-
40Between 1960 and 1999, it was quite common for philosophers to rely almost completely on a priori methods to advance their arguments ; in a recent study by Knobe, the majority of papers sampled from this period used strictly a priori methods. In contrast, in the last decade and a half, many philosophers' strategy for making progress on philosophical questions has changed. Philosophers are now relying more heavily on empirical data—including running their own observational and experimental studie…Read more
-
375Teleological essentialism across developmentProceedings of the 44th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. forthcoming.Do young children have a teleological conception of the essence of natural kinds? We tested this by examining how the preservation or alteration of an animal’s purpose affected children’s persistence judgments (N = 40, ages 4 - 12, Mean Age = 7.04, 61% female). We found that even when surface-level features of an animal (e.g., a bee) were preserved, if the entity’s purpose changed (e.g., the bee now spins webs), children were more likely to categorize the entity as a member of a different natura…Read more
-
98Explanatory anti-psychologism overturned by lay and scientific case classificationsSynthese 191 (5): 1-23. 2014.Many philosophers of science follow Hempel in embracing both substantive and methodological anti-psychologism regarding the study of explanation. The former thesis denies that explanations are constituted by psychological events, and the latter denies that psychological research can contribute much to the philosophical investigation of the nature of explanation. Substantive anti-psychologism is commonly defended by citing cases, such as hyper-complex descriptions or vast computer simulations, wh…Read more
-
92Ordering effects, updating effects, and the specter of global skepticismSynthese 194 (4): 1189-1218. 2017.One widely-endorsed argument in the experimental philosophy literature maintains that intuitive judgments are unreliable because they are influenced by the order in which thought experiments prompting those judgments are presented. Here, we explicitly state this argument from ordering effects and show that any plausible understanding of the argument leads to an untenable conclusion. First, we show that the normative principle is ambiguous. On one reading of the principle, the empirical observati…Read more
-
85Evidence for anti-intellectualism about know-how from a sentence recognition taskSynthese 193 (9). 2016.An emerging trend in cognitive science is to explore central epistemological questions using psychological methods. Early work in this growing area of research has revealed that epistemologists’ theories of knowledge diverge in various ways from the ways in which ordinary people think of knowledge. Reflecting the practices of epistemology as a whole, the vast majority of these studies have focused on the concept of propositional knowledge, or knowledge-that. Many philosophers, however, have argu…Read more
-
49A Bayesian framework for knowledge attribution: Evidence from semantic integrationCognition 139 (C): 92-104. 2015.We propose a Bayesian framework for the attribution of knowledge, and apply this framework to generate novel predictions about knowledge attribution for different types of “Gettier cases”, in which an agent is led to a justified true belief yet has made erroneous assumptions. We tested these predictions using a paradigm based on semantic integration. We coded the frequencies with which participants falsely recalled the word “thought” as “knew” (or a near synonym), yielding an implicit measure of…Read more
-
49A Single Counterexample Leads to Moral Belief RevisionCognitive Science 39 (8): 1950-1964. 2015.What kind of evidence will lead people to revise their moral beliefs? Moral beliefs are often strongly held convictions, and existing research has shown that morality is rooted in emotion and socialization rather than deliberative reasoning. In addition, more general issues—such as confirmation bias—further impede coherent belief revision. Here, we explored a unique means for inducing belief revision. In two experiments, participants considered a moral dilemma in which an overwhelming majority o…Read more
-
71Belief Updating in Moral DilemmasReview of Philosophy and Psychology 4 (4): 705-714. 2013.Moral psychologists have shown that people’s past moral experiences can affect their subsequent moral decisions. One prominent finding in this line of research is that when people make a judgment about the Trolley dilemma after considering the Footbridge dilemma, they are significantly less likely to decide it is acceptable to redirect a train to save five people. Additionally, this ordering effect is asymmetrical, as making a judgment about the Trolley dilemma has little to no effect on people’…Read more
-
19Intuitions about personal identity are rooted in essentialist thinking across developmentCognition 191 (C): 103981. 2019.
-
648Intelligibility is Necessary for Scientific Explanation, but Accuracy May Not BeIn Naomi Miyake, David Peebles & Richard Cooper (eds.), Proceedings of the Thirty-Fourth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Cognitive Science Society. 2012.Many philosophers of science believe that empirical psychology can contribute little to the philosophical investigation of explanations. They take this to be shown by the fact that certain explanations fail to elicit any relevant psychological events (e.g., familiarity, insight, intelligibility, etc.). We report results from a study suggesting that, at least among those with extensive science training, a capacity to render an event intelligible is considered a requirement for explanation. We als…Read more
Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Philosophy of Psychology |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Philosophy of Psychology |
Epistemology |