Abstract
This paper provides a new argument for the relevance of empirical research to moral and political philosophy and a novel defense of the positive program in experimental philosophy. The argument centers on the idea that normative concepts used in moral and political philosophy can be evaluated in terms of their fruitfulness in solving practical problems. Empirical research conducted with an eye to the practical problems that are relevant to particular concepts can provide evidence of their fruitfulness along a number of dimensions. An upshot of the argument is that philosophers should not only engage with but must also be involved in conducting experimental studies that examine the practical roles that normative concepts can play. Rather than just clearing the way for philosophical work to be done, the argument has the further implication that empirical research will be required to advance at least some important debates in moral and political philosophy.
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Notes
Nadelhoffer and Nahmias (2007), Weinberg (2007), Alexander and Weinberg (2007), Cappelen (2012), Alexander et al. (2014), Fisher (2015), Shepherd and Justus (2015) and Williamson (2016). Knobe (2016) argues that the positive–negative program distinction fails to capture much of the important work being conducted in the field. Sytsma and Livengood (2016) propose a broader taxonomy of programs (non-intuitional, negative, positive, cognitive, and descriptive) and hold that the work that Knobe points to largely falls under what they refer to as the “cognitive program”.
See, e.g., the discussion in the Opinion Pages of the New York Times (X-Phi’s New Take on Old Problems 2010).
Of course, there are some exceptions. See, e.g., Shepherd and Justus (2015).
While I focus primarily on psychological research, the argument that I present in this paper supports a wide role for empirical research from other social sciences in moral and political philosophy. It may also support a broader role for non-empirical research in some of these fields, including economic theory, social choice theory, and game theory, but establishing this point would go beyond the bounds of the present paper. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for suggesting that my argument may also encompass some non-empirical research.
I will remain neutral on the degree to which normative concepts employed in other fields of philosophy, such as epistemology or aesthetics, can be similarly evaluated in terms of their fruitfulness. Some commentators have suggested that what I have to say here about moral and political concepts can be extended to these other fields.
Carnap used this term in putting forward a somewhat different view of the practical role that scientific concepts play. I discuss this in Sect. 4.
The distinction between concepts and conceptions is due to Rawls (1971).
This commitment does not require one to adopt any substantive positions in moral or political philosophy that Aristotle or Aristotelians endorse. It is instead a general commitment regarding how normative concepts should be evaluated, where their fruitfulness should go into such evaluations.
See Korsgaard (2003) for a characterization of this disagreement in terms of the history of the debate between realism and constructivism in moral philosophy. One need not be a constructivist to endorse what I will say here, but I will suggest that Korsgaard is committed to the fruitfulness of normative concepts mattering to their evaluation in Sect. 2.
The assumption here, of course, is that they have the kinds of deontological moral intuitions that most people report. If the person in question has consequentialist moral intuitions, following those intuitions will involve acting on consequentialist principles.
Luke Buckland, David Rodríguez-Arias, Carissa Véliz, and I have conducted empirical studies examining the effects of reading some of these arguments on charitable giving. See Buckland et al. (unpublished manuscript).
Peter Singer, Paul Slovic, Daniel Västfjäll, Joshua Greene, Marcus Mayorga and I have recently been conducting empirical research on these issues.
Recent studies have questioned the extent to which both implicit bias and stereotype threat affect the kinds of behaviors thought to be affected by them in in prior research. While some of these effects have not replicated in these studies, other effects, such as the “shooter bias” effect (Correll et al. 2002), have replicated (Essien et al. 2017). There is an ongoing debate about the effects of implicit bias and stereotype threat on particular behaviors and what conclusions can be drawn from this literature for public policy. The point that I am making here relies only on the claim that any negative effects of biases grounded in social group membership on evaluations of others and oneself are worth addressing through the use of normative concepts if doing so is possible, and there is some evidence that this can be done (see Payne 2005).
Working largely within the framework of Carnapian explication, Pinder (2017) argues that experimental philosophy can help to determine whether explicated concepts are fruitful in the sense that they can achieve uptake by “the relevant theoretical community”. Although I find much to agree with in Pinder, my view is not offered within the Carnapian framework, with its emphasis on explication. It is also a commitment of my view that, rather than only achieving uptake by moral and political philosophers, ordinary people as moral agents and citizens are part of the relevant community that moral and political philosophy must be fruitful for. This commitment, I suggest throughout the paper, is not uncommon among moral and political philosophers who take the practical upshots of their views to be philosophically significant.
Street (2008) takes Korsgaard to task on this point, arguing that it is implausible to regard this as a practical problem. However, Street in her recent work suggests that metaethics may be therapeutic, helping us to deal with “the problem of attachment and loss” (Street 2016), and so it seems that she is receptive to the thought that moral theory could be evaluated in terms of serving a practical purpose.
For a helpful discussion of this view, which is often referred to as “motivational judgment internalism”, see Rosati (2016). For a prominent defense of the view, see Smith (1994). Of course, there are related but distinct internalist views in the literature, but the broad outlines will suffice for my purposes here.
It may be the case that the only concepts of gender and race that are fruitful in the resilience sense, of course, will also have to be fruitful in other respects—motivating various kinds of feminist, antiracist actions, preventing sexist and racist actions, and so on. As with other concepts, an exploration of the resilience-based fruitfulness of gender and race may lead to questions concerning the other types of fruitfulness that I have described.
For a helpful overview, see Knobe (2010).
For early conversations on the topics addressed in this paper, I am grateful to Serene Khader, Josh Knobe, Tori McGeer, and Michael Strevens. For helpful discussions of earlier versions of the paper and the points raised in it, I would like to thank Christian Barry, Geoff Brennan, Ramon Das, Ben Fraser, Ana Gantman, Simon Keller, Eric Mandelbaum, Philip Pettit, Luke Russell, Nic Southwood, Katie Steele, Kim Sterelny, Justin Sytsma, John Thrasher, Joe Ulatowski, Dan Weijers, and audiences at the First Annual Australasian Experimental Philosophy Workshop at Victoria University of Wellington, the Fifth Australasian Workshop in Moral Philosophy at the Kioloa Coastal Campus of the Australian National University, the Experimental Methods in Social and Political Philosophy Workshop at ANU, and the ANU School of Philosophy Seminar. For helpful written comments, I am grateful to Justin Bruner, Toby Handfield, Frank Jackson, Serene Khader, Josh Knobe, Matt Kopec, Shaun Nichols, Peter Singer, Katja Vogt, and two anonymous reviewers for the journal.
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Lindauer, M. Experimental philosophy and the fruitfulness of normative concepts. Philos Stud 177, 2129–2152 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-019-01302-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-019-01302-3