Aug 21, 2020 04:49 PM
(This post was last modified: Aug 21, 2020 04:54 PM by C C.)
Philosophical intuitions are surprisingly stable (experimental philosophy)
https://xphiblog.com/philosophical-intui...ly-stable/
EXCERPTS: . . . The core idea of the [draft] paper is a simple one. When it comes to many philosophical issues, people feel conflicted or confused. There is something drawing them toward one intuition but also something drawing them toward the exact opposite intuition. This tension seems to be an important aspect of what makes us regard these issues as important philosophical problems in the first place. I argue that experimental philosophy research over the past decade or so has shown us something very surprising about these issues. It has shown that the tensions in people’s intuitions are themselves stable. In particular, these tensions seem to be surprisingly stable both across different demographic groups and across different situations.
[...] 1. I used to believe that you could change people’s moral intuitions around by putting them in situations that affected the degree to which they experienced disgust. So I thought that moral intuitions could be affected by washing one’s hands, drinking a disgusting beverage, or just being next to a hand sanitizer. Amazingly, all of those effects have failed to replicate. ... Moral judgments seem to be a lot less sensitive to manipulations of the situation than many of us [in experimental philosophy] thought they were.
2. I also used to think that people’s epistemic intuitions could be shifted around by manipulations of the vignette they saw previously. [...] That effect, too, has failed to replicate...
3. Finally, I used to think that people were drawn toward one moral view by System 1 processes and toward another moral view by System 2 processes, so I thought that any manipulation of the situation that increased System 2 cognition would shift people’s judgments around. An important study seemed to suggest that there was indeed such an effect, but once again, that study has failed to replicate... (MORE - details)
Natural Philosophers: Sean Carroll on Quantum Spacetime
INTRO: Interview with Prof. Sean Carroll, Research Professor of Physics at Caltech and an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. We mainly talk about quantum spacetime: the idea that our familiar spacetime might be actually emergent from some complex quantum mechanical system. We cover entanglement, decoherence, entropic gravity, the AdS/CFT correspondence, string theory, black holes, along with several philosophical questions concerning these topics, including reduction and emergence, substantivalism vs. relationalism, monism, and much more...
The opening chit-chat ends circa the 10:45 mark.
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/oo2wLTd_-QM
https://xphiblog.com/philosophical-intui...ly-stable/
EXCERPTS: . . . The core idea of the [draft] paper is a simple one. When it comes to many philosophical issues, people feel conflicted or confused. There is something drawing them toward one intuition but also something drawing them toward the exact opposite intuition. This tension seems to be an important aspect of what makes us regard these issues as important philosophical problems in the first place. I argue that experimental philosophy research over the past decade or so has shown us something very surprising about these issues. It has shown that the tensions in people’s intuitions are themselves stable. In particular, these tensions seem to be surprisingly stable both across different demographic groups and across different situations.
[...] 1. I used to believe that you could change people’s moral intuitions around by putting them in situations that affected the degree to which they experienced disgust. So I thought that moral intuitions could be affected by washing one’s hands, drinking a disgusting beverage, or just being next to a hand sanitizer. Amazingly, all of those effects have failed to replicate. ... Moral judgments seem to be a lot less sensitive to manipulations of the situation than many of us [in experimental philosophy] thought they were.
2. I also used to think that people’s epistemic intuitions could be shifted around by manipulations of the vignette they saw previously. [...] That effect, too, has failed to replicate...
3. Finally, I used to think that people were drawn toward one moral view by System 1 processes and toward another moral view by System 2 processes, so I thought that any manipulation of the situation that increased System 2 cognition would shift people’s judgments around. An important study seemed to suggest that there was indeed such an effect, but once again, that study has failed to replicate... (MORE - details)
Natural Philosophers: Sean Carroll on Quantum Spacetime
INTRO: Interview with Prof. Sean Carroll, Research Professor of Physics at Caltech and an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. We mainly talk about quantum spacetime: the idea that our familiar spacetime might be actually emergent from some complex quantum mechanical system. We cover entanglement, decoherence, entropic gravity, the AdS/CFT correspondence, string theory, black holes, along with several philosophical questions concerning these topics, including reduction and emergence, substantivalism vs. relationalism, monism, and much more...
The opening chit-chat ends circa the 10:45 mark.