英国博后职位雷丁大学哲学系

This post arises from the Leverhulme Research Project Grant, “The Psychology of Philosophical Thought Experiments”. The project is led by Dr. Nat Hansen (Department of Philosophy and Centre for Cognition Research, University of Reading), and Professor Phil Beaman (Department of Psychology, University of Reading).

The project will involve developing and applying novel experimental investigations of the stakes-sensitivity and context-sensitivity of knowledge. The project will expand the methodological resources of experimental philosophy by adapting methods from experimental psychology (e.g., the use of “stooges”) and behavioral economics (e.g., varying monetary awards for performance).

These methods will enable participants to focus on actual practical consequences (and reveal potential effects of those consequences on judgments about knowledge), rather than asking participants to merely imagine practical consequences (as in existing experiments).

By applying these more sophisticated experimental methods, the project will address a recent challenge to experimental approaches to philosophical questions that claims that experimental participants do not really understand what they are being asked to do when they are confronted with philosophical thought experiments, and it will contribute to ongoing philosophical investigations into the nature of knowledge.

You will have:

• A completed PhD by the start date of the post (1 April 2017) in Philosophy, Psychology, Cognitive Science, or an allied discipline.
• You will be expected to pursue independent work related to the overall project theme and to work as a research assistant to the Principal Investigator (PI) and Co-Investigator (CI).
• You will contribute to the design and statistical analysis of experiments, and contribute to the writing of research papers resulting from the project.
• You will be expected to be involved in planning and running collaborative activities of the project group (project meetings, experiments, presentations), as well as some administrative work associated with the project (updating online resources for the project, for example)