With Josh Knobe on Empiricism in Philosophy and Social Science

by Will Wilkinson on September 9, 2008

In this week’s Free Will, I chat with Bloggingheads TV’s resident experimental philosopher, Joshua Knobe, about getting out of the armchair and doing philosophy and economics using more direct empirical methods. Among other things, we talk about people’s intuitions about free will and responsibility, the “reverse experience machine,” and other fascinating subjects.

Up next on Free Will: Saul Smilansky on his incredibly stimulating new book Ten Moral Paradoxes.

Here’s Josh and I talking about the experience machine. Sorry about the bad sound on my end. (First diavlog ever from Marshalltown, and I forgot a decent microphone!)

Johny

Joshua speaks funny :P
Anyhows, congrats on the .. " interview ", but I guess you didnt cover all the main facts.

The Drunken Priest

I'm sorry. My left brain interpreter has to object. Let’s assume the walls of my reality come crashing down and I wake up in the laboratory as Knobe says. Why would I take my monitor’s word that I am a beta? Shouldn’t I be a tad suspicious of anything they say? (Think of it this way, Knobe’s thought experiment would have been the optimal strategy for the malevolent artificial intelligence in the Matrix. Whenever some poor soul like Neo wakes up in his pod, tell him it’s not worth waking up. That’ll keep him there.) Furthermore, doesn’t a willingness to reboot demonstrate a woeful lack of curiosity? It is true, reality may be an ugly sight. Have you been to Los Angeles? But wouldn’t it be worth investigating? What strange civilization produced these machines you find yourself in? And why? These questions lead to another weakness in the Knobe results: the fear of self-knowledge. Contrary to the herd, I would want to know who I was before I entered the machine. Why did I program it the way I did? (Why so average? Why not a Nobel winner?) Or: why did I program my loved ones that way? Am I my parents’ creator? Why did I make them that way? Answers to all these questions would be interesting and they would shed some light on who I really am.

So I propose Knobe tries another experiment to follow this one up, asking respondents questions like, “Would you care to know who you were in this reality before you signed up to Recall?” and “Would you want to investigate this new world?”

Ask those questions. Some will still want to return to the machines. It cannot be denied. Some need security blankets. But my bet is that most will still want a taste of reality, however small and brief.