Building upon previous investigations of scientific realism “in the wild” – i.e., among practicing scientists – we report the results of an empirical study that examined the attitudes of scientists from physics, biology, psychology, and anthropology (N = 777) toward various issues in the scientific realism debate. Out of all the major issues that have fallen under the heading of scientific realism, we found that the mind-independence of scientific phenomena and the ideas that comprise the no-miracles argument were most central to scientists’ thinking about this cluster of issues and that ideas pertaining to instrumentalism and the pessimistic induction were least central. We also found that scientists’ judgments about the status of unobservable entities posited in their fields failed to cohere with their responses to other issues in the debate and that the fields where scientists most strongly endorsed realism on the whole were the ones that expressed the most skepticism about unobservables. Additionally, we found that scientists were significantly inclined toward realism, with natural scientists being more so than social scientists, and that this inclination was generally accompanied by a modestly antirealist endorsement of the pessimistic induction. Implications of these findings for the philosophical debate over scientific realism are considered.

Individuals who possess the virtue of epistemic autonomy rely upon themselves in their reasoning, judgment and decision making in virtuous ways. Philosophers working on intellectual virtue agree that if the pursuit of epistemic autonomy is not tempered by other virtues such as intellectual humility, it can lead to vices such as extreme intellectual individualism. Virtue theorists have made a number of empirical claims about the consequences of possessing this vice - e.g. that it will lead to significantly fewer epistemic goods and a greater number of faulty beliefs. This paper reports the results of two pilot studies and initial results from a larger series of studies that attempt to shed light on some of the intellectual pitfalls of pursuing unrestricted epistemic autonomy. The studies provide empirical support for the philosophical claim that epistemic autonomy and intellectual humility are mutually supporting virtues by showing that epistemic autonomy without intellectual humility leads to increased belief in misinformation, conspiracy theories and pseudoscience and decreased trust in scientific experts. They also reveal important contours of the complex and often delicate relationship between the virtue of epistemic autonomy and its more vicious cousin, strong intellectual individualism.

The central focus of post-Gettier epistemology was the attempt to find necessary and sufficient conditions that captured "the ordinary concept of knowledge" - on the assumption that there was a single, widely shared concept to be found. A guiding assumption behind this project was that the competent epistemic judgments of ordinary individuals were relevant to whether an analysis is correct. Against this backdrop, experimental epistemology emerged as the systematic empirical study of epistemic judgments. Expecting to find cross-cultural differences, experimental philosophers have instead uncovered broad agreement. Notably, researchers have found that most people agree that false beliefs and unjustified beliefs do not count as knowledge and that justified true beliefs in Gettier cases do not count as knowledge when they are based upon merely apparent rather than authentic evidence. However, contrary to received philosophical wisdom, non-philosophers judge that justified true beliefs formed on the basis of authentic evidence do count as knowledge even when the putative knower is in a classic Gettier situation. What the distinction between authentic and apparent evidence amounts to and what other differences in epistemic intuitions across demographic groups there might be are important issues that mainstream and experimental philosophers need to work together to understand.

Some philosophers working on the epistemology of disagreement claim that conciliationist responses to peer disagreement embody a kind of intellectual humility. Others contend that standing firm or ‘sticking to one's guns’ in the face of peer disagreement may stem from an admirable kind of courage or internal fortitude. In this paper, we report the results of two empirical studies that examine the relationship between conciliationist and steadfast responses to peer disagreement, on the one hand, and virtues such as intellectual humility, courage, grit, and actively open-minded thinking, on the other. We observed positive correlations between measures of conciliationism, intellectual humility, and actively open-minded thinking but failed to find any reliable association between steadfastness, courage, and grit. Our studies reveal that there are at least two important intellectual virtues associated with conciliationist responses to peer disagreement (viz., intellectual humility and actively open-minded thinking) and two vices associated with steadfast responses (intellectual arrogance and myside bias). These findings shed new light on the overall epistemic goodness of the conciliationist perspective.

Responding to recent concerns about the reliability of the published literature in psychology and other disciplines, we formed the X-Phi Replicability Project (XRP) to estimate the reproducibility of experimental philosophy (osf.io/dvkpr). Drawing on a representative sample of 40 x-phi studies published between 2003 and 2015, we enlisted 20 research teams across 8 countries to conduct a high-quality replication of each study in order to compare the results to the original published findings. We found that x-phi studies – as represented in our sample – successfully replicated about 70% of the time. We discuss possible reasons for this relatively high replication rate in the field of experimental philosophy and offer suggestions for best research practices going forward.

Recent empirical work on folk moral objectivism has attempted to examine the extent to which folk morality presumes that moral judgments are objectively true or false. Some researchers report findings that they take to indicate folk commitment to objectivism (Nichols & Folds-Bennett, 2003; Wainryb et al., 2004; Goodwin & Darley, 2008, 2010, 2012), while others report findings that may reveal a more variable commitment to objectivism (Sarkissian, et al., 2011; Wright, Grandjean, & McWhite, 2013; Wright, McWhite, & Grandjean, 2014; Beebe, 2014; Beebe et al., 2015; Beebe & Sackris, 2016; Wright, 2018). However, the various probes that have been used to examine folk moral objectivism almost always fail to be good direct measures of objectivism. Some critics (Beebe, 2015; Pölzler, 2017, 2018) have suggested that the problems with existing probes are serious enough that they should be viewed as largely incapable of shedding any light on folk metaethical commitments. Building upon the work of Justin Khoo and Joshua Knobe (2018), I argue that many of the existing probes can be seen as good measures of the extent to which people think that the truth of one moral judgment excludes the possibility that a judgment made by a disagreeing party is also true and that the best explanation of the findings obtained using these measures is significant folk support for indexical moral relativism—the view that the content of moral judgments is context-sensitive. If my thesis is correct, most contemporary moral philosophers are deeply mistaken about the metaethical contours of folk morality in one very important respect.

We report the results of a study that investigated the views of researchers working in seven scientific disciplines and in history and philosophy of science in regard to four hypothesized dimensions of scientific realism. Among other things, we found (i) that natural scientists tended to express more strongly realist views than social scientists, (ii) that history and philosophy of science scholars tended to express more antirealist views than natural scientists, (iii) that van Fraassen’s characterization of scientific realism failed to cluster with more standard characterizations, and (iv) that those who endorsed the pessimistic induction were no more or less likely to endorse antirealism.

We report the results of an exploratory study that examines the judgments of climate scientists, climate policy experts, astrophysicists, and non-experts (N = 3,367) about the factors that contribute to the creation and persistence of disagreement within climate science and astrophysics and about how one should respond to disagreements among experts. We found that, as compared to educated non-experts, climate experts believe that within climate science (i) there is less disagreement about climate change, (ii) methodological factors play less of a role in generating existing disagreements, (iii) fewer personal or institutional biases influence the nature and direction of climate research, (iv) there is more agreement among scientists about which methods or theoretical perspectives should be used to examine the relevant phenomena, (v) disagreements about climate change should not lead people to conclude that the scientific methods being employed are unreliable, and (vi) climate science is more settled than ideological pundits would have us believe and settled enough to base public policy on it. In addition, we observed that the uniquely American political context predicted experts’ judgments about some of these factors. We also found that, in regard to disagreements concerning cosmic ray physics, and commensurate with the greater inherent uncertainty and data lacunae in their field, astrophysicists working on cosmic rays were generally more willing to acknowledge expert disagreement, more open to the idea that a set of data can have multiple valid interpretations, and generally less quick to dismiss someone articulating a non-standard view as non-expert, than climate scientists were in regard to climate science.

Within the cognitive science of religion, some scholars hypothesize (1) that minimally counterintuitive (MCI) concepts enjoy a transmission advantage over both intuitive and highly counterintuitive concepts, (2) that religions concern counterintuitive agents, objects, or events, and (3) that the transmission advantage of MCI concepts makes them more likely to be found in the world’s religions than other kinds of concepts. We hypothesized that the memorability of many MCI supernatural concepts was due in large part to other characteristics they possess, such as their frequent and salient association with moral concerns and the alleviation of existential anxieties, and that without such characteristics they would fail to be memorable. We report the results of three experiments designed to test the relative contributions of minimal counterintuitiveness, moral valence, and existential anxiety to the memorability of supernatural ideas. We observed no main effects for minimal counterintuitiveness but did observe main effects for both moral valence and existential anxiety. We also found that these effects did not seem to stem from the greater visualizability of morally valenced concepts or concepts that concerned existential anxieties. These findings challenge important claims made by leading researchers regarding MCI concepts within the cognitive science of religion.

Within the cognitive science of religion, some scholars hypothesize (1) that minimally counterintuitive (MCI) concepts enjoy a transmission advantage over both intuitive and highly counterintuitive concepts, (2) that religions concern counterintuitive agents, objects, or events, and (3) that the transmission advantage of MCI concepts makes them more likely to be found in the world’s religions than other kinds of concepts. We hypothesized that the memorability of many MCI supernatural concepts was due in large part to other characteristics they possess, such as their frequent and salient association with moral concerns and the alleviation of existential anxieties, and that without such characteristics they would fail to be memorable. We report the results of three experiments designed to test the relative contributions of minimal counterintuitiveness, moral valence, and existential anxiety to the memorability of supernatural ideas. We observed no main effects for minimal counterintuitiveness but did observe main effects for both moral valence and existential anxiety. We also found that these effects did not seem to stem from the greater visualizability of morally valenced concepts or concepts that concerned existential anxieties. These findings challenge important claims made by leading researchers regarding MCI concepts within the cognitive science of religion.

Confused terms appear to signify more than one entity. Carnap (Meaning and necessity, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1956) maintained that any putative name that is associated with more than one object in a relevant universe of discourse fails to be a genuine name. Although many philosophers have agreed with Carnap, they have not always agreed among themselves about the truth-values of atomic sentences containing such terms. Some hold that such atomic sentences are always false, and others claim they are always truth-valueless. Field (J Philos 70:462–481, 1973) maintained that confused terms can still refer, albeit partially, and offered a supervaluational account of their semantic properties on which some atomic sentences with confused terms can be true. After outlining many of the most important theoretical considerations for and against various semantic theories for such terms, we report the results of a study designed to investigate which of these accounts best accords with the truth-value judgments of ordinary language users about sentences containing these terms. We found that naïve participants view confused names as capable of successfully referring to one or more objects. Thus, semantic theories that judge them to involve total reference failure do not comport well with patterns of ordinary usage.

We report the results of a study that investigated the views of researchers working in seven scientific disciplines and in HPS in regard to four hypothesized dimensions of scientific realism. Among other things, we found (i) that natural scientists tended to express more strongly realist views than social scientists, (ii) that HPS scholars tended to express more anti-realist views than natural scientists, (iii) that van Fraassen’s characterization of scientific realism failed to cluster with more standard characterizations, and (iv) that those who endorsed the Pessimistic Induction were no more or less likely to endorse anti-realism.

We report the results of an exploratory study that examines the judgments of climate scientists, climate policy experts, astrophysicists, and nonexperts (N = 3367) about the factors that contribute to the creation and persistence of disagreement within climate science and astrophysics and about how one should respond to expert disagreement. We found that, as compared to non-experts, climate experts believe that within climate science (i) there is less disagreement about climate change, (ii) methodological factors play less of a role in generating disagreements, (iii) fewer personal or institutional biases influence climate research, and (iv) there is more agreement about which methods should be used to examine relevant phenomena we also observed that the uniquely American political context predicted experts’ judgments about some of these factors. We also found that, in regard to disagreements concerning cosmic ray physics, and commensurate with the greater inherent uncertainty and data lacunae in their field, astrophysicists working on cosmic rays were generally more willing to acknowledge expert disagreement, more open to the idea that a set of data can have multiple valid interpretations, and generally less quick to dismiss someone articulating a non-standard view as non-expert, than climate scientists were in regard to climate science.

Jeffrey Brower has recently articulated a way to make sense of the doctrine of divine simplicity using resources from contemporary truthmaker theory. Noel Saenz has advanced two objections to Brower's account, arguing that it violates constraints on adequate metaphysical explanations at various points. I argue that Saenz's objections fail to show that Brower's account is explanatorily inadequate.

Explanationist (or abductivist) responses to skepticism maintain that our commonsense beliefs about the external world can be rationally preferred to skeptical hypotheses on the grounds that the former provide better explanations of our sensory experiences than the latter. This kind of response to radical skepticism has never enjoyed widespread acceptance in the epistemological community due to concerns about the epistemic merits of inference to the best explanation and appeals to the explanatory virtues. Against this tide of skepticism about explanationism, the chapter argues that traditional skeptical challenges rest upon central explanationist tenets and thus that one cannot harbor doubts about the general class of explanationist responses to skepticism while at the same time granting the force of the skeptical challenges they seek to answer. This chapter also shows how explanationist principles do a better job than epistemic closure and underdetermination principles in articulating the structure and force of skeptical challenges.

For scientific theories grounded in empirical data, replicability is a core principle, for at least two reasons. First, unless we accept to have scientific theories rest on the authority of a small number of researchers, empirical studies should be replicable, in the sense that its methods and procedure should be detailed enough for someone else to conduct the same study. Second, for empirical results to provide a solid foundation for scientific theorizing, they should also be replicable, in the sense that most attempts at replicating the original study that produced them would yield similar results. The XPhi Replicability Project is primarily concerned with replicability in the second sense, that is: the replicability of results. In the past year, several projects have shed doubt on the replicability of key findings in psychology, and most notably social psychology. Because the methods of experimental philosophy have often been close to the ones used in social psychology, it is only natural to wonder to which extent the results experimental philosophers ground their theory are replicable. The aim of the XPhi Replicability Project is precisely to reach a reliable estimate of the replicability of empirical results in experimental philosophy. To this end, several research teams across the world will replicate around 40 studies in experimental philosophy, some among the most cited, others drawn at random. The results of the project will be published in a special issue of the Review of Philosophy and Psychology dedicated to the topic of replicability in cognitive science. The official website of the project can be found here : https://sites.google.com/site/thexphireplicabilityproject/home The project can also be followed on social medias: https://twitter.com/XPhiReplication https://www.facebook.com/XPhiReplicabilityProject/