“Ought Implies Can” as a Principle of the Moral Faculty

This thesis is a contribution to moral psychology, the systematic study of the cognitive processes underlying moral judgment. It has two main aims. First, it attempts to show that the so-called Linguistic Analogy (LA) is the most productive framework for the study of moral cognition. As its name suggests, LA has it that moral psychology can be fruitfully modelled on linguistics, in particular on the Chomskyan project of detailing the architecture of the Language Faculty (FL)—a domain-specific cognitive system dedicated to language. This means, amongst other things, that the fundamental task of moral psychology is to discover and detail the representations, principles, and computational operations of the Moral Faculty (FM)—a domain-specific cognitive system that underpins the human capacity for moral judgment. Second, the thesis argues that the “Ought Implies Can” principle (OIC)—according to which if an agent ought to perform an action, then she can perform that action—is one of the central principles of FM, and proposes a novel account of how OIC is implemented in FM. To achieve this second aim, the thesis presents novel empirical evidence on intuitive moral judgments of ordinary people and argues that the best explanation of these data is to consider OIC as a processing constraint on the operations of FM

Does ought imply can?

Most philosophers believe that a person can have an obligation only insofar as she is able to fulfil it, a principle generally referred to as “Ought Implies Can”. Arguably, this principle reflects something basic about the ordinary concept of obligation. However, in a paper published recently in this journal, Wesley Buckwalter and John Turri presented evidence for the conclusion that ordinary people in fact reject that principle. With a series of studies, they claimed to have demonstrated that, in people’s judgements, obligations persist irrespective of whether those who hold them have the ability to fulfil them. We argue in this paper that due to some problems in their design, Buckwalter & Turri’s conclusions may not be war- ranted. We present the results of a series of studies demonstrating the problems with their design and showing that, with an improved design, people judge that obligation depends on ability after all

‘Must’ implies ‘can’

An open question in the semantics of modality is what relations there are among different modal flavours. In this article, we consider the thorny issue of whether ascribing to an agent the obligation to φ implies that it is possible for the agent to φ. Traditionally, this issue has been interpreted as whether ‘ought’ implies ‘can’. But another linguistic interpretation is available as well, namely, whether ‘must’ implies ‘can’ (MIC). We show that ‘must’ does imply ‘can’ via a convergent argument. The first strand of the argument is theoretical: it consists in proving MIC from a well-established theory of modality in natural language, i.e., that proposed by Kratzer. The second strand is empirical: we present novel acceptability judgment studies showing that MIC predicts and explains the linguistic behaviour of native English speakers

Does ought imply can?

Most philosophers believe that a person can have an obligation only insofar as she is able to fulfil it, a principle generally referred to as “Ought Implies Can”. Arguably, this principle reflects something basic about the ordinary concept of obligation. However, in a paper published recently in this journal, Wesley Buckwalter and John Turri presented evidence for the conclusion that ordinary people in fact reject that principle. With a series of studies, they claimed to have demonstrated that, in people’s judgements, obligations persist irrespective of whether those who hold them have the ability to fulfil them. We argue in this paper that due to some problems in their design, Buckwalter & Turri’s conclusions may not be warranted. We present the results of a series of studies demonstrating the problems with their design and showing that, with an improved design, people judge that obligation depends on ability after all

Estimating the Reproducibility of Experimental Philosophy

Responding to recent concerns about the reliability of the published literature in psychology and other disciplines, we formed the X-Phi Replicability Project (XRP) to estimate the reproducibility of experimental philosophy (osf.io/dvkpr). Drawing on a representative sample of 40 x-phi studies published between 2003 and 2015, we enlisted 20 research teams across 8 countries to conduct a high-quality replication of each study in order to compare the results to the original published findings. We found that x-phi studies – as represented in our sample – successfully replicated about 70% of the time. We discuss possible reasons for this relatively high replication rate in the field of experimental philosophy and offer suggestions for best research practices going forward

The deflationary model of harm and moral wrongdoing: A rejoinder to Royzman & Borislow

With a series of studies, Royzman and Borislow (2022) purport to show that extant models about the conditions under which harmful actions are deemed morally wrong do not have explanatory power—for any proposed condition, various harmful actions meet the condition but are not deemed immoral. And they reach the following conclusion: judgments of moral wrongdoing in the context of harmful actions (or judgments of moral wrong- doing more generally) are not reducible to an explanatory template. However, they did not address the main claim of the deflationary model of harm and moral wrongdoing, which is that intuitions of injustice connect harmful actions to judgments of moral wrongdoing (Sousa & Piazza, 2014). Our first study adjusts Royzman and Borislow’ design to include a measure of perceived injustice, while our second elaborates their design to manipulate perceived injustice. The results undermine their conclusion and support the deflationary model, which we further refine here in light of the results of Royzman and Borislow’s studies and ours

Nadelhoffer (2004) Replication

You can find here files related to the replication of Nadelhoffer (2004). This replication was conducted under the Experimental Philosophy Replicability Project. More information here: https://sites.google.com/site/thexphireplicabilityproject/

Knobe and Burra Replication

Files related to the replication of Knobe and Burra (2006) for the Xphi Replicability Project. More information here: https://sites.google.com/site/thexphireplicabilityproject/

Beebe and Shea (2013) Replication

You can find here the files related to the replication of Beebe and Shea (2013) for the Xphi Replicability Project. More information here: https://sites.google.com/site/thexphireplicabilityproject/