Velleman on Experimental Philosophy

Over at Left2Right, David Velleman has a post arguing that experimental philosophy will not be a helpful method in trying to understand either the nature of intentional action or the problem of free will.  His concluding paragraphs are:

Of course, it's useful to know what most people think about intentional action and moral responsibility.  In philosophizing on these topics, we can't stray too far from what people think, lest we end up changing the subject, talking about things that won't be recognizable as intentional action or moral responsibility at all.  Even Aristotle relied on endoxa — received opinions — as a starting point of his inquiries. 

Maybe Aristotle was the first "experimental philosopher", then?  No.  Aristotle knew that the real philosophizing starts after the endoxa have been surveyed. 

His view remains true today.

I think that Velleman's own philosophical work has been consistently excellent, and I'm a bit surprised that his reaction to experimental philosophy was so negative.  I'd be curious to hear what readers of this blog think of his argument. 

Comments

[James Gibson]

From what I can see, Velleman's critical comments are representative of the thoughts of many philosophers. It is not that there is no value to experimental philosophy; there surely is value to be found. But beyond figuring out what people think about a particular topic and being able to challenge sweeping claims about what the guy on the street believes, I suppose the important questions people like Velleman may have are these: why is experimental philosophy so important? Why is it necessary, if indeed it is? What is the pay off and how big is the pay off that we should expect from doing experimental philosophy? Each of these questions are related, obviously. But the answers aren't obvious to those who aren't doing what is recognized as experimental philosophy, at least experimental philosophy as a new trend (maybe this last claim about how new it is is inapt). It would be helpful if you or someone else (e.g., Eddie?) could point us to some papers that address these questions directly. Any suggestions?

[Kip Werking]

"Aristotle knew that the real philosophizing starts after the endoxa have been surveyed."

The critics of experimental philosophy need to be very careful to avoid just innoculating their precious philosophical beliefs from the scrunity of science. Velleman says that we cannot "stray *too* far" from folk concepts. How far is too far? My counter-argument would be: we cannot stray at all. There is no middle ground. If by "free will" people mean a concept with attributes A, B, C, and philosophers instead talk about a concept with attributes D, E, F, then we are no longer talking about free will, but free will*.

Philosophers sometimes feel tempted, or seduced, with regard not just to belief in free will but also belief in other precious things, into defending the existence of something by defending the existence of something similar in name only. The name is the same but the substance is different. But people do, and should, only care about the substance, not the name.

This is the dilemma of revisionism. It is, for example, Manuel Vargas' constant challenge in defending his view. Experimental philosophy, in my estimation, is the great guardian against revisionism. This cuts both ways: many or most experimental philosophers, in this area, question the popular claim that incompatibilism is intuitive. On their view, incompatibilist concepts of free will may be revisionary. Personally, I consider the finding of Nichols and Knobe that "[p]erhaps the most obvious interpretation of our results is that affect distorts lay judgments of responsibility, and this distortion explains compatibilist responses" to be especially telling.

I've noted before that the difference between hard compatibilists and free will deniers, unlike the difference between either of them and libertarians, is between the attributions one should make, given an identical understanding of the world, and not about how the world actually is. In other words, we are disagreeing about premises and not logic. Perhaps the latter is the only area proper to philosophy. Philosophers cannot create premises in a vacuum, and if their premises are challenged, no amount of philosophy (except, perhaps, appealing to other premises) can defend them. Ultimately, these premises must be tested in the fire of science. The dispute between hard compatibilists and free will deniers does not, it seems to me, involve any logic whatsoever. Rather, the dispute involves the truth of certain controversial premises (e.g. TNR). Similarly, the dispute between libertarians and non-libertarians about whether indeterminism in our brains significantly affects our decision-making is one, not for philosophers, but neurosurgeons. Perhaps philosophers have done all they can on the question of free will's existence; the only work left to be done belongs to science.

[hilzoy]

Hi. I wrote about the article on my, um, other blog, where I tend not to write much about philosophy, here. I don't take up the question of revision of ordinary concepts there. For what it's worth, though, I think that it's not as cut and dried as Kip Werking suggests:

"If by "free will" people mean a concept with attributes A, B, C, and philosophers instead talk about a concept with attributes D, E, F, then we are no longer talking about free will, but free will*."

Some attributes are criterial: nothing without those attributes would count as free. Some are not: I imagine a lot of people could be talked out of their initial responses to some of the questions cited in the article without thereby ceasing to talk about freedom. Which properties are which, and whether people's responses to surveys would settle this question, I think are open to a lot of debate.

I also think that if, for instance, someone gave an account of something s/he called "freedom" that captured everything we take to be at stake in debates about free will, the further question whether or not we should call it "freedom" or "freedom*" would not be very important. Presumably, there's some reason we care about freedom of the will, moral responsibility, etc., and if some modification will allow us to get what we care about, that would, I think, be a lot.

[hilzoy]

Sorry -- should have identified myself more clearly. This and the preceding post are by me, Hilary Bok.

[Robert Allen]

"If by "free will" people mean a concept with attributes A, B, C, and philosophers instead talk about a concept with attributes D, E, F, then we are no longer talking about free will, but free will*. ... Perhaps philosophers have done all they can on the question of free will's existence; the only work left to be done belongs to science." Werking

Bullshit; and we've gone over this before: philosophers, not lay persons or scientists, are the ones to determine what fw is and whether or not it exists. (If you are so enamored of science, you ought to be working in a laboratory somewhere, instead of studying fw literature.) I'm not going to bother repeating my arguments, as not even Prof. Velleman can get through to you. Like Smeltzer concluded a while back, all you do is run your mouth.

[tnadelhoffer]

Robert,
Can we please not revisit the fact that you (a) don't like the very idea of experimental philosophy, and (b) prefer to be abusive rather than civil. Perhaps you will be more professional at the upcoming INPC where a number of the people whose views you dismiss tout court will be presenting their work. Apparently, not everyone finds the stuff we do as unhelpful as you do--but that might only be because they have actually bothered to read it. In any event, I won't be lured back into an unproductive and heated "exchange" with you this time around. You may not agree with or even like Kip--but that is no grounds for being hostile towards him or anyone else.

[Eddy Nahmias]

First, I would suggest that if people (e.g., James) are interested in examining the potential payoffs, or lack of payoffs, of experimental philosophy, look at some of the papers published or being published. Nichols JCC piece has a wonderful opening riff on three projects, descriptive, substantive, and prescriptive. NO ONE in exp phil thinks doing experiments and getting results about folk intuitions, concepts, or theories by itself answers any substantive or prescriptive questions. But most think such results (a) serve as a starting point for substantive and prescriptive projects (e.g., whether revisionism is called for; also see below) and (b) raise interesting meta-philosophical questions, such as the nature of intuitions, whose should matter, and how they should matter in the substantive project. For more discussion of these issues, I humbly suggest the opening and closing sections of my group's "Is Incompatibilism Intuitive?" or the work of Knobe, Nadelhoffer, or Weisberg, Nichols, Stich papers. Unsurprisingly given the nascent nature of the field, people doing exp phil differ in what they take to be the philosophical payoff.

I'll repeat one example I think illustrates the potential payoff. Suppose, just for the sake of argument, that I'm right and most non-philosophers are not in fact troubled by the philosophical conception of determinism (suppose they only become troubled by determinism when it is presented in a way that suggests epiphenomenalism about conscious mental states). If so, I think this presents a dilemma for both libertarians and skeptics about free will (whose skepticism requires a libertarian conception of freedom that they consider unsatisfied by us or impossible to satisfy). Either give up the libertarian conception of freedom and accept compatibilist conceptions or develop an argument for why the proper notion of freedom and moral responsibility requires a libertarian conception. I suspect the latter move would take the form of starting from a moral theory (e.g., Kant's) and arguing that the theory demands a libertarian conception of free will. But I'd like to hear others' views--again assuming for the sake of argument that the folk are compatibilists--about (a) whether there is a horn of the dilemma I've missed or (b) what the arguments are for why the libertarian conception is the one we should adopt (and prescribe?).

[Sean Aas]

Eddy-

I could use a clarification on what you take to be the (substantive/prescriptive) relevance of your hypothesis that the folk are compatbilists. Say, for the sake of argument, that (at least some important subset of-) the folk are compatibilists in just the way that your data suggests (i.e., worried about epiphenomenalism but not determinism). Your comment here (and dicusssion elsewhere) suggests that you take this at least to rob incompatibilism of a source of support which incompatibilists have traditionally made a claim to. Thus, you say, a dilemma arises for the incompatibilis- provide another argument for her view or give it up.

My question is this- does this dilemma arise because the fact that the folk are compatibilists shift the *burden of proof* onto the incompatibilist, or simply because it robs the incompatibilist position of the strongest traditional argument for it- i.e., that something like AP is intuitive? It seems to me that these are different positions on the relevance of the data, and I'm a little worried that your conclusion doesn't follow unless you take the former, stronger, position on the philosophical relevance of folk intutions, as it seems to me that on the latter, weaker view, the (hypothesized) fact that the folk are compabilists does little more than 'level the playing field', in that is creates no special problem for the incompatibilist other than the requirement that she argue for her position without appeal to the justificatory status of folk intuitions. But in the absence of an account of the epistemic force of these intuitions (i.e., an account of how and why they should guide our deliberations about philosophical questions), I see no reason to believe that this same requirement should not apply to the compatibilist as well, whether the folk agree with him or not.

So on either the 'burden of proof' or 'challenges traditional support' interpretation of the relevance of folk intuitions to this particular debate, it seems to me that the data presents a special challenge for the incompatibilist only on the assumption of some (as yet unspecified, I think) general story about the epistemic status of folk intuitions generally.

The uphsot of this may be that it's hard to see how we can draw conclusion from X-Phi. data that are relevant to a particular philosophical problem (e.g., FW/MR), without taking a position on broader questions that belong in the first instance to epistemology and the philosophy of mind and language. This is not, of course, to denigrate the value of this work- I wholeheartedly agree that the meta-philosophical questions it raises are vitally important, and, depending how these are resolved, important substantive/prescriptive conclusions may follow. But that's just the thing- it's not clear to me that, in the (current, and hopefully temporary) absence of a resolution/clarification of these broader issues, that we can draw much from it in the way of substantive or prescriptive conclusions about specific philosophical problems.

[Paul Torek]

There is a kind of intuition on which the folk rightly reign supreme: linguistic intuition. Velleman makes the key point about the danger of changing the subject, but then fails to give the experimental devils their due, I feel. This is a charge which at least some incompatibilists have pressed against some compatibilists. It would be surprising if the X-Philes could not provide some ammo to one or both sides in that debate.

Hilary is right that some attributes are criterial and some are not, but again, I think the experimentalists can help here. The hypothesis that an attribute is part and parcel of the very meaning of a given term is a testable hypothesis. It can be tested by presenting people with a scenario that provides all other relevant attributes and omits the one, and by verifying that the subjects understand the scenario as intended.

[Sean Aas]

Paul's comment illustrates precisely the point I was attempting to make- if he is right about the authority of folk linguistic intentions, then the X-Phi. data has important implications. But it seems to me that this authority is at least controversial, if not outright dubious, assuming as it seems to some form of semantic internalism about the relevant terms. If, for instance, the referent of 'free action' (read:H20) is fixed by something outside the head, then it is quite possible that most or even all of the folk could be mistaken about what 'free action' (H20) refers to. So again, the importance of the data regarding folk intuitions hinges on broader philosophical questions about the (meta-) semantic properties of the terms in question.

[Paul Torek]

I'm a semantic externalist myself, but I'm not familiar with any post-behavorist externalist account that fixes reference purely by what's outside the head. Rather, reference depends on the relationships between what's inside and what's outside. And to understand those relationships, part of what we must understand is what's inside.

[zeljka]

>If by "free will" people mean a concept with attributes A, B, C, and philosophers instead talk about a concept with attributes D, E, F, then we are no longer talking about free will, but free will*

exactly. and since philosophers are interested in free will* (otherwise they would be talking about free will) then empirical research on free will is irrelevant for them.