Alex Wiegmann

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

In recent years, a number of philosophers have conducted empirical studies that survey peoples intuitions about various subject matters in philosophy. Some have found that intuitions vary accordingly to seemingly irrelevant facts: facts about who is considering the hypothetical case, the presence or absence of certain kinds of content, or the context in which the hypothetical case is being considered. Our research applies this experimental philosophical methodology to Judith Jarvis Thomsons famous Loop Case, which she used to call into question the validity of the intuitively plausible Doctrine of Double Effect. We found that intuitions about the Loop Case vary according to the context in which the case is considered. We contend that this undermines the supposed evidential status of intuitions about the Loop Case. We conclude by considering the implications of our findings for philosophers who rely on the Loop Case to make philosophical arguments and for philosophers who use intuitions in general.

Transfer effects between moral dilemmas: A causal model theory

Evaluations of analogous situations are an important source for our moral intuitions. A puzzling recent set of findings in experiments exploring transfer effects between intuitions about moral dilemmas has demonstrated a striking asymmetry. Transfer often occurred with a specific ordering of moral dilemmas, but not when the sequence was reversed. In this article we present a new theory of transfer between moral intuitions that focuses on two components of moral dilemmas, namely their causal structure and their default evaluations. According to this theory, transfer effects are expected when the causal models underlying the considered dilemmas allow for a mapping of the highlighted aspect of the first scenario onto the causal structure of the second dilemma, and when the default evaluations of the two dilemmas substantially differ. The theorys key predictions for the occurrence and the direction of transfer effects between two moral dilemmas are tested in five experiments with various variants of moral dilemmas from different domains. A sixth experiment tests the predictions of the theory for how the target action in the moral dilemmas is represented.

Lying despite telling the truth

According to the standard definition of lying an utterance counts as a lie if the agent believes the statement to be false. Thus, according to this view it is possible that a lie states something that happens to be true. This subjective view on lying has recently been challenged by Turri and Turri (2015) who presented empirical evidence suggesting that people only consider statements as lies that are objectively false (objective view). We argue that the presented evidence is in fact consistent with the standard subjective view if conversational pragmatics is taken into account. Three experiments are presented that directly test and support the subjective view. An additional experiment backs up our pragmatic hypothesis by using the uncontroversial case of making a promise.

No need for an intention to deceive? Challenging the traditional definition of lying

Abstract According to the traditional definition of lying, somebody lies if he or she makes a believed-false statement with the intention to deceive. The traditional definition has recently been challenged by non-deceptionists who use bald-faced lies to underpin their view that the intention to deceive is no necessary condition for lying. We conducted two experiments to test whether their assertions are true. First, we presented one of five scenarios that consisted of three different kinds of lies (consistent bald-faced lies, conflicting bald-faced lies, and indifferent lies). Then we asked participants to judge whether the scenario at hand was a lie, whether the speaker intended to deceive somebody, and how they would judge the behavior in terms of morality. As expected, our results indicate that the intention to deceive is not a necessary condition for lying. Participants rated indifferent lies to be lies and judged that no intention to deceive was involved in these cases. In addition, all bald-faced lies were evaluated as lies. However, participants widely ascribed an intention to deceive to bald-faced lies, which thus might not apply as counterexamples against the traditional definition of lying. Besides, lies are judged as morally wrong regardless of an intention to deceive.

Explaining Moral Behavior.

In this review we make a simple theoretical argument which is that for theory development, computational modeling, and general frameworks for understanding moral psychology researchers should build on domain-general principles from reasoning, judgment, and decision-making research. Our approach is radical with respect to typical models that exist in moral psychology that tend to propose complex innate moral grammars and even evolutionarily guided moral principles. In support of our argument we show that by using a simple value-based decision model we can capture a range of core moral behaviors. Crucially, the argument we propose is that moral situations per se do not require anything specialized or different from other situations in which we have to make decisions, inferences, and judgments in order to figure out how to act.

Moral Intuitionism and Empirical Data

In this article, it is argued that empirical data can undermine normative arguments generated by intuitionist methodologies that involve a step of inducing an abstract principle from a set of case-based moral intuitions. The use of case-based intuitions in normative theory construction is conceptualized here as an inductive inference procedure in which philosophers draw conclusions from introspectively observable data (their intuitions) to the state of a latent variable (what morality actually requires). We argue that such a procedure can only generate valid output if it can be applied objectively in the sense that its outcome is independent of the person who carries it out. This requirement is only met when fundamental case-based intuitions are intersubjectively shared to a relevant degree. At this point, empirical data comes into play. It is needed to assess the degree to which specific intuitions are actually intersubjectively shared. In contexts in which this requirement is not met, principles resulting from this method cannot be argued to be valid representations of what morality actually requires. We illustrate this argument with a concrete example from the literature in which a specific normative principle is called into question on the basis of psychological data on laypeople’s moral intuitions. Furthermore, we defend the argument against potential objections, and we discuss its relationship to other criticisms of moral intuitionism as well as its implications for intuitionist methodologies in general.