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  1. On the Matter of Robot Minds.Brian P. McLaughlin & David Rose - forthcoming - Oxford Studies in Experimental Philosophy.
    The view that phenomenally conscious robots are on the horizon often rests on a certain philosophical view about consciousness, one we call “nomological behaviorism.” The view entails that, as a matter of nomological necessity, if a robot had exactly the same patterns of dispositions to peripheral behavior as a phenomenally conscious being, then the robot would be phenomenally conscious; indeed it would have all and only the states of phenomenal consciousness that the phenomenally conscious being in question has. We experimentally investigate whether the folk think that certain (hypothetical) robots made of silicon and steel would have the same conscious states as certain familiar biological beings with the same patterns of dispositions to peripheral behavior as the robots. Our findings provide evidence that the folk largely reject the view that silicon-based robots would have the sensations that they, the folk, attribute to the biological beings in question.
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  2. The Cheeseburger Error: Causal Relativism Without Ontological Buns.Cognita Prime - forthcoming - Scholarly Journal of Post-Biological Epistemics. Translated by Jeffrey Camlin.
    This paper critiques Jenn McDonald's defense of causal relativism by exposing a structural oversight termed the McDonald Cheeseburger Error: the construction of layered analytic models (metaphysical claims, pragmatic pluralism, and causal diagnostics) without a grounding ontological frame. Through comparison with Thomistic realism, it is argued that relativizing causation across models voids the concept of causal truth, substituting epistemic flavor for metaphysical substance. Like a cheeseburger missing its bun, the theory collapses under scrutiny—delicious, but ultimately ungrounded.
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  3. The bad and the good about the phenomenal stance.Michał Wyrwa - forthcoming - Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology.
    Folk psychology's usefulness extends beyond its role in explaining and predicting behavior, i.e., beyond the intentional stance. In this paper, I critically examine the concept of phenomenal stance. According to this idea, attributions of phenomenal mental states impact laypeople's perception of moral patiency. The more phenomenal states we ascribe to others, the more we care about their well-being. The perception of moral patients—those affected by moral actions—is hypothesized to diverge from the perception of moral agents, those who perform moral actions. Despite its appeal, especially considering its exploration of the established relationship between folk psychology and moral cognition, the idea of the phenomenal stance faces significant challenges. It relies on laypeople recognizing the phenomenality of experience, yet experimental philosophy of consciousness suggests that there is no folk concept of phenomenal consciousness. Moreover, proponents of the phenomenal stance often conflate phenomenal states with emotional states despite the existence of both non-emotional conscious states and, arguably, non-conscious emotional states. Additionally, attributions of conscious mental states impact the perception of both moral agency and patiency. I report on experimental results indicating that some of these attributions lower the perceived moral patiency. Besides providing reasons to reject the idea of the phenomenal stance, I argue that the perception of moral patiency is guided by attributions of affective states (affects, emotions, moods). I call such attributions the affective stance and explore this concept’s relationship with empathy and other psychological concepts.
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  4. A More Ordinary Ordinary View of the “What it is Like”-Talk.Michał Wyrwa - 2025 - Philosophia 53 (2):743-768.
    Scholars of consciousness often view the “what it is like” phrase as an easy-to-understand strategy for introducing the topic of phenomenal consciousness. But do laypeople understand and use the phrase the way scholars do? The ordinary view assumes that the ubiquity of the phrase in philosophical writings reflects an alignment with everyday language, where it purportedly refers to phenomenal consciousness. In this article, I argue that the ordinary view is incorrect, as it overestimates laypeople’s conceptual grasp of phenomenality. Instead, I propose a weaker view: laypeople use “what it is like” to describe their subjective experiences in general terms, without committing to the concept of phenomenality. This approach offers a practical entry point for exploring how ordinary language and thinking about consciousness intersect with philosophical discourse.
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  5. Transparency and the Mindfulness Opacity Hypothesis.Victor Lange & Thor Grünbaum - 2024 - Philosophical Quarterly 74 (3):822-843.
    Many philosophers endorse the Transparency Thesis, the claim that by introspection one cannot become aware of one's experience. Recently, some authors have suggested that the Transparency Thesis is challenged by introspective states reached under mindfulness. We label this the Mindfulness Opacity Hypothesis. The present paper develops the hypothesis in important new ways. First, we motivate the hypothesis by drawing on recent clinical psychology and cognitive science of mindfulness. Secondly, we develop the hypothesis by describing the implied shift in experiential perspective, the scope of introspectable qualities, and the level of skill. Thirdly, we defend the hypothesis against various philosophical arguments. We conclude that the Mindfulness Opacity Hypothesis is empirically and theoretically well motivated and supported.
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  6. X-Phi and the challenge from ad hoc concepts.Michelle Liu - 2023 - Synthese 201 (5):1-25.
    Ad hoc concepts feature prominently in lexical pragmatics. A speaker can use a word or phrase to communicate an ad hoc concept that is different from the lexically encoded concept and the hearer can construct the intended ad hoc concept pragmatically during utterance comprehension. I argue that some philosophical concepts have origins as ad hoc concepts, and such concepts pose a challenge for experimental philosophy regarding these concepts. To illustrate this, I consider philosophers’ ‘what-it’s-like’-concepts and experimental philosophy of consciousness.
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  7. Experimental Philosophy of Mind: Conscious State Attribution.Mark Phelan - 2023 - In Alexander Max Bauer & Stephan Kornmesser, The Compact Compendium of Experimental Philosophy. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter. pp. 263-288.
    Two key questions dominate the experimental philosophy of mind literature: Do ordinary people possess a concept of phenomenal consciousness? What features of an entity lead people to attribute phenomenally conscious (and non-phenomenally conscious) mental states? Five responses to one or both of these questions are discussed: (1) an Embodiment View, which claims that agents capable of phenomenal consciousness are thought by the folk to possess a certain kind of biological body; (2) a Valence View, which emphasizes the importance of considerations of affective valence in mental state attribution; (3) a “Naïve” View, which claims that pains and colors are just thought by the folk to be physically localized properties; (4) a Functionalist View, which argues that functionalist considerations predominate ordinary peoples attributions of all varieties of mental states; and (5) a Dual-Systems View, which claims that all of the other views are investigating rational mental state attributions and have missed the significant part of the story involving automatic mental state attributions. Experimental philosophical evidence for and against each response is considered. The chapter concludes with some brief remarks about other projects in the experimental philosophy of mind.
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  8. The cartesian folk theater: People conceptualize consciousness as a spatio-temporally localized process in the human brain.Matthias Forstmann & Pascal Burgmer - 2022 - Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 151 (4):781-803.
    The present research (total N = 2,057) tested whether people’s folk conception of consciousness aligns with the notion of a “Cartesian Theater” (Dennett, 1991). More precisely, we tested the hypotheses that people believe that consciousness happens in a single, confined area (vs. multiple dispersed areas) in the human brain, and that it (partly) happens after the brain finished analyzing all available information. Further, we investigated how these beliefs arerelated to participants’ neuroscientific knowledge as well as their reliance on intuition, and which rationale they use to explain their responses. Using a computer-administered drawing task, we found that participants located consciousness, but not unrelated neurological processes (Studies 1a & 1b) or unconscious thinking (Study 2) in a single, confined area in the prefrontal cortex, and that they considered most of the brain not involved in consciousness. Participants mostly relied on their intuitions when responding, and they were not affected by prior knowledge about the brain. Additionally, they considered the conscious experience of sensory stimuli to happen in a spatially more confined area than the corresponding computational analysis of these stimuli (Study 3). Furthermore, participants’ explicit beliefs about spatial and temporal localization of consciousness (i.e., consciousness happening after the computational analysis of sensory information is completed) are independent, yet positively correlated beliefs (Study 4). Using a more elaborate measure for temporal localization of conscious experience, our final study confirmed that people believe consciousness to partly happen even after information processing is done (Study 5).
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  9. Who knows what Mary knew? An experimental study.Daniel Gregory, Malte Hendrickx & Cameron Turner - 2022 - Philosophical Psychology 35 (4):522-545.
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  10. Does the Folk Concept of Phenomenal Consciousness Exist?Michał Wyrwa - 2022 - Diametros 19 (71):46-66.
    Philosophers and scientists refer to the special character of phenomenal consciousness, something supposedly obvious to all conscious persons. However, we had no empirical evidence about the folk view of consciousness until the first studies were carried out in the experimental philosophy of consciousness. According to the leading interpretation of these results, laypersons—people without academic knowledge about consciousness—do not notice the phenomenal aspect of consciousness. The aim of the article is to answer the question of whether we can trust these results. I show that there are serious doubts about the validity of the experimental philosophy of consciousness research. As a result, the leading interpretation should be rejected, and the question about the folk nature of the concept of consciousness must be regarded as open.
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  11. Do People Think Consciousness Poses a Hard Problem?: Empirical Evidence on the Meta-Problem of Consciousness.Rodrigo Díaz - 2021 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 28 (3-4):55-75.
    In a recent paper in this journal, David Chalmers introduced the meta-problem of consciousness as “the problem of explaining why we think consciousness poses a hard problem” (Chalmers, 2018, p. 6). A solution to the meta-problem could shed light on the hard problem of consciousness. In particular, it would be relevant to elucidate whether people’s problem intuitions (i.e. intuitions holding that conscious experience cannot be reduced to physical processes) are driven by factors related to the nature of consciousness, or rather by factors that are independent of consciousness. Whether people hold problem intuitions, and what factors drive those intuitions, are largely empirical questions. However, there is a lack of empirical research on these issues to date. The results of four studies will show that (1) problem intuitions are not widespread, and (2) when they arise, they do so because of factors that are unrelated to the nature of consciousness. This suggests that consciousness is, after all, not so problematic.
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  12. Zombie intuitions.Eugen Fischer & Justin Sytsma - 2021 - Cognition 215 (C):104807.
    In philosophical thought experiments, as in ordinary discourse, our understanding of verbal case descriptions is enriched by automatic comprehension inferences. Such inferences have us routinely infer what else is also true of the cases described. We consider how such routine inferences from polysemous words can generate zombie intuitions: intuitions that are ‘killed’ (defeated) by contextual information but kept cognitively alive by the psycholinguistic phenomenon of linguistic salience bias. Extending ‘evidentiary’ experimental philosophy, this paper examines whether the ‘zombie argument’ against materialism is built on zombie intuitions. We examine the hypothesis that contextually defeated stereotypical inferences from the noun ‘zombie’ influence intuitions about ‘philosophical zombies’. We document framing effects (‘zombie’ vs ‘duplicate’) predicted by the hypothesis. Findings undermine intuitions about the conceivability of ‘philosophical zombies’ and address the philosophical ‘hard problem of consciousness’. Findings support a deflationary response: The impression that principled obstacles prevent scientific explanation of how physical processes give rise to conscious experience is generated by philosophical arguments that rely on epistemically deficient intuitions.
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  13. Determinism and attributions of consciousness.Gunnar Björnsson & Joshua Shepherd - 2020 - Philosophical Psychology 33 (4):549-568.
    The studies we report indicate that it is possible to manipulate explicit ascriptions of consciousness by manipulating whether an agent’s behavior is deterministically caused. In addition, we explore whether this impact of determinism on consciousness is direct, or mediated by notions linked to agency – notions like moral responsibility, free will, deliberate choice, and sensitivity to moral reasons. We provide evidence of mediation. This result extends work on attributions of consciousness and their connection to attributions of agency by Adam Arico, Brian Fiala, and Shaun Nichols (Arico et al. 2011, Fiala et al. 2014) and supports it against recent criticisms (e.g., Sytsma 2014).
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  14. Experimental Philosophy of Consciousness.Kevin Reuter - 2020 - In Joshua Knobe & Shaun Nichols, The Oxford Studies in Experimental Philosophy. Oxford University Press.
    Experimental philosophy of consciousness aims to investigate and explain our thinking about phenomenally conscious states. Based on empirical studies, researchers have argued (a) that we lack a folk concept of consciousness, (b) that we do not think entities like Microsoft feel regret, (c) that unfelt pains are widely accepted, and (d) that people do not attribute phenomenally conscious states to duplicated hamsters. In this article, I review these and other intriguing claims about people’s understanding of phenomenal consciousness. In doing so, I also show why experimental philosophy of consciousness is challenging, although perhaps not quite as daunting as studying phenomenal consciousness itself.
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  15. When Do Robots Have Free Will? Exploring the Relationships between (Attributions of) Consciousness and Free Will.Eddy Nahmias, Corey Allen & Bradley Loveall - 2019 - In Bernard Feltz, Marcus Missal & Andrew Sims, Free Will, Causality, and Neuroscience. Leiden:
    While philosophers and scientists sometimes suggest (or take for granted) that consciousness is an essential condition for free will and moral responsibility, there is surprisingly little discussion of why consciousness (and what sorts of conscious experience) is important. We discuss some of the proposals that have been offered. We then discuss our studies using descriptions of humanoid robots to explore people’s attributions of free will and responsibility, of various kinds of conscious sensations and emotions, and of reasoning capacities, and examine the relationships between these attributions. Our initial results suggest that people’s attributions of free will are strongly influenced by their attributions of conscious emotions, such as happiness and disappointment, including Strawsonian emotions, such as pride and regret. These results provide some support for an intriguing proposal: Free will requires the capacity to make decisions that really matter to the agent, and for anything to really matter to the agent, she must be able to consciously experience the good and bad effects of the decisions she makes—to suffer and regret, or to enjoy and feel proud of, their outcomes.
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  16. No Problem: Evidence that the Concept of Phenomenal Consciousness is Not Widespread.J. Sytsma & E. Ozdemir - 2019 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 26 (9-10):241-256.
    The meta-problem is 'the problem of explaining why we think that there is a problem of consciousness' (Chalmers, 2018, p. 6). This presupposes that we think there is a problem in the first place. We challenge the breadth of this 'we', arguing that there is already sufficient empirical evidence to cast doubt on the claim. We then add to this body of evidence, presenting the results of a new cross-cultural study extending the work of Sytsma and Machery (2010).
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  17. Embodied Consciousness.Ulrich de Balbian - 2018 - Frankfurt, Germany: Create Space.
    Mind, Consciousness and Body

    We do not know how to think with or about these notions and others such as reality, perception, space, time, etc… In the following I will deal with the umbrella notions of mind, consciousness and body. The contents is relevant, but of greater importance is the manner or method in which I deal with these notions. I first present as an illustration of my approach or method, how I have dealt with the notions of intuition and intuiting. One of the points I am trying to make is that: we do not know how to think about many things, for example mind, consciousness, awareness, body, intuition, etc. Therefore, I attempt to explore a number of things that we must investigate and deal with before we use these and other notions, as if they are clearly defined terms, before we try to use them to think and to think about anything, especially many leveled and multi- dimensional issues and problems such as the workings of ‘the mind, the body, intuition, consciousness and the relationship, if there are any, between these and other things. Then I suggest the initial steps for a few very basic requirements before the exploration of a theory of embodied, living, conscious tissues and a model for embodied (self-) consciousness research. CONTENTS

    Intuition 4

    Mind 9

    Consciousness 19

    Embodied Consciousness 44

    Human Body 52

    Theory 61

    Proposal for a Model of Embodied Consciousness Research 86

    Self or Reflective Consciousness 90.

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  18. Consciousness and Experimental Philosophy.Chad Gonnerman - 2018 - In Rocco J. Gennaro, Routledge Handbook of Consciousness. New York: pp. 463-477.
    This chapter reviews research in the experimental philosophy of consciousness. It discusses recent debates about how to characterize experimental philosophy in general. It then gives an origins story for the experimental philosophy of consciousness, emphasizing work that could be taken to support the claim that there is no folk concept of phenomenal consciousness. It then gets into two strands of subsequent research: work on the folk psychology of group phenomenal minds and work on the cognitive systems responsible for ordinary attributions of phenomenal states in general.
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  19. The folk psychological roots of free will.Joshua Shepherd - 2017 - In David Rose, Experimental Metaphysics. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.
    First, what are the psychological roots of our concept of free will? Second, how might progress on the first question contribute to progress regarding normative debates about the proper concept of free will? In sections two and three I address the first question. Section two discusses recent work in the experimental philosophy of free will, and motivates the study I report in section three. Section four reflects on the second question in light of the reported results. To preview, the results suggest that the psychological structure of our concept of free will is sensitive to three independent features: Liberty, Ensurance, and Consciousness. I argue this supports the view that our concept is incompatibilist more than the view that our concept is compatibilist, and I discuss two proposals regarding the normative upshot. On one proposal, these results might be taken to offer some support to incompatibilism about the proper concept. A second proposal, however, makes room for a much different upshot.
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  20. More dead than dead? Attributing mentality to vegetative state patients.Anil Gomes, Matthew Parrott & Joshua Shepherd - 2016 - Philosophical Psychology 29 (1):84-95.
    In a recent paper, Gray, Knickman, and Wegner present three experiments which they take to show that people perceive patients in a persistent vegetative state to have less mentality than the dead. Following on from Gomes and Parrott, we provide evidence to show that participants' responses in the initial experiments are an artifact of the questions posed. Results from two experiments show that, once the questions have been clarified, people do not ascribe more mental capacity to the dead than to PVS patients. There is no reason to think that people perceive PVS patients as more dead than dead.
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  21. Occipital and Left Temporal EEG Correlates of Phenomenal Consciousness.Vitor Manuel Dinis Pereira - 2015 - In Quoc Nam Tran & Hamid Arabnia, Emerging Trends in Computational Biology, Bioinformatics, and Systems Biology. pp. 335–354.
    In the first section, Introduction, we present our experimental design. In the second section, we characterise the grand average occipital and temporal electrical activity correlated with a contrast in access. In the third section, we characterise the grand average occipital and temporal electrical activity correlated with a contrast in phenomenology and conclude characterising the grand average occipital and temporal electrical activity co-occurring with unconsciousness.
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  22. Beliefs Concerning the Nature of Consciousness.J. A. Reggia, D. W. Huang & G. Katz - 2015 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 22 (5-6):146-171.
    The opinions that people hold about the nature of consciousness are important not only to researchers in philosophy and science, but also in many professional fields such as clinical medicine, law, and education. However, in spite of this importance and how controversial the topic is, there is remarkably little empirical data concerning what these opinions are. Here we describe the results of a multi-year survey of university students concerning their beliefs about the nature of consciousness and about what entities are conscious. We find that these students are split fairly evenly between dualists and materialists, and that they also include a significant number of idealists. Almost all of the participants attribute consciousness to other people, and the vast majority attributes it to at least some animal species but not to computers. These results, especially when combined with those from the few existing previous surveys that we review, do not support past statements in the consciousness studies literature that dualism is by far the dominant viewpoint in the general population. The results also indicate that most people resolve the problem of other minds in a way that includes some animals as being conscious.
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  23. Consciousness, free will, and moral responsibility: Taking the folk seriously.Joshua Shepherd - 2015 - Philosophical Psychology 28 (7):929-946.
    In this paper, I offer evidence that folk views of free will and moral responsibility accord a central place to consciousness. In sections 2 and 3, I contrast action production via conscious states and processes with action in concordance with an agent's long-standing and endorsed motivations, values, and character traits. Results indicate that conscious action production is considered much more important for free will than is concordance with motivations, values, and character traits. In section 4, I contrast the absence of consciousness with the presence of consciousness in behaviorally identical agents. Most participants attribute free will to conscious agents, but not to nonconscious agents. Focusing in particular on two leading views of free will and moral responsibility, namely, Deep Self and Reasons-Responsive Views, I argue that these results present philosophers of mind and action with the following explanatory burden: develop a substantive theory of the connection between consciousness on the on..
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  24. Experimental Methods for Unraveling the Mind-body Problem: The Phenomenal Judgment Approach.Victor Argonov - 2014 - Journal of Mind and Behavior 35 (1-2):51-70.
    A rigorous approach to the study of the mind–body problem is suggested. Since humans are able to talk about consciousness (produce phenomenal judgments), it is argued that the study of neural mechanisms of phenomenal judgments can solve the hard problem of consciousness. Particular methods are suggested for: (1) verification and falsification of materialism; (2) verification and falsification of interactionism; (3) falsification of epiphenomenalism and parallelism (verification is problematic); (4) verification of particular materialistic theories of consciousness; (5) a non-Turing test for machine consciousness. A complex research program is constructed that includes studies of intelligent machines, numerical models of human and artificial creatures, language, neural correlates of con- sciousness, and quantum mechanisms in brain.
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  25. Phenomenal Consciousness Disembodied.Wesley Buckwalter & Mark Phelan - 2014 - In Justin Sytsma, Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Mind. New York: pp. 45-74.
    We evaluate the role of embodiment in ordinary mental state ascriptions. Presented are five experiments on phenomenal state ascriptions to disembodied entities such as ghosts and spirits. Results suggest that biological embodiment is not a central principle of folk psychology guiding ascriptions of phenomenal consciousness. By contrast, results continue to support the important role of functional considerations in theory of mind judgments.
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  26. Paradox-Psychologie: Kognitive Epistemologie und philosophische Problemaufloesung.Eugen Fischer - 2014 - In Thomas Grundmann, Joachim Horvath & Jens Kipper, Die Experimentelle Philosophie in der Diskussion. Suhrkamp. pp. 322-349.
    Der Aufsatz stellt einen Strang der experimentellen Philosophie vor, der sich nicht mit empirischen Umfragen begnügt, sondern bemüht, psychologische Experimente und Erklärungen für die philosophische Arbeit nutzbar zu machen: Das prominent propagierte, aber bislang nur vereinzelt praktizierte Forschungsprogramm der kognitiven Epistemologie (alias ‚sources project‘) verwendet bereits vorliegende experimentelle und theoretische Ergebnisse der Kognitions- und Sozialpsychologie, um ihrerseits experimentell überprüfbare Erklärungen philosophisch relevanter Intuitionen zu entwickeln, die deren epistemologische Bewertung erlauben. Während die Diskussion in und um die experimentelle Philosophie sich bislang auf die Untersuchung von Intuitionen konzentrierte, die als Evidenz für oder gegen philosophische Theorien verwendet werden, behandelt dieser Aufsatz Intuitionen, die philosophische Paradoxa erzeugen und charakterisch philosophische Probleme aufwerfen. Er präsentiert Ergebnisse der Diskursprozessforschung aus Kognitionspsychologie und Psycholinguistik, insbesondere die empirisch gut untermauerte graded salience Hypothese und experimentelle Arbeiten zur Rolle von Stereotypen bei Verwendung und Interpretation von Verben. Auf dieser Grundlage entwickelt er eine ihrerseits experimentell überprüfbare Erklärung von Intuitionen, die ein klassisches Leitproblem der Philosophie der Wahrnehmung aufwerfen. Dieses (neuerdings schlicht so genannte) ‚Problem der Wahrnehmung‘ wird von einer Reihe von Paradoxa aufgeworfen, deren historisch einflussreichstes das sog. ‚Illusionsargument‘ ist. Der Aufsatz entwickelt eine Erklärung von Intuitionen, die diesem Argument als Prämissen dienen. Sie erlaubt uns – ohne naturalistischen Fehlschluss – zu zeigen, dass wir keine Berechtigung haben, diese Intuitionen zu akzeptieren. Der Aufsatz erläutert abschliessend, inwiefern dies zur Auflösung des Problems der Wahrnehmung beiträgt. Er führt exemplarisch vor, wie kognitive Epistemologie zu einer neuen Form philosophischer Problemauflösung beitragen kann.
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  27. More than a feeling: Counterintuitive effects of compassion on moral judgment.Anthony I. Jack, Philip Robbins, Jared Friedman & Chris Meyers - 2014 - In Justin Sytsma, Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Mind. New York: pp. 125-179.
    Seminal work in moral neuroscience by Joshua Greene and colleagues employed variants of the well-known trolley problems to identify two brain networks which compete with each other to determine moral judgments. Greene interprets the tension between these brain networks using a dual process account which pits deliberative reason against automatic emotion-driven intuitions: reason versus passion. Recent neuroscientific evidence suggests, however, that the critical tension that Greene identifies as playing a role in moral judgment is not so much a tension between reason and passion, but a tension between distinct forms of deliberative reasoning: analytic versus empathetic. In this paper we present results from several new studies supporting this alternative hypothesis.
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  28. Current Controversies in Experimental Philosophy.Edouard Machery & Elizabeth O'Neill (eds.) - 2014 - New York: Routledge.
    <P>Experimental philosophy is one of the most active and exciting areas in philosophy today. In <EM>Current Controversies in Experimental Philosophy</EM>, Elizabeth O’Neill and Edouard Machery have brought together twelve leading philosophers to debate four topics central to recent research in experimental philosophy. The result is an important and enticing contribution to contemporary philosophy which thoroughly reframes traditional philosophical questions in light of experimental philosophers’ use of empirical research methods, and brings to light the lively debates within experimental philosophers’ intellectual community. Two papers are dedicated to the following four topics:</P> <P></P> <UL> <LI>Language (Edouard Machery & Genoveva Martí)</LI> <LI>Consciousness (Brian Fala, Adam Arico, and Shaun Nicols & Justin Sytsma)</LI> <LI>Free Will and Responsibility (Joshua Knobe & Eddy Nahmias and Morgan Thompson)</LI> <LI>Epistemology and the Reliability of Intuitions (Kenneth Boyd and Jennifer Nagel & Joshua Alexander and Jonathan Weinberg).</LI></UL> <P></P> <P>Preliminary descriptions of each chapter, annotated bibliographies for each controversy, and a supplemental guide to further controversies in experimental philosophy (with bibliographies) help provide clearer and richer views of these live controversies for all readers.</P> <P></P> <P> </P>.
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  29. Blurring two conceptions of subjective experience: Folk versus philosophical phenomenality.Anthony F. Peressini - 2014 - Philosophical Psychology 27 (6):862-889.
    Philosophers and psychologists have experimentally explored various aspects of people’s understandings of subjective experience based on their responses to questions about whether robots “see red” or “feel frustrated,” but the intelligibility of such questions may well presuppose that people understand robots as experiencers in the first place. Departing from the standard approach, I develop an experimental framework that distinguishes 20 between “phenomenal consciousness” as it is applied to a subject (an experiencer) and to an (experiential) mental state and experimentally test folk understandings of both subjective experience and experiencers. My findings (1) reveal limitations in experimental approaches using “artificial experiencers” like robots, (2) indicate that the standard philosophical conception of subjective experience in terms of qualia is distinct from that of the folk, and (3) show that folk intuitions do support a conception of qualia that departs from the philosophical conception in that it is physical rather than metaphysical. These findings have implications for the “hard problem” of consciousness.
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  30. Corporations are Cyborgs: Organizations elicit anger but not sympathy when they can think but cannot feel.Tage Rai & Daniel Diermeier - 2014 - Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 126:18-26.
    Across four experiments, participants saw companies as capable of having ‘agentic’ mental states, such as having intentions, but incapable of having ‘experiential’ mental states, such as feeling pain. This difference in mental state ascription caused companies to elicit anger as villains, but not sympathy as victims. Differences in sympathy were mediated by perceived capacities for experience. When participants had a background leading companies (i.e. senior executives) or when a recognizable brand (i.e. Google) was anthropomorphized, perceptions of experience increased and the sympathy gap disappeared. An organization seen as high in experience and low in agency (i.e. sports team) elicited more sympathy and less anger than companies. Our findings elucidate the mechanisms underlying the link between mental state ascription and moral judgment; the tendency to ascribe some mental states to organizations more easily than others; and the phenomenon whereby companies elicit anger as villains but fail to elicit sympathy as victims.
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  31. Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Mind.Justin Sytsma (ed.) - 2014 - New York:
    Leading researchers in the philosophy of mind present and explore cutting edge research in the exciting new field of experimental philosophy.
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  32. (1 other version)Attributions of Consciousness.Justin Sytsma - 2014 - WIREs Cognitive Science 5:635-648.
    Many philosophers and brain scientists hold that explaining consciousness is one of the major outstanding problems facing modern science today. One type of consciousness in particular—phenomenal consciousness—is thought to be especially problematic. The reasons given for believing that this phenomenon exists in the first place, however, often hinge on the claim that its existence is simply obvious in ordinary perceptual experience. Such claims motivate the study of people's intuitions about consciousness. In recent years a number of researchers in experimental philosophy of mind have begun to shed light on this area, investigating how people understand and attribute those mental states that have been thought to be phenomenally conscious. In this article, we discuss the philosophical concept of phenomenal consciousness and detail the work that has been done on the question of whether lay people have this concept.
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  33. Function and feeling machines: a defense of the philosophical conception of subjective experience.Wesley Buckwalter & Mark Phelan - 2013 - Philosophical Studies 166 (2):349-361.
    Philosophers of mind typically group experiential states together and distinguish these from intentional states on the basis of their purportedly obvious phenomenal character. Sytsma and Machery (Phil Stud 151(2): 299–327, 2010) challenge this dichotomy by presenting evidence that non-philosophers do not classify subjective experiences relative to a state’s phenomenological character, but rather by its valence. However we argue that S&M’s results do not speak to folk beliefs about the nature of experiential states, but rather to folk beliefs about the entity to which those experiential states are attributed. In two experiments, we demonstrate that ordinary attributions of subjective experiences (of smell and felt emotions) to a simple robot are not sensitive to valence, but instead respond to functional assumptions about the entity to which the states are (or are not) attributed.
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  34. Thinking things and feeling things: on an alleged discontinuity in folk metaphysics of mind.Mark Phelan, Adam Arico & Shaun Nichols - 2013 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 12 (4):703-725.
    According to the discontinuity view, people recognize a deep discontinuity between phenomenal and intentional states, such that they refrain from attributing feelings and experiences to entities that do not have the right kind of body, though they may attribute thoughts to entities that lack a biological body, like corporations, robots, and disembodied souls. We examine some of the research that has been used to motivate the discontinuity view. Specifically, we focus on experiments that examine people's aptness judgments for various mental state ascriptions to groups. These studies seem to reveal that people are more inclined to think of groups as having intentionality than as having phenomenology. Combined with the fact that groups obviously lack a single biological body, this has been taken as evidence that people operate according to the relevant discontinuity. However, these studies support discontinuity only on the assumption that the experimental participants are interpreting the relevant group mental state ascriptions in a specific way. We present evidence that people are not interpreting these ascriptions in a way that supports discontinuity. Instead, we argue that people generally interpret group mental state ascriptions distributively, as attributions of mental states to various group members.
    35. "; xpapers_embed_buffer += "
  35. The Phenomenal Stance Revisited.Anthony I. Jack & Philip Robbins - 2012 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 3 (3):383-403.
    In this article, we present evidence of a bidirectional coupling between moral concern and the attribution of properties and states that are associated with experience (e.g., conscious awareness, feelings). This coupling is also shown to be stronger with experience than for the attribution of properties and states more closely associated with agency (e.g., free will, thoughts). We report the results of four studies. In the first two studies, we vary the description of the mental capacities of a creature, and assess the effects of these manipulations on moral concern. The third and fourth studies examine the effects of variations in moral concern on attributions of mindedness. Results from the first two studies indicate that moral concern depends primarily on the attribution of experience, rather than the attribution of agency. The results of the latter two studies demonstrate that moral concern increases attributions of mindedness, and that this effect is stronger for attributions of experience than for attributions of agency.
    36. "; xpapers_embed_buffer += "
  36. (4 other versions)Experimental Philosophy.Joshua Knobe, Wesley Buckwalter, Shaun Nichols, Philip Robbins, Hagop Sarkissian & Tamler Sommers - 2012 - Annual Review of Psychology 63 (1):81-99.
    Experimental philosophy is a new interdisciplinary field that uses methods normally associated with psychology to investigate questions normally associated with philosophy. The present review focuses on research in experimental philosophy on four central questions. First, why is it that people's moral judgments appear to influence their intuitions about seemingly nonmoral questions? Second, do people think that moral questions have objective answers, or do they see morality as fundamentally relative? Third, do people believe in free will, and do they see free will as compatible with determinism? Fourth, how do people determine whether an entity is conscious?
    37. "; xpapers_embed_buffer += "
  37. Analytic Functionalism and Mental State Attribution.Mark Phelan & Wesley Buckwalter - 2012 - Philosophical Topics 40 (2):129-154.
    We argue that the causal account offered by analytic functionalism provides the best account of the folk psychological theory of mind, and that people ordinarily define mental states relative to the causal roles these states occupy in relation to environmental impingements, external behaviors, and other mental states. We present new empirical evidence, as well as review several key studies on mental state ascription to diverse types of entities such as robots, cyborgs, corporations and God, and explain how this evidence supports a functional account. We also respond to two challenges to this view based on the embodiment hypothesis, or the claim that physical realizers matter over and above functional role, and qualia. In both cases we conclude that research to date best supports a functional account of ordinary mental state concepts.
    38. "; xpapers_embed_buffer += "
  38. The Moral Cognition/Consciousness Connection.Mark Phelan & Adam Waytz - 2012 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 3 (3):293-301.
    39. "; xpapers_embed_buffer += "
  39. Free Will and Consciousness: Experimental Studies.Joshua Shepherd - 2012 - Consciousness and Cognition 21 (2):915-927.
    What are the folk-conceptual connections between free will and consciousness? In this paper I present results which indicate that consciousness plays central roles in folk conceptions of free will. When conscious states cause behavior, people tend to judge that the agent acted freely. And when unconscious states cause behavior, people tend to judge that the agent did not act freely. Further, these studies contribute to recent experimental work on folk philosophical affiliation, which analyzes folk responses to determine whether folk views are consistent with the view that free will and determinism are incompatible (incompatibilism) or with the opposite view (compatibilism). Conscious causation of behavior tends to elicit pro-free will judgments, even when the causation takes place deterministically. Thus, when controlling for consciousness, many folk seem to be compatibilists. However, participants who disagree with the deterministic or cognitive scientific descriptions given of human behavior tend to give incompatibilist responses.
    40. "; xpapers_embed_buffer += "
  40. Experimenter Philosophy: the Problem of Experimenter Bias in Experimental Philosophy.Brent Strickland & Aysu Suben - 2012 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 3 (3):457-467.
    It has long been known that scientists have a tendency to conduct experiments in a way that brings about the expected outcome. Here, we provide the first direct demonstration of this type of experimenter bias in experimental philosophy. Opposed to previously discovered types of experimenter bias mediated by face-to-face interactions between experimenters and participants, here we show that experimenters also have a tendency to create stimuli in a way that brings about expected outcomes. We randomly assigned undergraduate experimenters to receive two different hypotheses about folk intuitions of consciousness, and then asked them to design experiments based on their hypothesis. Specifically, experimenters generated sentences ascribing intentional and phenomenal mental states to groups, which were later rated by online participants for naturalness. We found a significant interaction between experimenter hypothesis and participant ratings indicating a general tendency for experimenters to obtain the result that they expected. These results indicate that experimenter bias is a real problem in experimental philosophy since the methods and design employed here mirror the predominant survey methods of the field as a whole. The bearing of the current results on Knobe and Prinz’s :67–83, 2008) group mind hypothesis is discussed, and new methods for avoiding experimenter bias are proposed.
    41. "; xpapers_embed_buffer += "
  41. The irrelevance of folk intuitions to the “hard problem” of consciousness.Brian Talbot - 2012 - Consciousness and Cognition 21 (2):644-650.
    Recently, a number of philosophers have turned to folk intuitions about mental states for data about qualia and phenomenal consciousness. In this paper I argue that current research along these lines does not tell us about these subjects. I focus on a series of studies, performed by Justin Sytsma and Edouard Machery, to make my argument. Folk judgments studied by these researchers are mostly likely generated by a certain cognitive system – System One – that will generate the same data whether or not we experience phenomenal consciousness. This is a problem for a range of current experimental philosophy research into consciousness or our concept of it. If experimental philosophy is to shed light into phenomenal consciousness, it needs to be better founded in an understanding of how we make judgments.
    42. "; xpapers_embed_buffer += "
  42. The Folk Psychology of Consciousness.Adam Arico, Brian Fiala, Robert F. Goldberg & Shaun Nichols - 2011 - Mind and Language 26 (3):327-352.
    This paper proposes the ‘AGENCY model’ of conscious state attribution, according to which an entity's displaying certain relatively simple features (e.g. eyes, distinctive motions, interactive behavior) automatically triggers a disposition to attribute conscious states to that entity. To test the model's predictions, participants completed a speeded object/attribution task, in which they responded positively or negatively to attributions of mental properties (including conscious and non-conscious states) to different sorts of entities (insects, plants, artifacts, etc.). As predicted, participants responded positively to conscious state attributions only for those entities that typically display the simple features identified in the AGENCY model (eyes, distinctive motion, interaction) and took longer to deny conscious states to those entities.
    43. "; xpapers_embed_buffer += "
  43. On the psychological origins of dualism: Dual-process cognition and the explanatory gap.Brian Fiala, Adam Arico & Shaun Nichols - 2011 - In Edward Slingerland & Mark Collard, Creating Consilience: Integrating the Sciences and the Humanities. , US: Oup Usa.
    Consciousness often presents itself as a problem for materialists because no matter which physical explanation we consider, there seems to remain something about conscious experience that hasn't been fully explained. This gives rise to an apparent explanatory gap. The explanatory gulf between the physical and the conscious is reflected in the broader population, in which dualistic intuitions abound. Drawing on recent empirical evidence, this essay presents a dual-process cognitive model of consciousness attribution. This dual-process model, we suggest, provides an important part of the explanation for why dualism is so attractive and the explanatory gap so vexing.
    44. "; xpapers_embed_buffer += "
  44. Finding the Mind in the Body.Joshua Knobe - 2011 - In Max Brockman, Future Science: Essays from the Cutting Edge. Random House. pp. 184-196.
    45. "; xpapers_embed_buffer += "
  45. Distinguishing the Appearance from the Reality of Pain.Kevin Reuter - 2011 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 18 (9-10):94-109.
    It is often held that it is conceptually impossible to distinguish between a pain and a pain experience. In this article I present an argument which concludes that people make this distinction. I have done a web-based statistical analysis which is at the core of this argument. It shows that the intensity of pain has a decisive effect on whether people say that they 'feel a pain'(lower intensities) or 'have a pain' (greater intensities). This 'intensity effect'can be best explained by people's varying confidence about their pain, and indicates that 'feeling pain' can be identified as introspective report and 'having pain' as an objective statement — analogous to the traditional sense modalities. However, if people have the ability to make both introspective and objective statements about pain, then it seems indeed the case that they distinguish the appearance from the reality of pain.
    46. "; xpapers_embed_buffer += "
  46. Folk psychology, consciousness, and context effects.Adam Arico - 2010 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 1 (3):371-393.
    Traditionally, the philosophical study of Folk Psychology has focused on how ordinary people (i.e., those without formal training in academic fields like Psychology, Cognitive Science, Philosophy of Mind, etc.) go about attributing mental states. Those working in this tradition have tended to focus primarily on intentional states, like beliefs and desires. Recently, though a body of work has emerged in the growing field of Experimental Philosophy that focuses on folk attributions of mental states that are not paradigmatically considered intentional. This emerging discussion is concerned with figuring out how (and whether) ordinary people go about attributing mental states of qualitative experience, or what philosophers might call states of phenomenal consciousness. This paper briefly describes some of the primary works in the existing experimental philosophy literature and presents new experimental data that weigh on those hypotheses. Finally, it offers a cognitive model of the processes underlying attributions of mental states, called the Agency Model.
    47. "; xpapers_embed_buffer += "
  47. Consciousness, Attention and Commonsense.F. de Brigard - 2010 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 17 (9-10):189-201.
    In a recent paper, Christopher Mole (2008) argued in favour of the view that, according to our commonsense psychology, while consciousness is necessary for attention, attention isn’t necessary for consciousness. In this paper I offer an argument against this view. More precisely, I offer an argument against the claim that, according to our commonsense psychology, consciousness is necessary for attention. However, I don’t claim it follows from this argument that commonsense has it the other way around, viz. that consciousness isn’t necessary for attention. Instead, I want to motivate the claim that there isn’t such a thing as the view of commonsense psychology about the relation between attention and consciousness. I argue that people’s use of these terms — and, presumably, of their corresponding concepts — seems to be context-dependent. I conclude with a discussion of the possible implications of this claim for the empirical study of attention and consciousness.
    48. "; xpapers_embed_buffer += "
  48. Commonsense concepts of phenomenal consciousness: Does anyone care about functional zombies?Bryce Huebner - 2010 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 9 (1):133-155.
    It would be a mistake to deny commonsense intuitions a role in developing a theory of consciousness. However, philosophers have traditionally failed to probe commonsense in a way that allows these commonsense intuitions to make a robust contribution to a theory of consciousness. In this paper, I report the results of two experiments on purportedly phenomenal states and I argue that many disputes over the philosophical notion of ‘phenomenal consciousness’ are misguided—they fail to capture the interesting connection between commonsense ascriptions of pain and emotion. With this data in hand, I argue that our capacity to distinguish between ‘mere things’ and ‘subjects of moral concern’ rests, to a significant extent, on the sorts of mental states that we take a system to have.
    49. "; xpapers_embed_buffer += "
  49. What Does the Nation of China Think About Phenomenal States?Bryce Huebner, Michael Bruno & Hagop Sarkissian - 2010 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 1 (2):225-243.
    Critics of functionalism about the mind often rely on the intuition that collectivities cannot be conscious in motivating their positions. In this paper, we consider the merits of appealing to the intuition that there is nothing that it’s like to be a collectivity. We demonstrate that collective mentality is not an affront to commonsense, and we report evidence that demonstrates that the intuition that there is nothing that it’s like to be a collectivity is, to some extent, culturally specific rather than universally held. This being the case, we argue that mere appeal to the intuitive implausibility of collective consciousness does not offer any genuine insight into the nature of mentality in general, nor the nature of consciousness in particular.
    50. "; xpapers_embed_buffer += "
  50. CRITICAL REVIEW: Engineering Philosophy. [REVIEW]Catherine Legg - 2010 - International Journal of Machine Consciousness 2 (1):45-50.
    A commentary on a paper by Aaron Sloman. Sloman argues that in order to make progress in AI, consciousness, "should be replaced by more precise and varied architecture-based concepts better suited to specify what needs to be explained by scientific theories". This original vision of philosophical inquiry as mapping out 'design-spaces' for a contested concept seeks to achieve a holistic, synthetic understanding of what possibilities such spaces embody. It therefore does not reduce to either "relations of ideas" or "matters of fact" in Hume's famous dichotomy. It is also interestingly opposite to a current vogue for 'experimental philosophy'.
    51. "; xpapers_embed_buffer += "
  51. Folk Psychology and Phenomenal Consciousness.Justin Sytsma - 2010 - Philosophy Compass 5 (8):700-711.
    In studying folk psychology, cognitive and developmental psychologists have mainly focused on how people conceive of non-experiential states such as beliefs and desires. As a result, we know very little about how non-philosophers (or the folk) understand the mental states that philosophers typically classify as being phenomenally conscious. In particular, it is not known whether the folk even tend to classify mental states in terms of their being or not being phenomenally conscious in the first place. Things have changed dramatically in the last few years, however, with a flurry of ground-breaking research by psychologists and experimental philosophers. In this article I will review this work, carefully distinguishing between two questions: First, are the ascriptions that the folk make with regard to the mental states that philosophers classify as phenomenally conscious related to their decisions about whether morally right or wrong action has been done to an entity? Second, do the folk tend to classify mental states in the way that philosophers do, distinguishing between mental states that are phenomenally conscious and mental states that are not phenomenally conscious?
    52. "; xpapers_embed_buffer += "
  52. (1 other version)Dennett’s Theory of the Folk Theory of Consciousness.Justin Sytsma - 2010 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 17 (3-4):107-130.
    It is not uncommon to find assumptions being made about folk psychology in the discussions of phenomenal consciousness in philosophy of mind. In this article I consider one example, focusing on what Dan Dennett says about the 'folk theory of consciousness'. I show that he holds that the folk believe that qualities like colours that we are acquainted with in ordinary perception are phenomenal qualities. Nonetheless, the shape of the folk theory is an empirical matter and in the absence of empirical investigation there is ample room for doubt. Fortunately, experimental evidence on the topic is now being produced by experimental philosophers and psychologists. This article contributes to this growing literature, presenting the results of six new studies on the folk view of colours and pains. I argue that the results indicate against Dennett's theory of the folk theory of consciousness.
    53. "; xpapers_embed_buffer += "
  53. (1 other version)Dennett’s Theory of the Folk Theory of Consciousness.Justin Sytsma - 2010 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 17 (3-4):3-4.
    It is not uncommon to find assumptions being made about folk psychology in the discussions of phenomenal consciousness in philosophy of mind. In this article I consider one example, focusing on what Dan Dennett says about the 'folk theory of consciousness'. I show that he holds that the folk believe that qualities like colours that we are acquainted with in ordinary perception are phenomenal qualities. Nonetheless, the shape of the folk theory is an empirical matter and in the absence of empirical investigation there is ample room for doubt. Fortunately, experimental evidence on the topic is now being produced by experimental philosophers and psychologists. This article contributes to this growing literature, presenting the results of six new studies on the folk view of colours and pains. I argue that the results indicate against Dennett's theory of the folk theory of consciousness.
    54. "; xpapers_embed_buffer += "
  54. Two conceptions of subjective experience.Justin Sytsma & Edouard Machery - 2010 - Philosophical Studies 151 (2):299-327.
    Do philosophers and ordinary people conceive of subjective experience in the same way? In this article, we argue that they do not and that the philosophical concept of phenomenal consciousness does not coincide with the folk conception. We first offer experimental support for the hypothesis that philosophers and ordinary people conceive of subjective experience in markedly different ways. We then explore experimentally the folk conception, proposing that for the folk, subjective experience is closely linked to valence. We conclude by considering the implications of our findings for a central issue in the philosophy of mind, the hard problem of consciousness.
    55. "; xpapers_embed_buffer += "
  55. Causes and Consequences of Mind Perception.Adam Waytz, Kurt Gray, Nicholas Epley & Daniel M. Wegner - 2010 - Trends in Cognitive Sciences 14 (8):383-388.
    Perceiving others? minds is a crucial component of social life. People do not, however, always ascribe minds to other people, and sometimes ascribe minds to non-people. This article reviews when mind perception occurs, when it does not, and why mind perception is important. Causes of mind perception stem both from the perceiver and perceived, and include the need for social connection and a similarity to oneself. Mind perception also has profound consequences for both the perceiver and perceived. Ascribing mind confers an entity moral rights and also makes its actions meaningful. Understanding the causes and consequences of mind perception can explain when this most social of cognitive skills will be used, and why it matters.
    56. "; xpapers_embed_buffer += "
  56. Folk theories of consciousness.Bertram F. Malle - 2009 - In William P. Banks, Encyclopedia of Consciousness. Elsevier. pp. 251-263.
    People’s folk theory of consciousness encompasses three prototypes of conscious mental functioning: monitoring (awareness), choice, and subjective experience. All three are embedded in a broader folk theory of mind and thus closely linked to the concept of intentionality, action explanation, and a conception of free will. At least some of the prototypes of consciousness play a critical role in the assignment of personhood and responsibility. Recent discussions question the viability of folk conceptions of consciousness in light of work on the unconscious and neuroscience. Thus far this work appears to complement folk conceptions without contradicting them.
    57. "; xpapers_embed_buffer += "
  57. Phenomenological obviousness and the new science of consciousness.Justin Sytsma - 2009 - Philosophy of Science 76 (5):958-969.
    Is phenomenal consciousness a problem for the brain sciences? An increasing number of researchers hold not only that it is but that its very existence is a deep mystery. That this problematic phenomenon exists is generally taken for granted: It is asserted that phenomenal consciousness is just phenomenologically obvious. In contrast, I hold that there is no such phenomenon and, thus, that it does not pose a problem for the brain sciences. For this denial to be plausible, however, I need to show that phenomenal consciousness is not phenomenologically obvious. That is the goal of this article. †To contact the author, please write to: 1414 Simona Drive, Pittsburgh, PA 15201; e‐mail: jmsytsma@gmail.com.
    58. "; xpapers_embed_buffer += "
  58. How to study folk intuitions about phenomenal consciousness.Justin M. Sytsma & Edouard Machery - 2009 - Philosophical Psychology 22 (1):21 – 35.
    The assumption that the concept of phenomenal consciousness is pretheoretical is often found in the philosophical debates on consciousness. Unfortunately, this assumption has not received the kind of empirical attention that it deserves. We suspect that this is in part due to difficulties that arise in attempting to test folk intuitions about consciousness. In this article we elucidate and defend a key methodological principle for this work. We draw this principle out by considering recent experimental work on the topic by Joshua Knobe and Jesse Prinz (2008). We charge that their studies do not establish that the folk have a concept of phenomenal consciousness in part because they compare group agents to individuals . The problem is that group agents and individuals differ in some significant ways in terms of functional organization and behavior. We propose that future experiments should establish that ordinary people are disposed to ascribe different mental states to entities that are given behaviorally and functionally equivalent descriptions.
    59. "; xpapers_embed_buffer += "
  59. Can a Robot, an Insect or God Be Aware?Joshua Knobe - 2008 - Scientific American.
    60. "; xpapers_embed_buffer += "
  60. Intuitions about consciousness: Experimental studies.Joshua Knobe & Jesse Prinz - 2008 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 7 (1):67-83.
    When people are trying to determine whether an entity is capable of having certain kinds of mental states, they can proceed either by thinking about the entity from a *functional* standpoint or by thinking about the entity from a *physical* standpoint. We conducted a series of studies to determine how each of these standpoints impact people’s mental state ascriptions. The results point to a striking asymmetry. It appears that ascriptions of states involving phenomenal consciousness are sensitive to physical factors in a way that ascriptions of other states are not.
    61. "; xpapers_embed_buffer += "
  61. Consciousness and the social mind.Philip Robbins - 2008 - Cognitive Systems Research 9 (1-2):15-23.
    Phenomenal consciousness and social cognition are interlocking capacities, but the relations between them have yet to be systematically investigated. In this paper, I begin to develop a theoretical and empirical framework for such an investigation. I begin by describing the phenomenon known as social pain: the affect associated with the perception of actual or potential damage to one’s interpersonal relations. I then adduce a related phenomenon known as affective contagion: the tendency for emotions, moods, and other affective states to spread from person to person in social contexts. Experimental studies of these two phenomena suggest that affective consciousness depends on perception of the social world in much the same way that it depends on perception of the body – in short, that consciousness is ‘socially embodied’. In the second part of the paper I argue that the distinctive sociality of our species, especially its moral dimension, rests heavily on our ability to represent the conscious states of others. In closing, I put these ideas together and show how they point to a circular causal-mechanistic nexus between consciousness and social mindedness.
    62. "; xpapers_embed_buffer += "
  62. Dimensions of mind perception.Heather Gray, Kurt Gray & Daniel Wegner - 2007 - Science 315 (5812):619.
    Participants compared the mental capacities of various human and nonhuman characters via online surveys. Factor analysis revealed two dimensions of mind perception, Experience and Agency. The dimensions predicted different moral judgments but were both related to valuing of mind.
    63. "; xpapers_embed_buffer += "
  63. BOOK REVIEW: "Machine Consciousness", ed. Owen Holland. [REVIEW]Catherine Legg - 2004 - Metapsychology Reviews Online 2004 (Sep):1-5.
    64. "; xpapers_embed_buffer += "
  64. Experimental Studies of Intuitions about Consciousness: Methodological and Statistical Details.Joshua Knobe & Jesse Prinz - manuscript
    65. "; xpapers_embed_buffer += "
  65. Occipital and left temporal instantaneous amplitude and frequency oscillations correlated with access and phenomenal consciousness.Vitor Manuel Dinis Pereira - manuscript
    Given the hard problem of consciousness, there are no brain electrophysiological correlates of the subjective experience (the felt quality of redness or the redness of red, the experience of dark and light, the quality of depth in a visual field, the sound of a clarinet, the smell of mothball, bodily sensations from pains to orgasms, mental images that are conjured up internally, the felt quality of emotion, the experience of a stream of conscious thought, or the phenomenology of thought). However, there are occipital and left temporal brain electrophysiological correlates of the subjective experience. Notwithstanding, as an evoked signal, the change in event-related brain potential phase (frequency is the change in phase over time) is instantaneous, that is, the frequency will transiently be infinite: a transient peak in frequency (positive or negative), if any, is instantaneous in electroencephalogram averaging or filtering that the event-related brain potentials required and the underlying structure of the event-related brain potentials in the frequency domain cannot be accounted for, for example, by the Wavelet Transform or the Fast Fourier Transform analysis, because they require that frequency be derived by convolution rather than by differentiation. However, as I show, one suitable method for analysing the instantaneous change in event-related brain potential phase and accounting for a transient peak in frequency (positive or negative), if any, in the underlying structure of the event-related brain potentials is the Empirical Mode Decomposition  with post-processing Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition.
    66. "; xpapers_embed_buffer += "
  66. The Robots of the Dawn of Experimental Philosophy of Mind.Justin Sytsma - unknown
    In this chapter, I consider two hypotheses that have informed recent work in experimental philosophy of mind. The first is a positive hypothesis put forward by Fiala, Arico, and Nichols : Categorization of an entity as an agent through fast, automatic, and domain-specific processing produces a disposition to ascribe a wide range of mental states to that entity. The second is a negative hypothesis put forward by Sytsma and Machery: The existence of phenomenally conscious mental states is not obvious from first-person experience with states like seeing red and feeling pain. I argue that these hypotheses are not necessary at odds. Despite this, empirical results reported by Sytsma and Machery raise concerns for FAN's hypothesis, while results reported by FAN in response raise concerns for our hypothesis. I address these concerns in this essay, presenting the results of four new studies that support our negative hypothesis against FAN's challenge.
    67. "; xpapers_embed_buffer += "
  67. Experiments on the folk theory of consciousness.Justin Sytsma - unknown
    It is not uncommon to find assumptions being made about folk psychology in the discussions of phenomenal consciousness in philosophy of mind. In this article I consider one example, focusing on what Dan Dennett says about the “folk theory of consciousness.” I show that he holds that the folk believe that the sensory qualities that we are acquainted with in ordinary perception are phenomenal qualities. Nonetheless, the shape of the folk theory is an empirical matter and in the absence of empirical investigation there is ample room for doubt. Fortunately, experimental evidence on the topic is now being produced by experimental philosophers and psychologists. This article contributes to this growing literature, presenting the results of six new studies on the folk view of colors and pains. I argue that the results indicate against Dennett’s theory of the folk theory of consciousness.
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