PhilLab Dataverse

The lab’s research draws on a broad range of the methods employed across psychology, philosophy, linguistics, and computer science to better understand questions about how humans think both about the actual world and about non-actual possibilities (sometimes called “possible worlds”). We explore both how people think about possibilities themselves and how that influences the way that they think more generally, from the language they use, to the causal and moral judgments they make.

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21 to 26 of 26 Results

Repository for Eavesdropping: What is it good for? Nov 19, 2020 - Harvard Dataverse Phillips, Jonathan; Mandelkern, Matthew, 2020, "Repository for Eavesdropping: What is it good for?", https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/BGA2BA, Harvard Dataverse, V1, UNF:6:JN0CbYM4aLh1E7uN9PdT/w== [fileUNF] Eavesdropping judgments (judgments about truth, retraction, and consistency across contexts) about epistemic modals have been used in recent years to argue for a radical thesis: that truth is assessment-relative. We argue that judgments for 'I think that p' pattern in strikingly similar ways to judgments for 'Might p' and 'Probably p'. We argue for...
Immoral Professors and Malfunctioning Tools: Counterfactual Relevance Accounts Explain the Effect of Norm Violations on Causal Selection Nov 19, 2020 - Harvard Dataverse Phillips, Jonathan; Kominsky, Jonathan, 2020, "Immoral Professors and Malfunctioning Tools: Counterfactual Relevance Accounts Explain the Effect of Norm Violations on Causal Selection", https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/V1E7AO, Harvard Dataverse, V1, UNF:6:Vak+gFckO4nWpd+VCK68Ew== [fileUNF] Causal judgments are widely known to be sensitive to violations of both prescriptive norms (e.g., immoral events) and statistical norms (e.g., improbable events). There is ongoing discussion as to whether both effects are best explained in a unified way through changes in the relevance of counterfactual possibilities, or whether these two effects a...
Do children believe immoral events are possible? Nov 19, 2020 - Harvard Dataverse Phillips, Jonathan; Bloom, Paul, 2020, "Do children believe immoral events are possible?", https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/OWWK3D, Harvard Dataverse, V1, UNF:6:i4bTAWvOvK85ZuZRiY2MhA== [fileUNF] Previous research found that young children judge improbable events (e.g., counting all the hairs on a dog’s tail) to be impossible and to require magic. One possibility is that this effect occurs because young children are unable to simulate how they could occur. We argue here for an alternative, which is that these children have an undifferentiat...
Causation and norms of proper functioning: Counterfactuals are (still) relevant Nov 19, 2020 - Harvard Dataverse Phillips, Jonathan; Kominksy, Jonathan, 2020, "Causation and norms of proper functioning: Counterfactuals are (still) relevant", https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/4UTHKY, Harvard Dataverse, V1, UNF:6:rU68RFoqjMhChXIaHEmHRg== [fileUNF] Causal judgments are well-known to be sensitive to violations of both moral and statistical norms. There is ongoing discussion as to whether both effects are best explained through changes in the relevance of counterfactual possibilities, or if moral norm violations should be independently ex- plained through a potential polysemy whereby ‘cause’ ma...
New Horizons for a Theory of Epistemic Modals Nov 19, 2020 - Harvard Dataverse Phillips, Jonathan; Khoo, Justin, 2020, "New Horizons for a Theory of Epistemic Modals", https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/AALWHT, Harvard Dataverse, V1, UNF:6:D60Idb97XHTdRMK+ERNQwg== [fileUNF] Recent debate over the semantics and pragmatics of epistemic modals has focused on intuitions about cross-contextual truth-value assessments. In this paper, we advocate for a different approach to evaluating theories of epistemic modals. Our strategy focuses on judgments of the incompatibility of two different epistemic possibility claims, or two d...
Manipulating morality: Third-party intentions alter moral judgments by changing causal reasoning Nov 19, 2020 - Harvard Dataverse Phillips, Jonathan; Shaw, Alex, 2020, "Manipulating morality: Third-party intentions alter moral judgments by changing causal reasoning", https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/TAWE7F, Harvard Dataverse, V1, UNF:6:AKyQI8nxipzbAZVfWyhfbA== [fileUNF] The present studies investigate how the intentions of third parties influence judgments of moral responsibility for other agents who commit immoral acts. Using cases in which an agent acts under some situational constraint brought about by a third party, we ask whether the agent is blamed less for the immoral act when the third party intended for t...

Repository for Eavesdropping: What is it good for?