrumental in shedding light on philosophically important issues. Rather than relying on their own intuitions about specific cases, experimental philosophers perform systematic experiments to determ…Read more
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388Philosophical temperamentPhilosophical Psychology 23 (3): 313-330. 2010.Many philosophers have worried about what philosophy is. Often they have looked for answers by considering what it is that philosophers do. Given the diversity of topics and methods found in philosophy, however, we propose a different approach. In this article we consider the philosophical temperament, asking an alternative question: what are philosophers like? Our answer is that one important aspect of the philosophical temperament is that philosophers are especially reflective: they are less l…Read more
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264Do judgments about freedom and responsibility depend on who you are? Personality differences in intuitions about compatibilism and incompatibilismConsciousness and Cognition 18 (1): 342-350. 2009.Recently, there has been an increased interest in folk intuitions about freedom and moral responsibility from both philosophers and psychologists. We aim to extend our understanding of folk intuitions about freedom and moral responsibility using an individual differences approach. Building off previous research suggesting that there are systematic differences in folks’ philosophically relevant intuitions, we present new data indicating that the personality trait extraversion predicts, to a signi…Read more
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80The fragmented folk: More evidence of stable individual differences in moral judgments and folk intuitionsIn B. C. Love, K. McRae & V. M. Sloutsky (eds.), Proceedings of the 30th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society., Cognitive Science Society. pp. 1771--1776. 2008.In a series of five experiments, we demonstrate that moral judgments and folk intuitions are often predictably fragmented. Drawing on the domains of ethics and action theory, we illustrate ways in which judgment tends to be associated with stable individual differences such as personality traits and reflective cognitive styles. We argue that these individual differences pose several unique challenges as well as provide opportunities for further theoretical development in the emerging field of ex…Read more
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32Knowledge, moral praise, and moral side effectsJournal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology 27 (1): 123-126. 2007.Thomas Nadelhoffer claims that a morally praiseworthy agent cannot knowingly produce a morally positive side effect. I claim that the argument Nadelhoffer uses to establish this claim has two false premises. The two false premises are: If something is a side effect, then it is not desired or intended; and If agent S is morally praiseworthy and knows that her performing p will produce a morally positive q, then q forms part of S's reason for p-ing. I offer a counterexample that shows the falsity …Read more
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2007Everyday Attitudes About Euthanasia and the Slippery Slope ArgumentIn Michael Cholbi & Jukka Varelius (eds.), New Directions in the Ethics of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia, Springer Verlag. pp. 145-165. 2015.This chapter provides empirical evidence about everyday attitudes concerning euthanasia. These attitudes have important implications for some ethical arguments about euthanasia. Two experiments suggested that some different descriptions of euthanasia have modest effects on people’s moral permissibility judgments regarding euthanasia. Experiment 1 (N = 422) used two different types of materials (scenarios and scales) and found that describing euthanasia differently (‘euthanasia’, ‘aid in dying’, …Read more
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426Questioning the free will comprehension question.In S. Ohlsson & R. Catrambone (eds.), Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Cognitive Science Society. pp. 2440--2445. 2010.Understanding the folk notion of free will and moral responsibility is important for a host of applied and theoretical issues in psychology, philosophy, and ethics. The bulk of experimental research has focused on folk intuitions concerning determinism's relation to free will and moral responsibility. However, determinism is a difficult term for many folk to understand. Accordingly researchers often use comprehension questions to identify and exclude large proportions of participants who seem to…Read more
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87The Virtues of IgnoranceReview of Philosophy and Psychology 3 (3): 335-350. 2012.It is commonly claimed that fully virtuous individuals cannot be ignorant and that everyday intuitions support this fact. Others maintain that there are virtues of ignorance and most people recognize them. Both views cannot be correct. We report evidence from three experiments suggesting that ignorance does not rule out folk attributions of virtue. Additionally, results show that many of these judgments can be predicted by one’s emotional stability—a heritable personality trait. We argue that th…Read more
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96Perspective in intentional action attributionPhilosophical Psychology 25 (5): 673-687. 2012.In two experiments, we demonstrate that intentional action intuitions vary as a function of whether one brings about or observes an event. In experiment 1a (N?=?38), participants were less likely to judge that they intended (M?=?2.53, 7 point scale) or intentionally (M?=?2.67) brought about a harmful event compared to intention (M?=?4.16) and intentionality (M?=?4.11) judgments made about somebody else. Experiments 1b and 1c confirmed and extended this pattern of actor-observer differences. Expe…Read more
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46Experimental philosophy needs to matter: Reply to Andow and CovaPhilosophical Psychology 29 (4): 567-569. 2016.Nearly a decade of research has provided overwhelming evidence that there is no the folk intuition about many fundamental philosophical questions, just as there is no the gender of human beings or...
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149An error theory for compatibilist intuitionsPhilosophical Psychology 28 (4): 529-555. 2015.One debate in the experimental exploration of everyday judgments about free will is whether most people are compatibilists or incompatibilists. Some recent research suggests that many people who have incompatibilist intuitions are making a mistake; as such, they do not have genuine incompatibilist intuitions. Another worry is whether most people appropriately understand determinism or confuse it with similar, but different, notions such as fatalism. In five studies we demonstrate people distingu…Read more
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70Frankfurt and the folk: An experimental investigation of Frankfurt-style casesConsciousness and Cognition 20 (2): 401-414. 2011.An important disagreement in contemporary debates about free will hinges on whether an agent must have alternative possibilities to be morally responsible. Many assume that notions of alternative possibilities are ubiquitous and reflected in everyday intuitions about moral responsibility: if one lacks alternatives, then one cannot be morally responsible. We explore this issue empirically. In two studies, we find evidence that folk judgments about moral responsibility call into question two popul…Read more
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667Adaptive diversity and misbeliefBehavioral and Brain Sciences 32 (6): 516. 2009.Although it makes some progress, McKay & Dennett's (M&D's) proposal is limited because (1) the argument for adaptive misbelief is not new, (2) arguments overextend the evidence provided, and (3) the alleged sufficient conditions are not as prohibitive as suggested. We offer alternative perspectives and evidence, including individual differences research, indicating that adaptive misbeliefs are likely much more widespread than implied.
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29The good life: Unifying the philosophy and psychology of well-being (review)Philosophical Psychology 29 (8): 1253-1255. 2016.
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57Experimental PhilosophyAnalyze and Kritik 31 (1): 201-219. 2009.Experimental philosophy is a new approach to philosophy that incorporates the experimental methodologies of psychology, behavioral economics, and sociology. Experimental philosophers generally maintain that, in addition to traditional philosophical practices, these ways of gathering evidence can be instrumental in shedding light on philosophically important issues. Rather than relying on their own intuitions about specific cases, experimental philosophers perform systematic experiments to determ…Read more
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Michigan Technological UniversityRegular Faculty
Houghton, Michigan, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Mind |
Applied Ethics |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |