Stephen Stich

Phillips and colleagues claim that the capacity to ascribe knowledge is a “basic” capacity, but most studies reporting linguistic data reviewed by Phillips et al. were conducted in English with American participants – one of more than 6,500 languages currently spoken. We highlight the importance of cross-cultural and cross-linguistic research when one is theorizing about fundamental human representational capacities.

In epistemology, fake-barn thought experiments are often taken to be intuitively clear cases in which a justified true belief does not qualify as knowledge. We report a study designed to determine whether members of the general public share this intuition. The data suggest that while participants are less inclined to attribute knowledge in fake-barn cases than in unproblematic cases of knowledge, they nonetheless do attribute knowledge to protagonists in fake-barn cases. Moreover, the intuition that fake-barn cases do count as knowledge is negatively correlated with age; older participants are less likely than younger participants to attribute knowledge in fake-barn cases. We also found that increasing the number of defeaters (fakes) does not decrease the inclination to attribute knowledge.

A critique of inferences from “is” to “ought” plays a central role in Elqayam & Evans' (E&E's) defense of descriptivism. However, the reflective equilibrium strategy described by Goodman and embraced by Rawls, Cohen, and many others poses an important challenge to that critique. Dual-system theories may help respond to that challenge.

From Plato to the present, philosophers have relied on intuitive judgments as evidence for or against philosophical theories. Most philosophers are WEIRD, highly educated, and male. The literature reviewed in the target article suggests that such people might have intuitions that differ from those of people in other groups. There is a growing body of evidence suggesting that they do.

Knobe contends that in making judgments about a wide range of matters, moral considerations and scientific considerations are “jumbled together” and thus that “we are moralizing creatures through and through.” We argue that his own account of the mechanism underlying these judgments does not support this radical conclusion.