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186Correction to: Estimating the Reproducibility of Experimental PhilosophyReview of Philosophy and Psychology 12 (1): 45-48. 2018.Appendix 1 was incomplete in the initial online publication. The original article has been corrected.
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170For Whom Does Determinism Undermine Moral Responsibility? Surveying the Conditions for Free Will Across CulturesFrontiers in Psychology 10. 2019.Philosophers have long debated whether, if determinism is true, we should hold people morally responsible for their actions since in a deterministic universe, people are arguably not the ultimate source of their actions nor could they have done otherwise if initial conditions and the laws of nature are held fixed. To reveal how non-philosophers ordinarily reason about the conditions for free will, we conducted a cross-cultural and cross-linguistic survey (N = 5,268) spanning twenty countries and…Read more
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147Is the warm glow actually warm? An experimental investigation into the nature and determinants of warm glow feelingsInternational Journal of Wellbeing 13 (3): 1-23. 2023.Giving money to others feels good. It is now standard to use the label ‘warm glow feelings’ to refer to the pleasure people take from giving. But what exactly are warm glow feelings? And why do people experience them? To answer these questions, we ran two studies: a recall task in which participants were asked to remember a donation they made, and a donation task in which participants were given the opportunity to make a donation before reporting their affective states. Correlational and experim…Read more
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133Moral asymmetries and the semantics of manySemantics and Pragmatics 8 (13): 1-45. 2015.We present the results of four experiments concerning the evaluation people make of sentences involving “many”, showing that two sentences of the form “many As are Bs” vs. “many As are Cs” need not be equivalent when evaluated relative to a background in which B and C have the same cardinality and proportion to A, but in which B and C are predicates with opposite semantic and affective values. The data provide evidence that subjects lower the standard relevant to ascribe “many” for the more nega…Read more
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104An empirical investigation of guilty pleasuresPhilosophical Psychology 32 (7): 1129-1155. 2019.In everyday language, the expression ‘guilty pleasure’ refers to instances where one feels bad about enjoying a particular artwork. Thus, one’s experience of guilty pleasure seems to involve the feeling that one should not enjoy this particular artwork and, by implication, the belief that there are norms according to which some aesthetic responses are more appropriate than others. One natural assumption would be that these norms are first and foremost aesthetic norms. However, this suggestion ru…Read more
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90Of Hosts and Men: Westworld and SpeciesismIn James South & Kimberly Engels (eds.), Westworld and Philosophy, Wiley-blackwell. 2018.People's attitude to animals is similar to the attitude Westworld has people adopt vis‐a‐vis the hosts: People often deem animal suffering acceptable because it improves their well‐being but still feel upset when an animal is mistreated just for the sake of it. Speciesism is the view that human well‐being matters more than that of other creatures. One justification for this view attempts to ground human beings’ special moral status in their membership in the human species itself. Some of Westwor…Read more
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90Behavioral Circumscription and the Folk Psychology of Belief: A Study in Ethno-MentalizingThought: A Journal of Philosophy 6 (3): 193-203. 2017.Is behavioral integration a necessary feature of belief in folk psychology? Our data from over 5,000 people across 26 samples, spanning 22 countries suggests that it is not. Given the surprising cross-cultural robustness of our findings, we argue that the types of evidence for the ascription of a belief are, at least in some circumstances, lexicographically ordered: assertions are first taken into account, and when an agent sincerely asserts that p, nonlinguistic behavioral evidence is disregard…Read more
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83La philosophie comme « armchair psychology »RÉPHA, revue étudiante de philosophie analytique 1 21-28. 2009.
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81RETRACTED: Beyond moral dilemmas: The role of reasoning in five categories of utilitarian judgmentCognition 209 (C): 104572. 2021.Over the past two decades, the study of moral reasoning has been heavily influenced by Joshua Greene’s dual-process model of moral judgment, according to which deontological judgments are typically supported by intuitive, automatic processes while utilitarian judgments are typically supported by reflective, conscious processes. However, most of the evidence gathered in support of this model comes from the study of people’s judgments about sacrificial dilemmas, such as Trolley Problems. To which …Read more
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77Lost in Intensity: Is there an empirical solution to the quasi-emotions debate?Aesthetic Investigations 4 (1): 460-482. 2020.Contrary to the emotions we feel in everyday contexts, the emotions we feel for fictional characters do not seem to require a belief in the existence of their object. This observation has given birth to a famous philosophical paradox (the ‘paradox of fiction’), and has led some philosophers to claim that the emotions we feel for fictional characters are not genuine emotions but rather “quasi-emotions”. Since then, the existence of quasi-emotions has been a hotly debated issue. Recently, philosop…Read more
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77Is the phenomenological overflow argument really supported by subjective reports?Mind and Language 36 (3): 422-450. 2021.Does phenomenal consciousness overflow access consciousness? Some researchers have claimed that it does, relying on interpretations of various psychological experiments such as Sperling's or Landman's, and crucially using alleged subjective reports from participants to argue in favor of these interpretations. However, systematic empirical investigations of participants' subjective reports are scarce. To fill this gap, we reproduced Sperling's and Landman's experiments, and carefully collected re…Read more
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76The emotional shape of our moral life: Anger-related emotions and mutualistic anthropologyBehavioral and Brain Sciences 36 (1). 2013.The evolutionary hypothesis advanced by Baumard et al. makes precise predictions on which emotions should play the main role in our moral lives: morality should be more closely linked to emotions (like contempt and disgust) than to emotions (like anger). Here, we argue that these predictions run contrary to most psychological evidence
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70Dans cet article, nous proposons de montrer expérimentalement que le "sens commun" n'est en matière moral ni complètement objectiviste ni complètement relativiste, mais qu'un même individu peut être tantôt objectiviste tantôt relativiste. De même, nous montrons que les jugements de goût portant sur le prédicat "dégoûtant" ne sont pas toujours relativiste mais peuvent varier selon le contexte entre objectivisme et relativisme
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69Being movedPhilosophical Studies 169 (3): 447-466. 2014.In this paper, we argue that, barring a few important exceptions, the phenomenon we refer to using the expression “being moved” is a distinct type of emotion. In this paper’s first section, we motivate this hypothesis by reflecting on our linguistic use of this expression. In section two, pursuing a methodology that is both conceptual and empirical, we try to show that the phenomenon satisfies the five most commonly used criteria in philosophy and psychology for thinking that some affective epis…Read more
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60Frankfurt-Style Cases and the Explanation Condition for Moral Responsibility: a Reply to SwensonActa Analytica 32 (4): 427-446. 2017.Frankfurt-style cases are supposed to constitute counter-examples to the principle of alternate possibilities, for they are cases in which we have the intuition that an agent is morally responsible for his action, even though he could not have done otherwise. In a recent paper, Swenson rejects this conclusion, on the basis of a comparison between standard FSCs, which typically feature actions, and similar cases involving omissions. Because the absence of alternate possibilities seems to preclude…Read more
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58La Philosophie Expérimentale (edited book)Vuibert. 2012.La philosophie expérimentale est un mouvement récent qui tente de faire progresser certains débats philosophiques grâce à l'utilisation de méthodes expérimentales. À la différence de la philosophie conventionnelle qui privilégie l'analyse conceptuelle ou la spéculation, la philosophie expérimentale préconise le recours aux études empiriques pour mieux comprendre les concepts philosophiques. Apparue il y a une dizaine d'années dans les pays anglo-saxons, cette approche constitue actuellement l'un…Read more
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52What Happened to the Trolley Problem?Journal of the Indian Council of Philosophical Research 34 (3): 543-564. 2017.In this paper, I provide a general introduction to the trolley problem. I describe its birth as a philosophical thought experiment, then its successful career in moral psychology. I explain the different reasons behind its popularity and success but argue that, despite its popularity and widespread utilization in psychological research, few researchers have actually tried to directly solve it and that we are still ignorant of the real factors guiding our responses to trolley cases. Against the i…Read more
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50How pills undermine skills: Moralization of cognitive enhancement and causal selectionConsciousness and Cognition 91 (C): 103120. 2021.Despite the promise to boost human potential and wellbeing, enhancement drugs face recurring ethical scrutiny. The present studies examined attitudes toward cognitive enhancement in order to learn more about these ethical concerns, who has them, and the circumstances in which they arise. Fairness-based concerns underlay opposition to competitive use—even though enhancement drugs were described as legal, accessible and affordable. Moral values also influenced how subsequent rewards were causally …Read more
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43Two kinds of respect for two kinds of contempt: Why contempt can be both a sentiment and an emotionBehavioral and Brain Sciences 40. 2017.Gervais & Fessler argue that because contempt is a sentiment, it cannot be an emotion. However, like many affective labels, it could be that “contempt” refers both to a sentiment and to a distinct emotion. This possibility is made salient by the fact that contempt can be defined by contrast with respect, but that there are different kinds of respect.
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43What makes a life meaningful? Folk intuitions about the content and shape of meaningful livesPhilosophical Psychology 36 (3): 477-509. 2023.It is often assumed that most people want their life to be “meaningful”. But what exactly does this mean? Though numerous research have documented which factors lead people to experience their life as meaningful and people’s theories about the best ways to secure a meaningful life, investigations in people’s concept of meaningful life are scarce. In this paper, we investigate the folk concept of a meaningful life by studying people’s third-person attribution of meaningfulness. We draw on hypothe…Read more
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39Can Folk Aesthetics Ground Aesthetic Realism?The Monist 95 (2): 241-263. 2012.We challenge an argument that aims to support Aesthetic Realism by claiming, first, that common sense is realist about aesthetic judgments because it considers that aesthetic judgments can be right or wrong, and, second, that becauseAesthetic Realism comes from and accounts for “folk aesthetics,” it is the best aesthetic theory available.We empirically evaluate this argument by probing whether ordinary people with no training whatsoever in the subtle debates of aesthetic philosophy consider thei…Read more
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37Free love? On the relation between belief in free will, determinism, and passionate loveConsciousness and Cognition 46 47-59. 2016.
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37Being moved by meaningfulness: appraisals of surpassing internal standards elicit being moved by relationships and achievementsCognition and Emotion 33 (7): 1387-1409. 2019.ABSTRACTPeople can be moved and overwhelmed, a phenomenon typically accompanied by goose-bumps and tears. We argue that these feelings of being moved are not limited to situations that are appraise...
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30“Sounds Fine, But No Thanks!”: On Distinguishing Judgments About Action and Acceptability in Attitudes Toward Cognitive EnhancementAmerican Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 10 (1): 57-59. 2019.
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26Experimental Philosophy of Aesthetics: Aesthetic JudgmentIn Alexander Max Bauer & Stephan Kornmesser (eds.), The Compact Compendium of Experimental Philosophy, De Gruyter. pp. 393-416. 2023.
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24Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Aesthetics (edited book)Bloomsbury Academic. 2018.Experimental philosophy has blossomed into a variety of philosophical fields including ethics, epistemology, metaphysics and philosophy of language. But there has been very little experimental philosophical research in the domain of philosophical aesthetics. Advances to Experimental Philosophy of Aesthetics introduces this burgeoning research field, presenting it both in its unity and diversity, and determining the nature and methods of an experimental philosophy of aesthetics. Addressing a wide…Read more
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20Retraction notice to “ Beyond moral dilemmas: The role of reasoning in five categories of utilitarian judgment” Cognition 209 (2021) 104572 (review)Cognition 216 (C): 104860. 2021.
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19In this paper, I question the dichotomy between fundamental moral disagreements, arising from divergences on moral principles, and superficial moral disagreements, that are expected to disappear under ideal epistemic circumstances. I claim that there are many other possibilities for moral disagreements, including moral disagreements that do not arise from different moral principles but would not disappear under ideal epistemic conditions. I describe two major kinds of such disagreements: semi-fu…Read more
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17An Assessment of Scaife and Webber’s ‘Consideration Hypothesis’Journal of Moral Philosophy 11 (1): 57-79. 2014.The ‘Knobe effect’ is the name given to the empirical finding that judgments about whether an action is intentional or not seems to depend on the moral valence of this action. To account for this phenomenon, Scaife and Webber have recently advanced the ‘Consideration Hypothesis’, according to which people’s ascriptions of intentionality are driven by whether they think the agent took the outcome in consideration when taking his decision. In this paper, I examine Scaife and Webber’s hypothesis an…Read more
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17Origines et fondations naturelles des normesArchives de Philosophie du Droit 55 19-46. 2012.L’idée d’une fondation naturelle des normes a rencontré de nombreuses résistances. Néanmoins, de récents développements en sciences cognitives ont tenté de donner un nouveau sens à l’idée d’une fondation naturelle de ces normes. Après avoir présenté un échantillon de ces approches, je conclurai néanmoins que leurs contributions ont en général un apport plutôt sceptique, en permettant de repérer les normes qui ne sont pas fondées plus que celles qui le sont
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University of GenevaPost-doctoral fellow
Geneva, Switzerland
Areas of Specialization
Meta-Ethics |
Areas of Interest
Metaphilosophy |
Philosophy of Mind |
Aesthetics |
Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
PhilPapers Editorships
Experimental Aesthetics |