Jonathan Livengood (Pitt, HPS) and I have been investigating Machery, Mallon, Nichols, and Stich’s (2004) findings of cross-cultural and intra-cultural variation in intuitions about Kripke’s Gödel case. The paper (“The Case of the Divergent Descriptions: An Experimental Investigation of Semantics, Cross-cultural Style“) can be found here and is briefly summarized below.
Abstract: In two fascinating articles, Machery, Mallon, Nichols, and Stich (2004; forthcoming) use experimental methods to raise a specter of doubt about reliance on intuitions in developing theories of reference which are then deployed in philosophical arguments outside the philosophy of language. Machery et al. ran a cross-cultural survey asking Western and East Asian subjects about a famous case from the philosophical literature on reference (Kripke’s Gödel example). They found significant variation in subjects’ intuitions about that case. While there have been a number of theoretical responses to this work, there have not yet been any experimental responses. This paper fills that gap. We noticed an ambiguity in the question Machery et al. posed in their original experiment; we then ran three studies to test the impact of this ambiguity on subjects’ responses. We found that the ambiguity accounts for much of the variation found in their original experiment. We argue that in the light of our data, Machery et al.’s argument is no longer convincing.
To quickly summarize our main findings: Across three studies we found that if Machery et al.’s original test question is slightly modified to emphasize the speaker’s perspective (John’s perspective), the percentage of (B) answers goes down; on the other hand, if you slightly modify the question to emphasize the narrator’s perspective, the percentage of (B) answers goes up. That percentage goes up even more with further clarifications of the question to better emphasize the narrator’s perspective. The results are shown graphically below (the studies on the left were between subjects, the study on the right within subjects).
- Results: Study 1, 2, and 3
As always, comments are both welcome and appreciated!
[Cross-posted at Experimental Philosophy.]
