Putting the trolley in order: Experimental philosophy and the loop case

Liao, S. Matthew; Wiegmann, Alex; Alexander, Joshua; Vong, Gerard

doi:10.1080/09515089.2011.627536

Cited by 113 publications

(62 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…It is only morally permissible to do that which, of all the alternative actions available to an agent, maximizes moral utility. The commitments of such a view can be illustrated using an infamous 'trolley case' (this version taken from Liao et al 2011).…”

Section: Consequentialism: Epistemic and Ethicalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do non-philosophers think epistemic consequentialism is counterintuitive?

Andow

2016

Synthese

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Direct epistemic consequentialism is the idea that X is epistemically permissible iff X maximizes epistemic value. It has received lots of attention in recent years and is widely accepted by philosophers to have counterintuitive implications. There are various reasons one might suspect that the relevant intuitions will not be widely shared among non-philosophers. This paper presents an initial empirical study of ordinary intuitions. The results of two experiments demonstrate that the counterintuitiveness of epistemic consequentialism is more than a philosophers' worry-the folk seem to agree!

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Section: Consequentialism: Epistemic and Ethicalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do non-philosophers think epistemic consequentialism is counterintuitive?

Andow

2016

Synthese

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“…A second study, Schwitzgebel and Cushman (2012) (hereafter 'SC'), offers a test of this formulation of the expertise defense. Previous research (Petrinovich and O'Neill 1996;Lombrozo 2009;Liao et al 2011;Wiegmann et al 2012) had found that nonphilosopher subjects' moral judgments were sensitive to order effects: their intuitive responses to test cases depended upon the order in which these cases were presented. It seems clear that order effects are a form of distortion; presumably the moral valence of a particular action does not depend upon whether the intuiter has just thought about some other action.…”

Section: Empirical Evidence Against the Expertise Defensementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Such arguments depend crucially on evidence from psychology and experimental philosophy, showing that people's intuitions are sensitive to a host of things which seem irrelevant to the truth of philosophical theories. For instance, intuitions about moral permissibility and knowledge-possession seem to be sensitive to the order in which the intuiter encounters test cases (Petrinovich and O'Neill 1996;Swain et al 2008;Lanteri et al 2008;Lombrozo 2009;Liao et al 2011;Wiegmann et al 2012) or whether the intuiter imagines herself as a bystander or actor in a test case (Nadelhoffer and Feltz 2008).…”

Section: Intuitions Empirical Challenges and The Expertise Defensementioning

confidence: 99%

How not to test for philosophical expertise

Rini

2014

Synthese

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Recent empirical work appears to suggest that the moral intuitions of professional philosophers are just as vulnerable to distorting psychological factors as are those of ordinary people. This paper assesses these recent tests of the 'expertise defense' of philosophical intuition. I argue that the use of familiar cases and principles constitutes a methodological problem. Since these items are familiar to philosophers, but not ordinary people, the two subject groups do not confront identical cognitive tasks. Reflection on this point shows that these findings do not threaten philosophical expertise -though we can draw lessons for more effective empirical tests.

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“…Liao et al (2011) report that participants asked about the statement 'It is morally permissible to redirect the trolley onto the second track' in a Loop trolley case had a mean response of 3.10 (on a scale from 1 to 6) when preceded by a push trolley case and 3.82 when preceded by a standard trolley case (p = 0.029).…”

Section: Which Belief Is Stronger?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Reliable but not home free? What framing effects mean for moral intuitions

Andow

2016

Philosophical Psychology

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Various studies show moral intuitions to be susceptible to framing e ects. Many have argued that this susceptibility is a sign of unreliability and that this poses a methodological challenge for moral philosophy. Recently, doubt has been cast on this idea. It has been argued that extant evidence of framing e ects does not show that moral intuitions have a unreliability problem. I argue that, even if the extant evidence suggests that moral intuitions are fairly stable with respect to what intuitions we have, the e ect of framing on the strength of those intuitions still needs to be taken into account. I argue that this by itself poses a methodological challenge for moral philosophy.

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Putting the trolley in order: Experimental philosophy and the loop case

Cited by 113 publications

References 24 publications

Do non-philosophers think epistemic consequentialism is counterintuitive?

Do non-philosophers think epistemic consequentialism is counterintuitive?

How not to test for philosophical expertise

Reliable but not home free? What framing effects mean for moral intuitions

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