Abstract
The advent of experimental philosophy has recently expanded the domain of philosophical debates so as to include discussions about survey-based methodology and the validity of its employment in philosophical inquiry. One of the main criticisms of this approach questions the alleged response-intuition equation, by claiming that ‘pragmatic cues’ might prevent the subjects from reporting their genuine intuitions about the survey scenarios and questions. The pragmatic cues discussed by the literature include aspects of a quite different nature, ranging from thinking-styles to semantic ambiguities. In order to distinguish between language-related pragmatic cues, and other features not strictly dependent on language, the distinction between the ‘response problem’ and the ‘interpretation problem’—potentially triggered by language-related pragmatic cues—is introduced. By employing an illustrated survey, this study aims at revealing the extent to which the use of ‘non-linguistic’ vignettes might constitute a valid aid to the traditional ‘linguistic’ vignette. A positive response would encourage the usage of illustrations and other non-linguistic or minimally-linguistic models in survey-based studies, which considerably restricts the liability of surveys for the interpretation problem.
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Notes
- 1.
I here shape the debate in terms of ‘rationalists’ versus ‘naturalists’ after Fisher and Collins (2015). Here ‘naturalism’ is to be regarded as a methodological stance totally independent from the metaphysical position.
- 2.
Since the survey study conducted by Weinberg et al. (2001), the literature in experimental philosophy has sharply increased.
- 3.
- 4.
This worry can be seen in Cullen (2010), where he argues that people’s judgments are a kind of behavior generated by inputs of various sorts, as for example the subjects’ “beliefs about what the researchers are interested in” (pp. 277–278).
- 5.
In the experimental philosophy literature, a case of ‘perspectival ambiguity’ has been recently discussed by Sytsma and Livengood (2011).
- 6.
The minimal recourse to linguistic elements in the illustrations—let’s call them ‘minimally-linguistic illustrations’—does not hamper the very goal of the illustrated survey, and dates or names stand in the drawing as a sort of ‘Peircean index’.
- 7.
Given the focus on the methodological problem, the data analysis will here be limited to the medium as a possible variation trigger. While the content of the vignettes is widely irrelevant with respect to the methodology issue, the collected data offer an occasion to check folk intuitions about the problem of object/person identity through time and change. The discussion of these data will be presented in a forthcoming paper.
- 8.
For reasons of space, vignettes and their related questions in the illustrated survey are placed on different sheets, which is why the repetition of the illustrations is needed on the question page.
- 9.
This paper offers the presentation and the results of the first phase of a cross-cultural research, and the same survey will be conducted with Western subject as to verify that the responses’ insensitivity to the non-linguistic medium is a cross-cultural one.
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Acknowledgments
The author wishes to thank Angel Qiantong Wu for her assistance with the data collection and analysis, Sara Huang Yang for the drawings for the illustrated survey, as well as Mog Stapleton, Alessandra Fermani, and two anonymous referees who provided constructive comments for improving the manuscript.
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Dolcini, N. (2016). Philosophy Made Visual: An Experimental Study. In: Magnani, L., Casadio, C. (eds) Model-Based Reasoning in Science and Technology. Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics, vol 27. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-38983-7_6
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