Ask a group of people a philosophical question and it’s often the case that they'll give conflicting answers to it. We quite naturally interpret this as different people having different intuitions. But that's not the only available explanation...

Where Intuitions Conflict - Daily Nous

If you ask a group of people a philosophical question or present them with a challenging thought experiment, it’s often the case that they will […]

dailynous.com

There hasn't been enough attention to this amazing result, and I'd love to hear ideas about how to explain it Participants are given a story about a morally bad behavior and told that it is due to genetics. Then they are asked the simplest possible question: Is it due to genetics?

Causal modeling fans! Tadeg Quilien has an amazing new app that implements a few different theories about how people make causal strength judgments. You specify a model, and it calculates what each theory predicts about people’s judgments

I am still just SO excited that Felipe De Brigard (@felipedebrigard.bsky.social) got a MacArthur Genius Grant! He has done so much amazing work in experimental philosophy, cognitive neuroscience, and a million other fields, and it's absolutely wonderful to see him getting recognized like this

Jorge Morales@jorgemorales.me · last mo.

Massive congratulations to my colleague @felipedebrigard.bsky.social for being awarded a MacArthur Fellowship! today.duke.edu/2026/09/duke...

There has been a huge amount of experimental philosophy research on the concept of KNOWLEDGE This research finds that the ordinary concept doesn’t work at all the way philosophers said it does A thread with some examples: 🧵

Massive congratulations to my colleague @felipedebrigard.bsky.social for being awarded a MacArthur Fellowship! today.duke.edu/2026/09/duke...

Duke Scientist Awarded MacArthur ‘Genius Grant’ | Duke Today

today.duke.edu

There hasn’t been enough discussion in philosophy of this wonderful research by April Bailey (@ahbailey.bsky.social) She provides a mountain of evidence for the claim that people see MEN as the prototype of the category of human beings www.researchgate.net/profile/Apri...

Imagine an LLM that behaves like a person in some ways but runs on completely different physical stuff (microchips instead of a biological brain). Would this LLM be conscious? There is a lot of experimental philosophy research on precisely this question markmphelan.github.io/papers/consc...

Research by @kevintobia.bsky.social argues lay vs legal concepts of the same notion (eg acting ‘intentionally’) can be neither identical nor distinct, and interpretation among non-legal experts may vary (lay person > student > law student): buff.ly/Smevt0T HT @xphilosopher.bsky.social

This is such a cool paper on why and how a broken fork is "1 fork" www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Children and adults’ treatment of partial objects in bounded quantificational contexts

When asked to count under specific instructions, for example, to count “the forks,” or to identify the referent of “a fork,” children have been shown to treat whole forks and detached parts of fork...

tandfonline.com

Hiring! 🧠❤️🤔If you’re a philosopher working in ethics/ x-phi/ empirically informed moral philosophy / moral psychology / applied ethics, consider applying for a 2.5 year research postdoc with me in my lab at Oxford. Deadline noon 16th Oct. Details 👉 philjobs.org/job/show/32101 Hit me up with q’s!

Shameless Fiona Gallagher

ALT: Shameless Fiona Gallagher

static.klipy.com

Philosopher @nathansen.bsky.social has created a website that uses AI to take people through a Socratic dialogue about a philosophical thought experiment I gave it a try. In my opinion, it really does help users think through these questions www.ux-phi.com/experiments

If you had to guess whether someone’s a philosopher, what’d be more predictive? Their decisions about thought experiments? Or their scores on assessments of neurodivergent traits? In more than 1000 people, the measures of #autistic (and other traits) were more predictive:

Thinking differently: neurodivergent traits and responses to thought experiments in philosophers and the general population

Philosophers have long speculated that individual differences in temperament influence philosophical thinking, yet empirical research has rarely explored the role of neurodivergent traits in this d...

doi.org

“Do philosophers really think differently than non-philosophers?” A team of researchers focusing on neurodivergent traits and responses to thought experiments offers a partial answer...

How Different Are Philosophers? (guest post) - Daily Nous

"Do philosophers really think differently than non-philosophers?" That's the question taken up by a team of researchers in a recent study published in Philosophical Psychology. Focusing on differences...

dailynous.com

Many of you will know the famous finding from @existwell.bsky.social and Derek Anderson: Philosophers' views on philosophical questions are not predicted by their personality traits But why not? I asked Anderson about this, and he had a very intriguing suggestion philarchive.org/rec/YADTPO-2

A lot of experimental philosophers are people who use their philosophical expertise to make contributions to psychology. It's analogous to how there are people in math departments using their math expertise to contribute to biology and physics; noone asks if their work is 'really mathematics'.

Ethan Landes@ethanlandes.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Thanks to everyone who commiserated and shared their experiences of being boundary-policed in philosophy. The DN comments were so mind bogglingly frustrating, I decided to write a follow-up that dissects why "this isn't philosophy" is such a dumb thing to say ethanlandes.com/posts/2026/0...

I finally read the original blog post (ethanlandes.com/posts/2026/0...) and the palaver around it (dailynous.com/2026/09/04/f...). Fwiw people in formal philosophy and some bits of social philosophy get "but why is this really philosophy?" all the time too.

Free to Be Experimental Philosophy - Daily Nous

"But is this actually philosophy?" Ethan Landes (Eindhoven University of Technology) is tired of experimental philosophers being asked The Question. And he's tired of experimental philosophers "appeas...

dailynous.com

"Are you happy?" New research on two ways to understand this question: - as a question about how you feel right now, in this moment - as a question about the overall state of your life These two understandings turn out to be radically different www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Sociologist @l-sage.bsky.social on why sociology papers so often fail to replicate Key insight: Non-sociologists sometimes put the blame on people doing autoethnographies or something like… but by definition, the work that fails to replicate is never that kind of sociology! 1/3

A note in response to Lionel Page, “Why has sociology become so politicised?”

From a quantitative sociologist

lsage1.substack.com

I had a great time sitting down with The Dissenter Podcast to talk about my recent book, The Fruitfulness of Normative Concepts. Grateful to Ricardo Lopes for his characteristically deep engagement with my work. @thedissenteryt.bsky.social #philsky #moralpsych

The Dissenter@thedissenteryt.bsky.social · 3mo ago

New episode (1290), with Dr. Matthew Lindauer (@mattlindauer.bsky.social). We talk about his book, The Fruitfulness of Normative Concepts. #Philosophy YouTube: youtu.be/Urjjoe_PRE8 Podcast: bit.ly/4xxHyC9

Starter pack for experimental philosophy

Nick Byrd, Ph.D.@byrdnick.com · 3mo ago

If you’ve been publishing experimental philosophy but are not on this list, message me and I will (eventually) try to add you (until the list is “full”). (Sorry not sorry for checking social media messages less than more important annd time-sensitive inboxes.) go.bsky.app/ombTiW

If you’ve been publishing experimental philosophy but are not on this list, message me and I will (eventually) try to add you (until the list is “full”). (Sorry not sorry for checking social media messages less than more important annd time-sensitive inboxes.) go.bsky.app/ombTiW

new preprint! in my final grad school project led by @kmiceli.bsky.social & @ninavanrooy.bsky.social w/@felipedebrigard.bsky.social, we challenge ~20yrs of causal cognition research by finding a context in which people's causal judgments are completely *unaffected* by norms! osf.io/preprints/ps...

Study on the file drawer problem in experimental philosophy Core result: The main thing creating the file draw problem is the sheer amount of time and effort it takes to write studies up for publication link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Publication bias in experimental philosophy: a survey on the file drawer problem, research attrition, and open science practices - Synthese

The “file drawer problem” – where study results remain unpublished – distorts scientific evidence and wastes resources, yet its impact on experimental philosophy has remained unexplored. We conducted ...

link.springer.com

Is it possible to change belief in free will with a quick manipulation? Answer seems to be: There is only an effect if you measure free will belief *immediately* after the manipulation… no effect if you measure free will belief even *a few minutes later* www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

You roll a fair die, hoping to get a 6. If you are successful, did you *intentionally* roll a 6? In a new paper, I explain why people hesitate to call lucky outcomes intentional:🧵 direct.mit.edu/opmi/article...

Philosophers of Bluesky, help! 🙏 Can you spare a few minutes to share your intuitions, and pass this along to colleagues who might not have seen it yet? #philsky moralsciencelab.com/intuitions/

Experimental Philosophy@xphilosopher.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Philosophers, we need your help We are running a study on philosophers’ intuitions about thought experiments moralsciencelab.com/intuitions/ Only takes a few minutes!

Philosophers, we need your help We are running a study on philosophers’ intuitions about thought experiments moralsciencelab.com/intuitions/ Only takes a few minutes!

Confs: 6th European Experimental Philosophy Conference & Satellite Workshop on Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Linguistic Justice

Confs: 6th European Experimental Philosophy Conference & Satellite Workshop on Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Linguistic Justice

The 6th European Experimental Philosophy Conference will take place at the University of Cagliari from September 8th to 11th, 2026. It will consist of the Linguistic Justice Society Satellite Workshop “Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Linguistic Justice” on September 8th, followed by the main Conference on September 9th–11th. The event is generously supported by Gian Pietro Storari Funds, Dipartimento di Pedagogia, Psicologia, Filosofia, Università degli Studi di Cagliari, Fondazione di Sard

dlvr.it

Now out in Noûs: A communication-first account of explanation, with Jacqueline Harding (jacquelineharding.github.io) and Thomas Icard (stanford.edu/~icard/). Paper: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... Preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2505.03732