I agree that the “externalist” issues you raise create problems for using paradigm x-phi results to inform semantics and metaphysics [although the extension of ‘paradigm x-phi’ is a moving target: work here is becoming more sophisticated by the day—see Chandra Sripada’s recent work for an example]. Let me add a further consideration which bolsters your point. I have argued in print that there may be cases in which whether a term is context sensitive or relative is an external matter in the sense of Burge and Putnam (Juhani Yli-Vakkuri is also exploring this idea). This will also create serious complications for accounts that try to read the context sensitivity of certain terms from ordinary use.

I think, however, it is unfair to single out some x-phi methods as special targets of these worries. The problems arise just as much for standard armchair semantic methodology. A leading method in semantics is judging (from the armchair) that some linguistic construction is a natural (or awkward) reaction or response to some previously displayed discourse. This sort of method is certainly subject to some of the same worries you mentioned above. Same thing can be said about the growing area of experimental semantics and pragmatics. There, we see appeal to non-expert language use through corpus-based research, eye tracking tests, timed responses and other methods similar to x-phi methods. I would think that all of these approaches are subject to the worries you mentioned above. BTW: here’s a syllabus for an experimental semantics and pragmatics class offered by a linguist at the University of Chicago (Chris Kennedy): http://semantics.uchicago.edu/kennedy/classes/s09/experimentalsemantics/

I find that experimental philosophy methods are totally appropriate as a complement to traditional semantic methods. If ordinary people grasp the meaning of their words, then it makes sense to study their judgments and reactions to get at the meaning of those words.

http://philostv.com/papers/Folk_Relativism.pdf

But I wanted to address two issues in particular. First, a number of commenters asked whether this phenomenon might arise only among American college students. To address that question, we ran the study in Singapore as well and got the same pattern of results.

Second, Tad rightly points out that the word ‘wrong’ seems to imply much more than just that a specific belief is incorrect. To address that worry, we conducted a study in which participants were asked whether one of the people’s beliefs had to be ‘incorrect,’ and that follow-up study showed exactly the same key result.

My own sense is that the empirical facts can be relevant in a slightly different way. It doesn’t seem right to say that people as a whole are adopting either relativism or objectivism. Rather, people seem in some way to be torn, feeling the pull of one view but also being drawn toward the other. (I myself feel torn in these different directions in exactly that same way.)

Now, when we find ourselves feeling torn between different options, it seems that all sorts of different forms of evidence could be helpful in enabling us to figure out which option is right, but one form of evidence would be information about the actual psychological processes that are pulling us one way or another. Once we get a better sense for the nature of these processes, we will be in a better position to know whether we should put our trust in them.

I offered a specific hypothesis here, along with some preliminary evidence in favor of it, but other commentators have argued for other hypotheses: Simon for a hypothesis about meaning, Angel for a hypothesis about emotion, Brad for a number of other interesting possibilities. Depending on which of these turns out to be correct, we would end up with very different conclusions about which of our inclinations to put more trust in.

On this sort of approach, it is again the case that the empirical data provide only a certain kind of defeasible reason to adopt a particular view, but this time the defeasible reason comes from a different source. It is not that the mere fact that a view is commonly held gives us some reason to adopt it; it is that facts about the cognitive processes underlying our intuitions can give us reason to think that these intuitions are either trustworthy or untrustworthy.

One important question coming out the recent comments concerns the philosophical significance of these empirical findings about people’s intuitions. Obviously, the empirical findings could have a certain kind of relevance in and of themselves (considered as a contribution to cognitive science), but a number of commenters have asked about whether they might also have relevance for issues in metaethics.

There are really two distinct issues arising there — one about whether empirical claims about folk morality in fact do play a role in metaethical debate, the other about whether these empirical claims should play such a role.

With regard to the question as to whether they do play a role, a number of commenters already pointed to evidence that they do. For an additional example, consider this passage from Frank Jackson:

“I take it that it is part of current folk morality that convergence will or would occur. We have some kind of commitment to the idea that moral disagreements can be resolved by sufficient critical reflection — which is why we bother to engage in moral debate. To that extent, some sort of objectivism is part of current folk morality.”

Or this one from Michael Smith:

“we seem to think moral questions have correct answers; that the correct answers are made correct by objective moral facts; that moral facts are wholly determined by circumstances and that, by engaging in moral conversation and argument, we can discover what these objective moral facts determined by the circumstances are.”

But, of course, regardless of what people have in fact been doing in metaethics, one might think that there is a further question here — a question about what people should be doing in metaethics — and there one might have doubts about whether existing work is using the right sort of method.

In my view, metaethicists are completely right to think that facts about folk morality are relevant here. I’ll say a little bit more about that issue in a separate post.

Brink does claim that crude relativism would be revisionary and Smith mentions a common sense belief in the possibility or eventual probability of consensus. But I think it is a big stretch to say that the realist tradition of appealing to common sense moral discourse and practice has taken relativism as its target.

I think most of the prominent appeals to common sense moral experience are made in support of realism (or circular response dependence theories like Wiggins and McDowell) in a debate with expressivists or emotivists. I am not seeing how this study, and the relativist reading of it, bear on that debate.

If you want to find a tradition of people appealing to common sense in order to reject (sophisticated, Harman-style) relativism, you need to distinguish them from people targeting emotivists, quasi-realists, etc.

Second, it is interesting that in the passage cited above Mackie suggests that “objectivity” or “realism” is packed into the meaning of moral terms. I find it surprising because I do not think most appeals to common sense moral experience (by realists) take that form. Is that what Brink, Smith, Shafer-Landau, etc do. (books at office!)?

Third, insofar as realists want to appeal to some aspect of our ordinary linguistic practice and to claim that it indicates a commitment to realism, they should and do appeal to the inferential practices discussed under the heading of ‘the frege-geach’ problem.

I agree with Brian that many realist moral philosophers do indeed appeal to common sense as a way of supporting their position. These realists usually don’t claim the folk have explicit beliefs about metaethics. Rather, they claim that objectivity is implicit or ‘presupposed’ in the ordinary moral discourse and practice. And to be fair to these thinkers, they don’t rest their case for moral realism on claims about common sense. Rather, they argue that preserving features of common sense is one consideration among many counting in favor of realist views. In terms of specific references to places where philosophers appeal to common sense to support moral realism, look at Brink page 25 of Moral Realism, Michael Smith page 5 of The Moral Problem, and Shafer-Landau page 23 of Moral Realism. The preceding are moral realists but of course error theorists make precisely the same claim about the objectivist presuppositions of common sense, e.g., J. L. Mackie Part 1 of Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong and Richard Joyce page 70 of Evolution of Morality.

Josh’s results, again assuming the methodological challenges can be met, would have some bite against this ‘argument from common sense’ used by these moral realists (and error theorists). But I am sure Josh would agree that his results themselves do not settle the issue against moral realism, since there are a large number of other arguments in favor of moral realism that would need to be addressed.