How (not) to react to experimental philosophy

Knowledge attribution, socioeconomic status, and education: new results using the Great British Class Survey

This paper presents new evidence on the impact of socioeconomic status (SES) and education on knowledge attribution. I examine a variety of cases, including vignettes where agents have been Gettiered, have false beliefs, and possess knowledge (according to orthodoxy). Early work investigated whether SES might be associated with knowledge attribution (Weinberg et al. in Philos Top 29(1-2):429-460, 2001; Seyedsayamdost in Episteme 12(1):95-116, 2014). But these studies used college education as a dummy variable for SES. I use the recently developed Great British Class Survey (Savage et al. in Sociology 47(2):219-250, 2013) to measure SES. The paper reports evidence against an association between SES and patterns of knowledge ascription, and reports mixed evidence about education effects.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11229-021-03131-6.

Empirical research on folk moral objectivism

Lay persons may have intuitions about morality's objectivity. What do these intuitions look like? And what are their causes and consequences? In recent years, an increasing number of scholars have begun to investigate these questions empirically. This article presents and assesses the resulting area of research as well as its potential philosophical implications. First, we introduce the methods of empirical research on folk moral objectivism. Second, we provide an overview of the findings that have so far been made. Third, we raise a number of methodological worries that cast doubt upon these findings. And fourth, we discuss ways in which lay persons' intuitions about moral objectivity may bear on philosophical claims.