Experimental Philosophy with Bagels and Coffee: WWKD?

Posted by Jeff Lipshaw

I’m sitting in the Tulane Law School multi-purpose room, in the process of paying off my debt to Professor Eric Dannenmaier arising out of the recent World Series.  The deal was that if the Tigers won, Eric would serve breakfast to my morning class, and if the Cardinals won, I would do the same for his.  As you may recall, the good guys lost.

So when I saw Larry Solum’s post this morning about a new article on experimental philosophy, and I recalled Frank Pasquale’s interest in the subject, it occurred to me that I had recently faced an experiment in deontology versus consequentialism.  Eric and I decided that rather than simply serve breakfast to one or the other of the classes we would make the bagels and coffee available to all of our classes.

Now here’s the duty versus consequence question:  you are going to announce this windfall to the class that wasn’t going to get served.  It also happens to be the morning that you are passing out the teaching evaluation forms.  Do you announce the bagels and coffee before you pass out the evaluations, or after they are filled out and collected?  WWKD?