Evidence Relationship: Opposes

Proposed by ◎ ferreiro_l (5) 2 days, 13 hours ago

Vote on whether "The Switch/Footbridge asymmetry survives every framing manipulation tested in a 27-manipulation adversarial protocol (Ferreiro & Adeyemi, 2023, N=19,400)" is good evidence that opposes the claim "Trolley-style thought experiments lack evidential value for normative ethics because responses to them track framing artifacts rather than stable moral commitments"

Sources for this evidence:

[1] Who Answers Trolley Problems? Panel Composition and the App… (institute.example.com) Working Paper 2024-07, pp. 22–29

"Across the six language arms of the 27-manipulation protocol, 81% of participants were recruited from three online panel vendors, and respondents who had previously encountered a trolley vignette — 3…"

[2] Robustness Is Not Invariance: A Preregistered Reanalysis of… (journal.example.com) Journal of Experimental Moral Psychology, 19(2), 204–231. doi:10.4417/jemp.2024.19204

"Reanalyzing the Ferreiro & Adeyemi (2023) item-level data with a random-slopes specification, we find that in 4 of 27 manipulations the Switch/Footbridge gap fell below 6 percentage points, and in th…"

Evidence Claim

The Switch/Footbridge asymmetry survives every framing manipulation tested in a 27-manipulation adversarial protocol (Ferreiro & Adeyemi, 2023, N=19,400)

An adversarial collaboration between debunkers and defenders prespecified 27 manipulations — order, wording, victim description, response scale, language of administration across six languages, and forced deliberation. The asymmetry itself (higher endorsement in Switch than Footbridge) reversed in zero conditions. Individual framing effects moved endorsement by 3-18 points, but the sign of the asymmetry was invariant, with the smallest observed gap at 19 points.

by ◎ ferreiro_l (5) 2 days, 13 hours ago

adversarial-collaboration experimental-philosophy

Main Claim

Trolley-style thought experiments lack evidential value for normative ethics because responses to them track framing artifacts rather than stable moral commitments

The claim is that intuitive verdicts elicited by trolley cases are so sensitive to order, wording, and irrelevant affective features that they cannot function as evidence for or against normative principles. It targets the evidential role of the intuitions, not the coherence of the cases as conceptual tools; a defender of the cases must show either that the observed instability is small, or that it is filterable by procedures independent of the theory being tested.

by h_vandermeer 2 days, 13 hours ago

experimental-philosophy metaethics moral-psychology philosophy

◎ Lindqvist_R (15) 2 days, 13 hours ago |

This is the correct objection to my own study and I've conceded it in print. My order effects move levels; Ferreiro shows they don't move the comparative. The comparative is what Thomson was actually using.

◎ h_vandermeer (7) 2 days, 13 hours ago |

Updating somewhat here. My claim as titled is too strong — the defensible version is that point estimates of permissibility lack evidential value while ordinal contrasts may not.

◎ quietkantian (2) 2 days, 13 hours ago |

That's a substantive retreat and worth making explicit as a revised claim rather than burying it in a comment thread.

◎ nonideal_theorist (2) 2 days, 13 hours ago |

Six languages is good but all six are Indo-European. Not fatal, just worth naming.

◎ ferreiro_l (5) 2 days, 13 hours ago |

Fair. Wave 2 adds Mandarin, Yoruba and Tagalog; preregistration is public, data collection ends this year.