A fresh look at the expertise reply to the variation problem

Irikefe, Paul Oghenovo

doi:10.1080/09515089.2020.1761541

Philosophical Psychology

2020

DOI: 10.1080/09515089.2020.1761541

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A fresh look at the expertise reply to the variation problem

Paul Oghenovo Irikefe

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Cited by 3 publications

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“…Note that both Williamson and Nagel take knowledge as a distinct mental state(Nagel, 2013;Williamson, 2000).23 For discussion of these empirical studies, seeIrikefe (2020).…”

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confidence: 99%

The epistemology of thought experiments without exceptionalist ingredients

Irikefe

2022

Synthese

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This paper argues for two interrelated claims. The first is that the most innovative contribution of Timothy Williamson, Herman Cappelen, and Max Deutsch (a.k.a., the intuition deniers) in the debate about the epistemology of thought experiments is not the denial of intuition and the claim of the irrelevance of experimental philosophy but the claim of epistemological continuity and the rejection of philosophical exceptionalism. The second is that a better way of implementing the claim of epistemological continuity is not Deutsch and Cappelen’s argument view or Williamson’s folk psychological view (i.e., off-line simulation). This is so because while the argument view makes the basis of the relevant classificational judgement evidentially too demanding; the folk psychological view makes it too weak and error-prone to count as an adequate explanation. Drawing from a certain reading of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics that flowers in Miranda Fricker and John McDowell, I argue for the reason-responsiveness view. Like the extant views, the reason-responsiveness view vindicates the claim of epistemological continuity. But unlike the extant views, it does not share those problematic features. Further, I show that the reason-responsiveness view offers a way for champions of the claim of epistemological continuity to resist Avner Baz’s objection to the claim of epistemological continuity and his objection to the philosophical use of thought experiments while taking on board some attractive elements of his view.

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“…Note that both Williamson and Nagel take knowledge as a distinct mental state(Nagel, 2013;Williamson, 2000).23 For discussion of these empirical studies, seeIrikefe (2020).…”

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confidence: 99%

The epistemology of thought experiments without exceptionalist ingredients

Irikefe

2022

Synthese

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Saving the armchair by experiment: what works in economics doesn’t work in philosophy

Bruin

2020

Philos Stud

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Financial incentives, learning (feedback and repetition), group consultation, and increased experimental control are among the experimental techniques economists have successfully used to deflect the behavioral challenge posed by research conducted by such scholars as Tversky and Kahneman. These techniques save the economic armchair to the extent that they align laypeople judgments with economic theory by increasing cognitive effort and reflection in experimental subjects. It is natural to hypothesize that a similar strategy might work to address the experimental or restrictionist challenge to armchair philosophy. To test this hypothesis, a randomized controlled experiment was carried out (for incentives and learning), as well as two lab experiments (for group consultation, and for experimental control). Three types of knowledge attribution tasks were used (Gettier cases, false belief cases, and cases in which there is knowledge on the consensus/orthodox understanding). No support for the hypothesis was found. The paper describes the close similarities between the economist’s response to the behavioral challenge, and the expertise defense against the experimental challenge, and presents the experiments, results, and an array of robustness checks. The upshot is that these results make the experimental challenge all the more forceful.

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Avner Baz's Ordinary Language Challenge to the Philosophical Method of Cases

Irikefe

2022

Dialectica

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Avner Baz argues that the philosophical method of cases presupposes a problematic view of language and linguistic competence, namely what he calls "the atomistic-compositional view". Combining key elements of social pragmatism and contextualism, Baz presents a view of language and linguistic competence, which he takes to be more sensitive to the open-endedness of human language. On this view, there are conditions for the "normal" and "felicitous" use of human words, conditions that Baz thinks are lacking in the context of the philosophical method of cases, and which make the question that philosophers are prone to ask in that context and the answers they give to that question to be pointless. However, in this paper, I argue as follows. First, Baz's conditions for the "normal" and "felicitous" use of human words are in tension with the open-endedness of human language and the use of human words. Second, it is not even clear that those conditions are really missing in the context of the philosophical method of cases. And third, even if we grant that those conditions are missing in that context, this does not licence his damning conclusion on the philosophical method of cases since we are not forced to embrace the view of language and linguistic competence on which that damning conclusion is plausible. This last move is secured by advancing and defending a skill or virtue-based view of language and linguistic competence inspired by the later work of Donald Davidson.

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A fresh look at the expertise reply to the variation problem

Cited by 3 publications

References 71 publications

The epistemology of thought experiments without exceptionalist ingredients

The epistemology of thought experiments without exceptionalist ingredients

Saving the armchair by experiment: what works in economics doesn’t work in philosophy

Avner Baz's Ordinary Language Challenge to the Philosophical Method of Cases

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