Here’s a classic philosophical thought experiment: Sandra is struggling with an addiction to heroin. She desperately wants another hit, but she wishes she didn’t. She wishes that she could stop craving heroin and that she could start living a very different life. Faced with this thought experiment, many people have the intuition that Sandra’s desire…
The Power of Norms
In many communities, there is a shared sense that if someone disses you, it is pretty normal to react by punching them. But academia is not like that. In academia, if someone disses your research, it would be considered wildly abnormal to react by punching them. This shared understanding then has a very large impact…
Changing Explanatory Theories vs. Changing Norms
Suppose you want to do something to decrease the amount of sexist behavior in the world. One thing you might do is try to change people’s explanatory theories. Perhaps you think that sexism is caused in part by people seeing certain outcomes as the result of a biological essence. You might then try an intervention…
Call: “Experimental Argument Analysis”
Immediately before the next “European X-Phi Conference,” a satellite workshop on “Experimental Argument Analysis – Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Verbal Reasoning,” organized by Eugen Fischer, Paul Engelhardt, and Dimitra Lazaridou-Chatzigoga, will be held from July 9 to 10, 2025, at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK. It aims to “bring together researchers from experimental…
Talk: “The Invocational Impact of Slurs” (Elin McCready and Christopher Davis)
On Monday, November 9, from 14:30–16:00 (UTC+1), the “Slurring Terms Across Languages” (STAL) network will present Elin McCready and Christopher Davis’ talk “The Invocational Impact of Slurs” as part of the STAL seminar series. The abstract reads: Rappaport (2019) articulates three distinct components that together constitute the meaning profile of slur terms: 1. descriptive: Slurs…
Call: “5th European Experimental Philosophy Conference”
The next “European X-Phi Conference” is coming! Experimental philosophers from all over Europe (and the world) will meet from July 10 to 12, 2025, at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK. Emma Borg (University of London), Susan Gelman (University of Michigan), Nat Hansen (University of Reading), and Joshua Knobe (Yale University) have been…
Philosophy of Mind is Very Different Now
A few decades ago, it felt like almost the entire field of philosophy of mind was focused on a pretty narrow range of questions (the mind-body problem, consciousness, the nature of intentionality, etc.). Insofar as anyone wanted to work on anything else, they often justified those interests by trying to explain how what they are…
Brief Changes to the Situation Don’t Have Much Impact on Judgments
There’s a certain kind of study we used to see all the time. The researchers ask all participants to make a judgment regarding the exact same question, but then they vary something in the external situation. They change the temperature in the room. Or the song that is playing in the background. Or they do…
Call: “EPITHETS & STAL-2025 Workshop”
The next workshop by the project “Explaining Pejoratives in Theoretical and Experimental Terms” (EPITHETS) and the “Slurring Terms Across Languages” (STAL) network will take place in Genoa, Italy, from May 7 to 8, 2025. Abstracts for contributions can be submitted until December 10. The call reads:
Call: “The Puzzle of Social Behavior – Game Theory and Beyond”
Mantas Radzvilas and Wolfgang Spohn organize a workshop on “The Puzzle of Social Behavior – Game Theory and Beyond” at the University of Bielefeld. It will take place from April 3 to 5, 2025. Abstracts for presentations can be submitted until January 6, 2025. The call reads: There are up to 5 further slots of…