Brian Talbot's Web Presence
This is the web site for Brian Talbot the philosopher (not the football coach or comic book artist).
Research stuff here
Teaching stuff here
Click here for information on work in progress at the Boulder Experimental Philosophy Lab.
Personal Stuff
I'm currently teaching at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Education:
PhD in philosophy from the University of Southern California (2009)
J.D. from U.C. Berkeley (1998)
B.A. (in philosophy) from U.C. Berkely (1995)
Research interests:
Epistemology, the role of intuitions in philosophy, cognitive science
Teaching interests:
Ethics and applied ethics, philosophy of law, political philosophy, critical reasoning (and of course, epistemology and cognitive science)
My CV
Research Stuff
Click here for information on work in progress at the Boulder Experimental Philosophy Lab.
My dissertation (How to Use Intuitions in Philosophy) is available here. It is on the use of intuitions in philosophy. I argue that properly evaluating the role of intuitions in philosophy should involve a general, empirically informed understanding of how intuitions are generated by our mind. I present this sort of an account based on the synthesis of a wide range of psychological research, and I work through some of its consequences for the use of intuitions in philosophy.
Publications
Psychology and the Use of Intuitions in Philosophy (2009, Studia Philosophical Estonica, special edition on the use of intuitions in philosophy) I argue that there are legitimate concerns about the use of intuitions in philosophy, and that these concerns cannot be fully responded to using the traditional methods of philosophy; we need a psychologically-informed understanding of how intuitions are generated. I explore how such an understanding is likely to impact a range of philosophical projects, from conceptual analysis to the study of (non-conceptual) "things themselves," to experimental philosophy.
The Irrelevance of Folk Intuitions to the "Hard Problem" of Consciousness (forthcoming in Consciousness and Cognition) Recently, a number of philosophers have turned to folk intuitions about mental states for data about whether or not humans have qualia or phenomenal consciousness. In this paper I argue that this is inappropriate. Folk judgments studied by these researchers are mostly likely generated by a certain cognitive system - System One - that will ignore qualia when making these judgments, even if qualia exist. If experimental research has any hope of shedding light into the existence of qualia, it needs to be better founded in an understanding of how we make judgments.
The Irrelevance of Dispositions and Difficulty to the "Hard Problem" of Consciousness (forthcoming in Consciousness and Cognition) I respond to Justin Sytsma, Edouard Machery, and Bryce Huebner's arguments against the view I put forth in "The Irrelevance of Folk Intuition..." I argue that judgments about mental states are likely to be insensitive to qualia (if they exist) because they are either too easy or too hard.
Student Relativism: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (forthcoming in Teaching Philosophy) I present a novel approach to teaching students who are moral relativists. I argue that we should not try to convince students to abandon relativism, as we can show moral relativists why they should care about studying ethics rigorously and engaging with the views of others, and that openness to relativism actually encourages better pedagogy.
Interest as a Starting Place for Philosophy (Essays in Philosophy, 2012, special edition on philosophical methodology) This paper discusses a puzzle about philosophical beliefs. Core philosophical beliefs that are widely shared among philosophers, such as the belief that skepticism is false, are often held with extreme confidence. However, this confidence is not justified if these beliefs are based on what are traditionally seen as the sources of philosophical evidence, such as intuitions or observation (or reasoning on these bases). Charity requires that we should look for some other basis for these beliefs. I argue that these beliefs are based on our knowledge of what we find interesting. Further, I argue that this is a good basis for belief. Knowing what we find interesting allows us to tune our inquiry in ways we could not otherwise.
Reforming Intuition Pumps: When Are the Old Ways the Best? (forthcoming in Philosophical Studies) There have been a number of calls for reform of traditional philosophical methods such as gathering intuitions from bizarre thought experiments and using them as evidence in deductive arguments. In this paper I argue that those who accept certain common meta-philosophical views have reasons to embrace some 'old fashioned' philosophical methods, such as the use of intuitions as data and the use of bizarre thought experiments; these reasons are especially strong for those that agree with these calls for reform.
Papers Under Consideration
(Please note that I'm following some 'advice' from a discussion on the Leiter blog, and the titles I'm using here are not the titles these papers would be published under)
Epistemic Norms that Matter: One has truth-promoting, non-evidence reasons to belief p when one's belief that p will promote having other true beliefs, independent of p's truth. I argue that all epistemic norms according to which such reasons cannot justify beliefs matter less than some epistemic norms according to which they can. Because of this, we should study the latter but not the former norms.
Work in Progress
Click here for information on work in progress at the Boulder Experimental Philosophy Lab.
Should You Do Experiments?: Experimental philosophy is an innovative and productive area of philosophical research, but to date it is has been largely focused on drawing or criticizing negative conclusions about intuitions. Those with a more positive view of intuitions might wonder if there is room in experimental philosophy for them. This paper considers positive experimental philosophy: experiments conducted by those who see intuitions as a good source of evidence, undertaken to show what is intuitive in order to provide evidence that it is true. I argue that, at the present moment, positive experimental philosophy is not a valuable pursuit. Given certain assumptions, those who take intuitions to be good evidence can achieve a very high level of rationally appropriate confidence in propositions merely by talking to a handful of colleagues. I argue that anyone who is justified in considering positive experimental philosophy should accept these assumptions. I end by exploring the chances that positive experimental philosophy will become appropriate in the future. (This paper is down while I implement software to test a modified version of Condorcet's Jury Theorem)
Experimental Philosophy and Intuitions: I argue that philosophical intuitions cannot be produced by conscious reasoning. So, if experimental philosophers are interested in studying philosophical intuitions, they should avoid constructing experiments that push participants to reason consciously. There are a number of factors that tend to cause people to reason consciously. I review these, and illustrate how they play a role in a range of experimental philosophy research.
Cognitive Dispositions and Intuitions: Recently, there has been interest among philosophers in the cognitive dispositions to trust, or not trust, our intuitions. This manifests in recent research on philosophers' dispositions of this sort, and the use of tests of these dispositions to shed light on the sources of judgments studied by experimental philosophers. Use of data on these cognitive dispositions should be informed by an understanding of how these dispositions manifest themselves: when those with these dispositions will and won't trust their intuitions. This paper synthesizes a range of data on two tests of the cognitive disposition to rely on intuitions.
Conference Presentations
An Argument for Old Fashioned Intuition Pumping: (for the 2011 West Division APA meeting) This became the paper listed above.
Normative Dilemmas (given at the 2011 Midsouth Philosophy Conference) A moral dilemma is a situation in which all the options a given agent can take are morally impermissible for her to take. If we accept that there can be moral dilemmas, we have to reject some of a group of plausible principles, one of which might be that ought implies can. I examine three non-moral normative domains, each of which allows for dilemmas and rejects ought implies can. I will show what they have in common that explains why they allow for dilemmas and reject ought implies can, and I will argue that the moral domain has this trait as well. If one accepts this, I will show that it is hard to deny that there are moral dilemmas.
Empirically Defending Intuitions (for the 2010 Western Division APA meeting symposium on the use of intuitions in philosophy) The use of intuitions as evidence about things themselves needs defense; I explain what such a defense would look like, why it must be on a domain-by-domain basis, and illustrate how this can be done by (tentatively) defending the use of intuitions about causation.
Is Experimental Philosophy Insufficiently Empirical? (for 2010 Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology conference) I argue that experimental philosophy, as currently practiced, relies on a number of assumptions about how the mind works and processes information. These assumptions are dubious and insufficiently empirically supported; if experimental philosophy is to be done well it must be more firmly grounded in an understanding of the cognitive processes behind judgments and intuitions.
The Irrelevance of Folk Intuitions to the "Hard Problem" of Consciousness (in the Second Annual Online Consciousness Conference) This became the paper listed above.
Virtue and Video Games (for a 2010 Think! Talk, C.U. Boulder) I argue that partly simulated actions performed in single player video games have moral significance. I examine arguments that participation in simulated atrocities can be morally wrong, and (partly based on psychological findings) argue that such participation is only wrong for certain types of people [taken down while I completely re-write it].
For a complete list of my conference presentations, see my CV.
Teaching Stuff
Classes taught (Click links for the course web sites):
Spring 2012, University of Colorado, Boulder:
Epistemology (combined upper division undergraduate and graduate level course)
Philosophy and Law (two sections)
Fall 2011, University of Colorado, Boulder:
Epistemology (graduate seminar)
Philosophy and Law (two sections)
Summer 2011, University of Colorado, Boulder:
Philosophy and Law
Spring 2011, University of Colorado, Boulder:
Philosophy and Law (I accidentally deleted the website, but it's very similar to the Fall 2011 site)
Critical Reasoning and Contemporary Topics
Epistemology
Fall 2010, University of Colorado, Boulder:
Political and Social Philosophy (upper division)
Philosophy and Law (two classes, lower division)
Honors Thesis supervisor (student received highest honors)
Spring 2010, University Colorado, Boulder:
Philosophy of Law (upper division undergraduate and graduate level)
Critical Reasoning and Contemporary Topics (upper division undergraduate)
Independent Study (Killing/letting die)
Honors Thesis supervisor (student received highest honors)
Fall 2009, University of Colorado, Boulder
Philosophy and Law (lower division undergraduate)
Experimental Philosophy (graduate)
Summer, 2009, California State University, Los Angeles
Human Values (lower division undergraduate)
Master's Thesis supervisor (student received award for best thesis in the Humanities)
Spring, 2009, California State University, Los Angeles
Human Values (lower division undergraduate)
Human Diversity and Justice (required for education majors)
Winter, 2009, California State University, Los Angeles
Epistemology (upper division undergraduate and graduate)
Summer, 2009, California State University, Los Angeles
Epistemology (graduate level)
