Experimental Philosophy @xphilosopher.bsky.social · 30/09/2026I am fascinated by that question, but I don't know the answer One possible answer would be that it is a sociological process of the type Cummins describes in this famous passage, where agreeing with certain claims becomes an entrance requirement for even participating in the discussion 271
Experimental Philosophy @xphilosopher.bsky.social · 24/09/2026There hasn’t been enough discussion in philosophy of this wonderful research by April Bailey (@ahbailey.bsky.social) She provides a mountain of evidence for the claim that people see MEN as the prototype of the category of human beings www.researchgate.net/profile/Apri... 0238
Experimental Philosophy @xphilosopher.bsky.social · 22/09/2026Imagine an LLM that behaves like a person in some ways but runs on completely different physical stuff (microchips instead of a biological brain). Would this LLM be conscious? There is a lot of experimental philosophy research on precisely this question markmphelan.github.io/papers/consc... 222
Experimental Philosophy @xphilosopher.bsky.social · 15/09/2026This new tech is a way of building on Hansen's beautiful experimental philosophy paper "Socratic Questionnaires" (with Kathryn Francis & Hamish Greening) philarchive.org/rec/HANSQ 020
Experimental Philosophy @xphilosopher.bsky.social · 15/09/2026Here are some screenshots from my session I am pretty impressed. This thing is asking questions that feel a lot like the questions that philosophers typically ask students in classes 110
Experimental Philosophy @xphilosopher.bsky.social · 15/09/2026Philosopher @nathansen.bsky.social has created a website that uses AI to take people through a Socratic dialogue about a philosophical thought experiment I gave it a try. In my opinion, it really does help users think through these questions www.ux-phi.com/experiments 1269
Experimental Philosophy @xphilosopher.bsky.social · 12/09/2026I agree! In our studies on people's views about religion, politics, love, etc., we find that: (a) people openly acknowledge that these views are not evidence-sensitive but (b) people nonetheless do refer to these views as "beliefs" @m-meyer.bsky.social philarchive.org/rec/MEYDOI-2 041
Experimental Philosophy @xphilosopher.bsky.social · 11/09/2026Many of you will know the famous finding from @existwell.bsky.social and Derek Anderson: Philosophers' views on philosophical questions are not predicted by their personality traits But why not? I asked Anderson about this, and he had a very intriguing suggestion philarchive.org/rec/YADTPO-2 43611
Experimental Philosophy @xphilosopher.bsky.social · 02/09/2026I strongly agree with this claim (see screenshot) I wonder if all fields go through this same trajectory? At first, there’s a lot of discussion of more “meta-“ questions about the nature of the field itself. Then, gradually, everyone stops talking about that stuff and just starts doing research 152
Experimental Philosophy @xphilosopher.bsky.social · 30/08/2026If you are doing something morally bad, people think two things: - that you can still be happy at this specific moment (see figure on left) - that in some larger way, you are not happy (see figure on right) 031
Experimental Philosophy @xphilosopher.bsky.social · 30/08/2026"Are you happy?" New research on two ways to understand this question: - as a question about how you feel right now, in this moment - as a question about the overall state of your life These two understandings turn out to be radically different www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... 2173
Experimental Philosophy @xphilosopher.bsky.social · 22/08/2026And here is a paper about dual process in population ethics judgments www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10... 000
Experimental Philosophy @xphilosopher.bsky.social · 22/08/2026There's a lot of great experimental work on population ethics Here is a nice paper but Schoenegger & @benleoecon.bsky.social on judgments about abstract principles vs. intuitions about concrete cases books.google.com/books?id=nkX... 110
Experimental Philosophy @xphilosopher.bsky.social · 22/08/2026So Sage argues: if we want to understand why these studies fail to replicate, we can’t blame the people doing qualitative work The solution lies elsewhere 3/3 010
Experimental Philosophy @xphilosopher.bsky.social · 22/08/2026The sociology research that fails to replicate is scientific quantitative research If we think in terms of opposing camps within sociology, this is the part that people doing more “critical” or qualitative work are usually not too fond of 2/3 110
Experimental Philosophy @xphilosopher.bsky.social · 08/08/2026Overall, it looks like: 1. Experimental philosophers do want to make all of their results available But: 2. They need to have some way of doing this that doesn't involve writing a full paper (with literature review, discussion of theoretical implications, etc.) 160
Experimental Philosophy @xphilosopher.bsky.social · 23/07/2026Is it possible to change belief in free will with a quick manipulation? Answer seems to be: There is only an effect if you measure free will belief *immediately* after the manipulation… no effect if you measure free will belief even *a few minutes later* www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... 172
Experimental Philosophy @xphilosopher.bsky.social · 17/07/2026Philosophers, we need your help We are running a study on philosophers’ intuitions about thought experiments moralsciencelab.com/intuitions/ Only takes a few minutes! 32522
Experimental Philosophy @xphilosopher.bsky.social · 04/07/2026Thanks Matt! Just for people who haven't read the full paper, I'm including screenshots of the two cases that the authors describe as fake barn cases 110
Experimental Philosophy @xphilosopher.bsky.social · 04/07/2026The orthodoxy in philosophy is that there’s no knowledge in “fake barn” cases But in a study of philosophers, the majority say that there *is* knowledge in fake barn cases How is it even possible for philosophical orthodoxy to come apart like this from what philosophers actually believe? 3140
Experimental Philosophy @xphilosopher.bsky.social · 10/06/2026People sometimes agree to seemingly teleological sentences like: "The sun produces light so that plants can photosynthesize" Does this mean that people literally think the sun produces light for that purpose? New paper in Cognition suggests the answer is No www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... 0101
Experimental Philosophy @xphilosopher.bsky.social · 19/05/2026You can say: There's a sense in which this clearly isn't beautiful, but in a deep sense, it truly is beautiful But you can't say that same thing with "pretty" 100
Experimental Philosophy @xphilosopher.bsky.social · 23/04/2026Factor analysis therefore reveals a very peculiar factor structure There is no single latent dimension that goes from direct to indirect realism. Instead, there are TWO distinct factors: agreement with direct realism and agreement with indirect realism Thus, a single person can be high on both 000
Experimental Philosophy @xphilosopher.bsky.social · 23/04/2026The studies find that individual people often have conflicting intuitions. An individual person will have an intuition drawing them toward direct realism and then also an intuition pulling them in the exact opposite direction, toward indirect realism 100
Experimental Philosophy @xphilosopher.bsky.social · 14/04/2026Full Psych Science paper from @bxjaeger.bsky.social available at: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... Here is the pattern of judgments for the individual targets: 042
Experimental Philosophy @xphilosopher.bsky.social · 14/04/2026How do people decide whether it’s wrong to harm a pig? A chimp? A baby? In the West, these judgments are based more on *experience* (being able to feel) than on *agency* (being able to think and act) New study finds that same pattern across other cultures journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... 13111
Experimental Philosophy @xphilosopher.bsky.social · 09/04/2026Interview with philosopher/psychologist @felipedebrigard.bsky.social. Discusses his work, but also more personal aspects of his life Quotation here is about what it was like growing up during a very violent period in the history of Colombia www.whatisitliketobeaphilosopher.com#/felipe-de-b... 1256
Experimental Philosophy @xphilosopher.bsky.social · 03/04/2026In a recent paper, we find that there has been a truly massive increase in the use of these other formal methods in philosophy link.springer.com/article/10.1... 180
Experimental Philosophy @xphilosopher.bsky.social · 10/02/2026Psychologist George Newman has a new book out about creativity, but it’s about almost exactly the opposite of what people usually mean by “creativity” Usual topic: ideas that are zany or original Newman’s topic: ideas that actually work www.amazon.com/How-Great-Id... 171
Experimental Philosophy @xphilosopher.bsky.social · 02/02/2026New experimental jurisprudence paper from Iza Skoczen on the legal concept PERJURY vs. the ordinary concept LYING This paper introduces a surprising new view about the relationship between legal concepts and ordinary concepts @izaskoczen.bsky.social x.com/izaskoczen/s... 1136
Experimental Philosophy @xphilosopher.bsky.social · 01/01/2026Beautiful experimental philosophy paper on what people ordinarily mean when they say that a statement is “true” Turns out it’s not always about corresponding correctly to the facts. Sometimes it’s more closely related to a moral ideal of “truthfulness” philarchive.org/archive/ZYGTJN 3439
Experimental Philosophy @xphilosopher.bsky.social · 22/12/2025Non-paywalled version: osf.io/preprints/ps... 0111
Experimental Philosophy @xphilosopher.bsky.social · 22/12/2025We find a two-factor solution: Beliefs vary in whether in: (a) whether they are aimed at tracking facts in the world (b) whether they are aimed at expressing your identity Strikingly, these can vary independently! A single belief can be very high in both 3/ 130
Experimental Philosophy @xphilosopher.bsky.social · 22/12/2025- Would you describe the belief by saying “I think…” vs. “I believe…”? - Does having this belief relate to your membership in a social group? … and many others The key question was whether we can identify certain deeper factors underlying all these dimensions 2/ 110
Experimental Philosophy @xphilosopher.bsky.social · 14/12/2025“Children enter from the door on the left.” This sentence is what’s called a GENERIC… but it isn’t saying anything general about the nature of children. What then makes it generic? New theory from @kateritch.bsky.social and Ny Vasil philpapers.org/archive/RITG... 3144
Experimental Philosophy @xphilosopher.bsky.social · 12/12/2025New experimental paper on intuitions about whether people have obligations *to themselves* From philosopher Laura Soter (@laurasoter.bsky.social) in JPSP psycnet.apa.org/record/2027-... 03011
Experimental Philosophy @xphilosopher.bsky.social · 28/11/2025“Murder is wrong, but I don’t disapprove of it” Expressivist theories of moral language seem to suggest that this sentence should make no sense — but a new paper in Cognition finds that people actually *do* find this sentence largely acceptable www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... 2225
Experimental Philosophy @xphilosopher.bsky.social · 06/11/2025Results from the most well-known dissonance experiment are mathematically impossible @steamtraen.eu (To get the intuition behind this analysis, imagine that we take the mean of 10 Likert scale scores. The mean could be 4.20 but not 4.25) mattiheino.com/2016/11/13/l... 3176
Experimental Philosophy @xphilosopher.bsky.social · 27/10/2025It has long been thought that there is a special connection between agency and causal judgment But it turns out the effect of agency arises not just for causal verbs but also for non-causal verbs like “touch” @samiyousif.bsky.social @fabiennemartin.bsky.social philpapers.org/archive/JOON... 040
Experimental Philosophy @xphilosopher.bsky.social · 27/10/2025People rarely use the word “cause,” but strikingly, young children already understand the difference between “Jane caused…” and “Jane broke…” @tobigerstenberg.bsky.social osf.io/preprints/ps... 131
Experimental Philosophy @xphilosopher.bsky.social · 27/10/2025Now consider cases of what philosophers call “double prevention” In these cases, people respond very differently to sentences like “Jane caused…” vs. sentences like “Jane broke…” philpapers.org/archive/ROSC... 100
Experimental Philosophy @xphilosopher.bsky.social · 27/10/2025Consider whether it’s better to use a sentence like “Jane broke the glass” to describe an action or an omission Turns out that in ‘disjunctive’ cases, people think these sentences are more appropriate for omissions than for actions (!) osf.io/preprints/ps... 121
Experimental Philosophy @xphilosopher.bsky.social · 27/10/2025There’s a deep difference between sentences like: (1) Jane caused the glass to break. vs. (2) Jane broke the glass. A surge of experimental philosophy research has led to some surprising discoveries about sentences like (2) [Thread] 1213
Experimental Philosophy @xphilosopher.bsky.social · 27/09/2025This work is closely related with the idea of resource rationality in cognitive science The core thought is that we cannot possibly think about everything, so we need concepts that help focus our attention on the things that are worth thinking about 050
Experimental Philosophy @xphilosopher.bsky.social · 27/09/2025Oddly enough, there actually is experimental philosophy research on this People with training in philosophy have significantly less visual imagery than non-philosophers do osf.io/preprints/ps... 010
Experimental Philosophy @xphilosopher.bsky.social · 23/09/2025There’s so much more in this paper — about how this relates to which choice people really think is the better one, how they rationalize their judgements, and so forth osf.io/preprints/ps... 040
Experimental Philosophy @xphilosopher.bsky.social · 23/09/2025New paper by @danielchiacchia.bsky.social, George Newman & Rachel Ruttan finds: Other things being equal, people tend to see System 1 as the true self 142
Experimental Philosophy @xphilosopher.bsky.social · 23/09/2025People sometimes face a conflict between intuition (system 1) and reasoning (system 2) In cases like these, which will be seen as the person’s true self? 5144