USI Fall 2014 Liberal Arts Faculty Colloquia series Lecture 2

Additional Information

Dr. Chad Gonnerman
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Department of Philosophy

“Tuning Philosophical Intuitions: Cognitive Experience and Restrictionism”

Thursday, October 9, 2014, 12 noon in Carter Hall A

Recent work in experimental philosophy suggests that philosophical intuitions can be sensitive to factors that seem irrelevant to the truth or falsity of their content, such as the cultural background of the intuiter, the order in which the thought experiments are presented, and the presence or absence of emotional content. In this presentation, I present results suggesting that among these factors are those affect the ease or difficulty with which intuiters process the eliciting materials. I argue that such results support restrictionism, the view that the current philosophical practice of appealing to intuitions as evidence needs to be restrained.