If you are doing something morally bad, people think two things: - that you can still be happy at this specific moment (see figure on left) - that in some larger way, you are not happy (see figure on right)

"Are you happy?" New research on two ways to understand this question: - as a question about how you feel right now, in this moment - as a question about the overall state of your life These two understandings turn out to be radically different www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

And here is a paper about dual process in population ethics judgments www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10...

There's a lot of great experimental work on population ethics Here is a nice paper but Schoenegger & @benleoecon.bsky.social on judgments about abstract principles vs. intuitions about concrete cases books.google.com/books?id=nkX...

So Sage argues: if we want to understand why these studies fail to replicate, we can’t blame the people doing qualitative work The solution lies elsewhere 3/3

The sociology research that fails to replicate is scientific quantitative research If we think in terms of opposing camps within sociology, this is the part that people doing more “critical” or qualitative work are usually not too fond of 2/3

Overall, it looks like: 1. Experimental philosophers do want to make all of their results available But: 2. They need to have some way of doing this that doesn't involve writing a full paper (with literature review, discussion of theoretical implications, etc.)

Is it possible to change belief in free will with a quick manipulation? Answer seems to be: There is only an effect if you measure free will belief *immediately* after the manipulation… no effect if you measure free will belief even *a few minutes later* www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Philosophers, we need your help We are running a study on philosophers’ intuitions about thought experiments moralsciencelab.com/intuitions/ Only takes a few minutes!

Thanks Matt! Just for people who haven't read the full paper, I'm including screenshots of the two cases that the authors describe as fake barn cases

The orthodoxy in philosophy is that there’s no knowledge in “fake barn” cases But in a study of philosophers, the majority say that there *is* knowledge in fake barn cases How is it even possible for philosophical orthodoxy to come apart like this from what philosophers actually believe?

People sometimes agree to seemingly teleological sentences like: "The sun produces light so that plants can photosynthesize" Does this mean that people literally think the sun produces light for that purpose? New paper in Cognition suggests the answer is No www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

You can say: There's a sense in which this clearly isn't beautiful, but in a deep sense, it truly is beautiful But you can't say that same thing with "pretty"

Factor analysis therefore reveals a very peculiar factor structure There is no single latent dimension that goes from direct to indirect realism. Instead, there are TWO distinct factors: agreement with direct realism and agreement with indirect realism Thus, a single person can be high on both

The studies find that individual people often have conflicting intuitions. An individual person will have an intuition drawing them toward direct realism and then also an intuition pulling them in the exact opposite direction, toward indirect realism

Full Psych Science paper from @bxjaeger.bsky.social available at: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... Here is the pattern of judgments for the individual targets:

How do people decide whether it’s wrong to harm a pig? A chimp? A baby? In the West, these judgments are based more on *experience* (being able to feel) than on *agency* (being able to think and act) New study finds that same pattern across other cultures journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Interview with philosopher/psychologist @felipedebrigard.bsky.social. Discusses his work, but also more personal aspects of his life Quotation here is about what it was like growing up during a very violent period in the history of Colombia www.whatisitliketobeaphilosopher.com#/felipe-de-b...

In a recent paper, we find that there has been a truly massive increase in the use of these other formal methods in philosophy link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Psychologist George Newman has a new book out about creativity, but it’s about almost exactly the opposite of what people usually mean by “creativity” Usual topic: ideas that are zany or original Newman’s topic: ideas that actually work www.amazon.com/How-Great-Id...

New experimental jurisprudence paper from Iza Skoczen on the legal concept PERJURY vs. the ordinary concept LYING This paper introduces a surprising new view about the relationship between legal concepts and ordinary concepts @izaskoczen.bsky.social x.com/izaskoczen/s...

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

Non-paywalled version: osf.io/preprints/ps...

We find a two-factor solution: Beliefs vary in whether in: (a) whether they are aimed at tracking facts in the world (b) whether they are aimed at expressing your identity Strikingly, these can vary independently! A single belief can be very high in both 3/

- Would you describe the belief by saying “I think…” vs. “I believe…”? - Does having this belief relate to your membership in a social group? … and many others The key question was whether we can identify certain deeper factors underlying all these dimensions 2/

“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-...

“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...