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Article
The Folk Probably Do Think What You Think They Think
Australasian Journal of Philosophy (2013)
  • William Dunaway, University of Missouri-St. Louis
  • Anna Edmonds
  • David Manley
Abstract
Much of contemporary experimental philosophy involves taking surveys of ‘folk’ subjects to test their intuitions involving philosophically relevant concepts. The results of these surveys are often claimed to be surprising, and treated as evidence that the relevant folk intuitions cannot be predicted from the ‘armchair’. We conducted an experiment to test these claims, and found that a solid majority of philosophers could predict even results that were claimed to be surprising in the literature. We discuss some methodological implications as well as some possible explanations for the common surprisingness claims.
Disciplines
Publication Date
2013
Citation Information
William Dunaway, Anna Edmonds and David Manley. "The Folk Probably Do Think What You Think They Think" Australasian Journal of Philosophy Vol. 91 Iss. 3 (2013) p. 421 - 441
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/william-dunaway/12/