Mar 05 2025 30 mins
Suppose you glance at a clock that, unbeknownst to you, is broken, showing the same time all day. Nonetheless, you happened to look at the clock precisely when it showed the correct time. So your belief about the time is correct. My question is this: did you know what time it is?
Perhaps you think that you did. After all, you formed a belief on the basis of a device that most people trust and the belief was true! What else would it mean to know something? Well, in academic philosophy, the orthodox answer to this kind of thought experiment is "no".
People who perform better on tests of reflective thinking tend to report philosophers' orthodox answer to this kind of thought experiment. And, if you've been following my research, you know that philosophers are particularly reflective thinkers. These correlations may make you wonder about causation. Does thinking reflectively cause people to accept philosophers' orthodoxy? Or is it the other way around: does studying thought experiments like the broken clock case somehow result in people performing better on reflection tests?
In this episode, I'll tell you about the experiment I ran to find out. The paper is titled "Reflection-Philosophy Order Effects and Correlations Across Samples" and has been accepted for publication in Analysis. The paper will also mention a bunch of other thought experiments, tests of reflective thinking, and measures of research participants' data quality.
Byrd, N. (2025). Reflection-Philosophy Order Effects and Correlations Across Samples. Analysis. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/y8sdm
As always, free preprints of my papers are available on my CV at byrdnick.com/cv under "Publications".
This episode's affiliate partner is Spark Education, who is offering free 30-minute class demo for your child. You can read about the testimonials, stats, and all the activities included in their latest offer at SparkMath.pxf.io/PObNOR.
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Related posts
* Upon Reflection, Ep. 10: Great Minds Do Not Think Alike
* Upon Reflection, Ep. 8: Reflective Reasoning & Philosophy
* Upon Reflection, Ep. 6: Your Health vs. My Liberty (COVID-19 Research Paper)
* Upon Reflection, Ep. 2: Not All Who Ponder Count Costs (Reflection & Moral Dilemmas)
* Oppenheimer: ‘Philosopher-Scientist-Statesman’