TY - JOUR
T1 - Ordering effects, updating effects, and the specter of global skepticism
AU - Horne, Zachary
AU - Livengood, Jonathan
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2015, Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.
PY - 2017/4/1
Y1 - 2017/4/1
N2 - One widely-endorsed argument in the experimental philosophy literature maintains that intuitive judgments are unreliable because they are influenced by the order in which thought experiments prompting those judgments are presented. Here, we explicitly state this argument from ordering effects and show that any plausible understanding of the argument leads to an untenable conclusion. First, we show that the normative principle is ambiguous. On one reading of the principle, the empirical observation is well-supported, but the normative principle is false. On the other reading, the empirical observation has only weak support, and the normative principle, if correct, would impugn the reliability of deliberative reasoning, testimony, memory, and perception, since judgments in all these areas are sensitive to ordering in the relevant sense. We then reflect on what goes wrong with the argument.
AB - One widely-endorsed argument in the experimental philosophy literature maintains that intuitive judgments are unreliable because they are influenced by the order in which thought experiments prompting those judgments are presented. Here, we explicitly state this argument from ordering effects and show that any plausible understanding of the argument leads to an untenable conclusion. First, we show that the normative principle is ambiguous. On one reading of the principle, the empirical observation is well-supported, but the normative principle is false. On the other reading, the empirical observation has only weak support, and the normative principle, if correct, would impugn the reliability of deliberative reasoning, testimony, memory, and perception, since judgments in all these areas are sensitive to ordering in the relevant sense. We then reflect on what goes wrong with the argument.
KW - Experimental philosophy
KW - Ordering effects
KW - Skepticism
KW - Thought experiments
KW - Updating effects
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U2 - 10.1007/s11229-015-0985-9
DO - 10.1007/s11229-015-0985-9
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84949975186
SN - 0039-7857
VL - 194
SP - 1189
EP - 1218
JO - Synthese
JF - Synthese
IS - 4
ER -