Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Science by Daniel A. Wilkenfeld;Richard Samuels;

Author:Daniel A. Wilkenfeld;Richard Samuels;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781350068889
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK

Part Three

Special Sciences

7

Applying Experimental Philosophy to Investigate Economic Concepts: Choice, Preference, and Nudge

Michiru Nagatsu

Introduction

Philosophers of science discuss not only general epistemological and metaphysical questions about explanation, causation, evidence, and the like, but also conceptual questions concerning the nature of scientific concepts such as genes, culture, and rationality. One might expect less disagreements in the latter debates, since the philosophical analyses are presumably based on the same “best scientific theories” available at the moment. The disagreements over the exact nature of these scientific concepts, however, seem sometimes more fundamental than those over, for example, what constitute a good explanation. One might argue that this is healthy because a naturalistic philosophy of science should reflect genuine disputes in scientific practice. But such dissonance among scientists may be exacerbated by philosophical commentaries, because philosophers of science typically rely on different evidence bases in an unsystematic way: some consult their intuitions, others firsthand experience as practitioners in the relevant scientific discipline, and yet others a small number of case studies of research articles. Although a narrow focus on a particular type of evidence can deepen our understanding of some aspects of scientific practice, if uncoordinated, it fails to provide a big picture of the scientific conceptual landscape (Weinberg and Crowley, 2009). Even worse, it may provide a distorted image of science.

Experimental philosophy (X-phi) of science is a relatively new approach that aims to overcome this problem. Specifically, it uses survey-experimental instruments to generate data about scientists’ judgments on conceptual issues, in a hypotheses-oriented and controlled fashion, thereby complementing or confronting the kinds of evidence mentioned here regarding how scientists understand and use particular concepts (Griffiths and Stotz, 2008; Machery, 2016). Until very recently, experimental philosophy has not been much applied in the philosophy of science, despite its popularity in other fields of philosophy.1 X-phi is even less popular in philosophy of economics, compared to other scientific fields (e.g., Stotz, 2009; Linquist et al., 2011; Knobe and Samuels, 2013). I think this is just a contingent fact, and there is no deep reason that prevents an experimental approach from being useful in the philosophy of economics. I argued elsewhere that this unfortunate situation should change (Nagatsu, 2013) and conducted one of the first consciously X-phi of economics studies (Nagatsu and Põder, 2019). Drawing on these results, I will argue that an X-phi approach can indeed bring conceptual clarity to some debates in philosophy of economics.

Another related field is worth a brief mention before discussing X-phi of economics. Philosophical questions concerning economics include not only methodological and conceptual ones about economics as a science, but also theoretical and normative ones within economics, such as the nature of justice, welfare, norms, and conventions. This field overlaps with philosophy both in content and in style, being highly theoretical, abstract, sometimes formal, and with little empirical input other than theorists’ intuitions. The rise of experimental and behavioral economics, however, changed this situation, just like X-phi has changed philosophy, and it has become increasingly popular to study these issues using experimental games of bargaining, coordination, and social dilemmas.

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