I am talking about experimental philosophy of medicine on Thursday. ruhr-uni-bochum.zoom.us/j/67803558818

New paper from the IMC lab! I am very excited about this one. For years, I have been arguing that one of the main claims of the so-called "simulation heuristic" is likely not true for episodic counterfactual thinking, namely that the harder it is to mentally simulate it, the less plausible (1/n)

Meta-analysis: After correcting for publication bias, there is no effect of “social norm messaging” nudges on health behavior We need theories that explain *why* these interventions don’t work www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🧵New preprint: Adults often agree with their ingroup even when evidence says otherwise. Why? To find out, we studied kids, who show the same tendency but *before* political identities take hold. With developmental data, we can see the basic psychological ingredients. doi.org/10.31234/osf... 1/11

A fascinating new paper by Amanda Royka and colleagues explores why monkeys fail false belief tasks. A natural explanation would be that monkeys wrongly assume that other agents share their own knowledge. Royka et al. find that this is NOT the case... www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Beautiful experimental philosophy paper on what people ordinarily mean when they say that a statement is “true” Turns out it’s not always about corresponding correctly to the facts. Sometimes it’s more closely related to a moral ideal of “truthfulness” philarchive.org/archive/ZYGTJN

@xphilosopher.bsky.social and I tried to study what beliefs do (or at least, what people think they do). Across hundreds of participant generated beliefs and first/third party ratings, we found they express identity and/or represent facts, in the pattern described in this post. 1/

In this new paper, we look at some different dimensions on which beliefs vary: - Is the belief deeply important to your identity? - Would you change your mind if you got evidence against it? - Is it best described in terms of credences (“pretty sure”), or is it more yes/no? 1/

“Children enter from the door on the left.” This sentence is what’s called a GENERIC… but it isn’t saying anything general about the nature of children. What then makes it generic? New theory from @kateritch.bsky.social and Ny Vasil philpapers.org/archive/RITG...

New experimental paper on intuitions about whether people have obligations *to themselves* From philosopher Laura Soter (@laurasoter.bsky.social) in JPSP psycnet.apa.org/record/2027-...

This is a fascinating new experimental jurisprudence paper from Chris Jaeger on what is "reasonable." For laypeople's judgments of reasonableness, the probability of harm (P) has an important effect beyond its role in the B<PL formula. yalelawjournal.org/article/the-...

The new journal *Experimental Philosophy* is now open for submissions! Very glad to serve as an AE and looking forward to seeing this take off. #philsky

“Murder is wrong, but I don’t disapprove of it” Expressivist theories of moral language seem to suggest that this sentence should make no sense — but a new paper in Cognition finds that people actually *do* find this sentence largely acceptable www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Get your papers ready!

The new journal EXPERIMENTAL PHILOSOPHY will soon be accepting submissions!

I appreciated the debate yesterday about how to interpret the results of the cognitive dissonance replication study Scroll up to read the points made by researchers on both sides

Maybe a good time to share my favorite critique of When Prophecy Fails (from 1965!)

There’s growing evidence that something was going seriously wrong in the classic early work on cognitive dissonance Latest revelation: The story in When Prophecy Fails seems to have been fabricated in the most egregious way But this is not the only one… onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

There’s a deep difference between sentences like: (1) Jane caused the glass to break. vs. (2) Jane broke the glass. A surge of experimental philosophy research has led to some surprising discoveries about sentences like (2) [Thread]

Ryan Doran is getting to the philosophical bottom of true beauty in this open access 🔓 advance article... ...by ranking the most beautiful philosophers' bottoms 🍎. (You'll never believe who made number 5 😱).* doi.org/10.1093/aest... ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ *might be bollocks.

We're excited to announce that Cognitive Science at Dartmouth is recruiting PhD students to work collaboratively with me, Steven Frankland, and Fred Callaway. Come study the principles and mechanisms that enable us to understand, plan, and act in the world! Info: sites.dartmouth.edu/cogscigrad/

New paper in Synthèse. Open access.

"...the “problem of perception” needs to be reconceptualized as arising not from a challenge to our ordinary understanding of vision, but from a patent conflict within this understanding." That is the central thought of Mike Martin's defense of disjunctivism

In philosophy of perception, we find different intuitions pulling people in opposing directions New studies from Eugen Fischer et al. show something important about that opposition: It is not different people having different intuitions; it's each individual person having *conflicting intuitions*

Feels like a natural experimental philosophy of medicine project: is “addictive” an inherently normative term? (My guess: yes.)

This free online event is TOMORROW The goal is to bring together two communities of researchers – folks in experimental pragmatics and folks in experimental philosophy

I don’t understand why one would think we are getting evidence against the reliability of intuitions when we find correlations between intuitions and personality traits Suppose we run a study and find that 60% or people give one response, 40% give the opposite response… 1/

Psychophysics meets moral psych! In the best possible way! I worry what this means for clinical research and patient reported outcomes, which often measure things like pain on a very simple 1-10 scale, often without clear anchoring. Such important work by @vladchituc.bsky.social!

Mikayla Kelley has an important new paper on why human beings even have a concept of intentional action The key question: What does this concept do in our lives? Her answer: Since we can't possibly evaluate all actions, it helps us choose which ones to evaluate philpapers.org/rec/KELTNF-3

People sometimes face a conflict between intuition (system 1) and reasoning (system 2) In cases like these, which will be seen as the person’s true self?

💖This paper has been ~11 years in the making - and probably my favorite project of all time. Thrilled to see it in @pnas.org! I'm so lucky that Zach decided to do a second PhD and join my lab @psychillinois.bsky.social back in 2014 - a fabulous scientist & human being! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

The fabulous @jrabanos.bsky.social and @BojanSpaic discussed experimental jurisprudence with me in their awesome podcast! If you want to know why experimental jurisprudence is not like theoretical physics, or what does lying and reasonableness have in common, check it out!

One common view in moral psychology is “the primacy of the moral” - the view that people think your moral traits are what’s most fundamental about you These new studies challenge that view, suggesting that people sometimes see artistic creation as just as fundamental as morality

Ep. #10 of Heavily Accented Philosophy of Law Podcast is here! In this episode, we delve with Iza Skoczeń (@izaskoczen.bsky.social - Jagiellonian Centre for Law, Language and Philosophy) into the topic of experimental jurisprudence. Listen to it here 👇 creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/...

New paper with @jowylie.bsky.social and @anagantman.bsky.social on art, morality, and the true self, forthcoming in Cognition! #philsky #psysky

Does ‘discrimination’ inherently imply unfairness, hence making it an evaluative (rather than a descriptive) term? Research by Willemsen et al concludes it is a “thick concept” that fundamentally blends descriptive and evaluative content: buff.ly/DUysv3c HT @xphilosopher.bsky.social

Experimental philosophy paper by Pascale Willemsen et al. on on what it means for something to be "discrimination" The studies focus specifically on discrimination -- but I think they also showing something more general about how thick concepts work philpapers.org/archive/WILD...

What People Think Self-Deception Is and Why Philosophers Should Care A summary of our x-phi paper (w/ @ivarr.bsky.social ) in the terrific Imperfect Cognitions blog. 🙌

Final call for global collaborators on this replication collaboration on @bioxphi studies — moral psychologists and x-phi researchers wanted! especially based in SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE! global-bioXphi | moral science lab www.mscilab.com/globalbioxphi/

🚨Publication Alert🚨 “Are the concepts of truth and lying shared across cultures?” 5 years in the making ~ 5000 participants 10 countries 6 languages Forthcoming in American Psychologist With @louisareins.bsky.social, . Mizumoto, A. Erut, Q. Li, and S. Orr. Short thread and preprint below

XPrag Meets X-Phi An online event bringing together two research communities: experimental pragmatics and experimental philosophy sites.google.com/view/xprag-w...

atest papers: Somogy Varga, Andrew J. Latham & Edouard Machery investigate the influence of evaluative judgments, specifically regarding an individual’s moral character, on judgments of health and disease in this #openaccess paper

Here is a ‘blame-praise curve’ for the percentage of household chores done by husbands People think husbands are blameworthy if they do 20%, but praiseworthy if they do 40% (!) Perceived average is above 40%, so people think below average is still praiseworthy [Thread]

Does this book offer groundbreaking research? No. A life-changing self-help plan? No. A workable taxonomy of spiritual experience? Still no. The most comprehensive review of the state of the science so far? Quite possibly... If interested, pre-order paperback at reduced price!

Professors from my generation sometimes complain that younger researchers don’t engage enough with earlier work (e.g., work from the late 20th century) In my view, this is *not* the problem we should be focusing on [Thread]

Ordinary folks often have trouble grasping the technical concept of doing something "knowingly," as used in the criminal law What would make people understand it? Giving them a definition? No! These beautiful studies Christian Mott and Larisa Heiphetz shows that it is something else entirely...

Recent studies suggest that manipulating "growth mindset" might not improve students' academic performance This new research suggests that it has a different effect. Growth mindset makes people more inclined to *blame* students for their failures escholarship.org/content/qt4k...

Research into intuitions around philosophical thought experiments often shows strong intuitions on either side. Is this indicative of a division in the population? No, argues @xphilisopher—people have *conflicting* intuitions: buff.ly/DSh8gx2

I realize that this may be a true post-tenure post™, but it really seems settled now that people think empirical research can be valuable and important to draw on in philosophy. 🧵 It was a weird time in the earlier 2000s... /1

🚨 Global BioXPhi Research Initiative 🚨 Assessing Replicability and Cross-Cultural Generalisability of Experimental Philosophical Bioethics (@bioxphi) studies! Exciting initiative led by Ivar Hannikainen (@moralsciencelab) and @briandavidearp (@NUS_CBmE) www.mscilab.com/globalbioxphi/