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ABSTRACT
This paper empirically investigates how perspective bears on putative salient alternative effects on knowledge ascriptions. Some theoretical accounts predict salient alternative effects in both first- and third-person perspective conditions. These include semantic accounts such as contextualism [Lewis Citation1996; DeRose Citation2009] and psychological accounts such as the epistemic focal bias account [Gerken Citation2013, Citation2017]. In contrast, other psychological accounts, such as the egocentric bias account [Nagel, Citation2010; Alexander et al. Citation2014] and the deference account [Turri Citation2017], only have clear predictions in third-person perspective conditions. Our study provides evidence of a salient alternative effect of the same magnitude in both first and third-person conditions. Thus, the study provides empirical evidence that might help to adjudicate between competing accounts in the literature on salient alternatives.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Disputes about how to specify the idea of ‘ruling out’ an alternative can be set aside for present purposes.
2 For surveys, see Buckwalter [Citation2017] and Gerken [Citation2017: ch. 2]. See also Fischer and Engelhardt [Citationforthcoming].
3 Unless perspective modulates context or focus. In such cases, contextualists and focal bias theorists might take perspective to have an indirect effect. But there is no reason to think that perspective will affect context or focus in standard salient alternative case-pairs.
4 Note that (for everyone except DeRose himself) DeRose’s case involves third-person perspectival evaluations from a first-personal mode, since they contrast ‘I know that p’ with ‘I don’t know that p.’
5 A related account is cast in terms of the availability heuristic [Hawthorne Citation2004; Williamson Citation2005; Dinges Citation2018]. Gerken argues that this is best understood as a less general version of focal bias [Citation2017: ch. 10].
6 The complete stimulus materials are archived here: https://philpapers.org/rec/GERAFS.
7 The experiment yielded some results worth reporting, although space does not permit anything more. The effect size in the salient alternative effect observed in DIAMOND was over twice the size of the next largest effect size observed in VACATION. One hypothesis for this pattern of results is that the salient alternative effect is amplified by the fact that DIAMOND involves the possibility of being cheated. Likewise, it is noteworthy that more people failed the comprehension controls in the salient alternative condition (12.6%) than in the control condition (5.3%): χ2(1, N = 1025) = 16.91, p < .001, ϕ = .13. These findings indicate avenues for further research.
8 One worry with this suggestion is that some of the information available to the participant—namely, that the complement clause is true—is not consistently projected onto the first-person or third-person subject of evaluation. Given that the complement clause is stipulated to be true, the participant knows it to be true. So, to the extent that this information is projected, it should yield knowledge ascriptions in all conditions. Yet this isn’t what is observed. Thus, the egocentric bias account faces a difficult question: why does the participant project her concerns about error-possibilities onto the subject in the story, but not her knowledge of the complement clause
9 We thank Alexander Dinges and Adam Feltz for written comments. We also thank the audiences of 2018 meeting of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology, the 2018 (and, sadly, final) meeting of the Buffalo Experimental Philosophy Conference, and the 2019 Midsouth Conference.