Stereotypical inferences: Philosophical relevance and psycholinguistic toolkit

Fischer, Eugen ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2088-1610 and Engelhardt, Paul E. (2017) Stereotypical inferences: Philosophical relevance and psycholinguistic toolkit. Ratio, 30 (4). pp. 411-442. ISSN 0034-0006

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Abstract

Stereotypes shape inferences in philosophical thought, political discourse, and everyday life. These inferences are routinely made when thinkers engage in language comprehension or production: We make them whenever we hear, read, or formulate stories, reports, philosophical case-descriptions, or premises of arguments – on virtually any topic. These inferences are largely automatic: largely unconscious, non-intentional, and effortless. Accordingly, they shape our thought in ways we can properly understand only by complementing traditional forms of philosophical analysis with experimental methods from psycholinguistics. This paper seeks, first, to bring out the wider philosophical relevance of stereotypical inference, well beyond familiar topics like gender and race. Second, we wish to provide (experimental) philosophers with a toolkit to experimentally study these ubiquitous inferences and what intuitions they may generate. This paper explains what stereotypes are (Section 1), and why they matter to current and traditional concerns in philosophy – experimental, analytic, and applied (Section 2). It then assembles a psycholinguistic toolkit and demonstrates through two studies (Sections 3-4) how potentially questionnaire-based measures (plausibility-ratings) can be combined with process measures (reaction times and pupillometry) to garner evidence for specific stereotypical inferences and study when they ‘go through’ and influence our thinking.

Item Type:	Article
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Politics, Philosophy, Language and Communication Studies (former - to 2024) Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Psychology
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Philosophy Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Wittgenstein Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > UEA Experimental Philosophy Group
Depositing User:	Pure Connector
Date Deposited:	18 Jan 2017 00:03
Last Modified:	14 Dec 2024 01:23
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/62136
DOI:	10.1111/rati.12174

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