Philosophical Criticisms of Experimental Philosophy (original) (raw)

Intuitions, reflective judgments, and experimental philosophy

Synthese, 2018

Experimental philosophers are often puzzled as to why many armchair philosophers question the philosophical significance of their research. Armchair philosophers, in contrast, are often puzzled as to why experimental philosophers think their work sheds any light on traditional philosophical problems. I argue there is truth on both sides.

Introduction: Experimental Philosophy and Its Critics, Parts 1 and 2

Philosophical Psychology, 2010

In this brief introduction, we would first like to explain how these two special issues of Philosophical Psychology (Nos. 23.3 & 23.4) actually came about. In addition, we will provide an outline of their overall structure and shortly summarize the featured papers.

Experimental Philosophy, Rationalism, and Naturalism. Rethinking Philosophical Method

2015

Publisher's abstract: Experimental philosophy is one of the most exciting and controversial philosophical movements today. This book explores how it is reshaping thought about philosophical method. Experimental philosophy imports experimental methods and findings from psychology into philosophy. These fresh resources can be used to develop and defend both armchair methods and naturalist approaches, on an empirical basis. This outstanding collection brings together leading proponents of this new meta-philosophical naturalism, from within and beyond experimental philosophy. They explore how the empirical study of philosophically relevant intuition and cognition transforms traditional philosophical approaches and facilitates fresh ones. Part One examines important uses of traditional "armchair" methods which are not threatened by experimental work and develops empirically informed accounts of such methods that can potentially stand up to experimental scrutiny. Part Two analyses different uses and rationales of experimental methods in several areas of philosophy and addresses the key methodological challenges to experimental philosophy: Do its experiments target the intuitions that matter in philosophy? And how can they support conclusions about the rights and wrongs of philosophical views? Essential reading for students of experimental philosophy and metaphilosophy, Experimental Philosophy, Rationalism, and Naturalism will also interest students and researchers in related areas such as epistemology and the philosophies of language, perception, mind and action, science and psychology. Contents and Contributors: Introduction: Rationalism and Naturalism in the Age of Experimental Philosophy – An Introduction Eugen Fischer and John Collins The Volume: Synopsis Eugen Fischer and John Collins Part 1: The Armchair and Naturalism 1. The Nature of A Priori Intuitions: Analytic or Synthetic? David Papineau 2. Understanding the Question: Philosophy and its History Tim Crane 3. Two Kinds of Naturalism John Collins 4. Philosophical Insights and Modal Cognition Mikkel Gerken 5. Thought Experiments, Concepts, and Conceptions Daniele Sgaravatti 6. Against Naturalistic Defences of Intuition Hilary Kornblith Part 2: Varieties of Experimental Philosophy 7. Humans as Instruments: Or, the Inevitability of Experimental Philosophy Jonathan M. Weinberg 8. The Illusion of Expertise Edouard Machery 9. Intuition, Philosophical Theorising, and the Threat of Scepticism Jennifer Nado 10. Experimental Philosophy and Naturalism Bence Nanay 11. Experimental Philosophical Semantics and the Real Reference of 'Gödel' Amir Horowitz 12. Intuitions and Illusions: From Explanation and Experiment to Assessment Eugen Fischer, Paul E. Engelhardt and Aurelie Herbelot. Index

How (not) to react to experimental philosophy

Philosophical Psychology, 2010

In this paper, I am going to offer a reconstruction of a challenge to intuition-based armchair philosophy that has been put forward by experimental philosophers of a restrictionist stripe, which I will call the ‘master argument’. I will then discuss a number of popular objections to this argument and explain why they either fail to cast doubt on its first, empirical premise or do not go deep enough to make for a lasting rebuttal. Next, I will consider two more promising objections, the grounding objection and the expertise objection, which aim at the second, epistemic premise of the argument. Against this background, I will then suggest what I call ‘conservative restrictionism’ as the most reasonable default reaction to the experimentalist challenge, which is a combination of the two views of local restrictionism and methodological conservativism.

The Rise and Fall of Experimental Philosophy

Philosophical Explorations

In disputes about conceptual analysis, each side typically appeals to pre-theoretical 'intuitions' about particular cases. Recently, many naturalistically oriented philosophers have suggested that these appeals should be understood as empirical hypotheses about what people would say when presented with descriptions of situations, and have consequently conducted surveys on non-specialists. I argue that this philosophical research programme, a key branch of what is known as 'experimental philosophy', rests on mistaken assumptions about the relation between people’s concepts and their linguistic behaviour. The conceptual claims that philosophers make imply predictions about the folk’s responses only under certain demanding, counterfactual conditions. Because of the nature of these conditions, the claims cannot be tested with methods of positivist social science. We are, however, entitled to appeal to intuitions about folk concepts in virtue of possessing implicit normative knowledge acquired through reflective participation in everyday linguistic practices.

Thought Experiments and Experimental Philosophy

In recent years, there has been a lot of debate in philosophical methodology about the best rational reconstruction of philosophical thought experiments. Concerning this debate, I argue against the current consensus that our intuitive judgments about Gettier thought experiments should be interpreted in modal terms. In order to provide a non-modal alternative, I present a detailed reconstruction of a paradigmatic Gettier thought experiment in terms of suppositional thinking. Next, I explore a problem that all rational reconstructions must face, namely that there is a large gap between the explicit case description of a thought experiment and our total supposition of the relevant scenario. In the final section, I use these considerations to make room for alternative explanations of some challenging results from experimental philosophy – explanations that are friendlier to the method of thought experimentation than the skeptical conclusions of experimental philosophers of a ‘restrictionist’ stripe.

Is Experimental Philosophy Philosophically Significant?

Experimental philosophy has emerged as a very specific kind of response to an equally specific way of thinking about philosophy, one typically associated with philosophical analysis and according to which philosophical claims are measured, at least in part, by our intuitions. Since experimental philosophy has emerged as a response to this way of thinking about philosophy, its philosophical significance depends, in no small part, on how significant the practice of appealing to intuitions is to philosophy. In this paper, I defend the significance of experimental philosophy by defending the significance of intuitions -in particular, by defending their significance from a recent challenge advanced by Timothy Williamson.

The Concept of Intuition in Experimental Philosophy

Argument: Biannual Philosophical Journal, 2022

Although the concept of intuition has a central place in experimental philosophy, it is still far from being clear. Moreover, critics of that movement often argue that the concept of intuition in experimental philosophy does not correspond to the concept of intuition used in traditional, armchair philosophy. However, such a claim is problematic, because most attempts to define this concept are made with regard to the armchair philosophy's point of view and not that of experimental philosophy. In the article I analyse the concept of intuition in experimental philosophy by taking into account its theoretical assumptions, and the research practice of its representatives. By analysing the most influential experimental philosophers' views, I formulate its core characteristics. According to them, intuition is a mental state that is a reaction to the described case, which is revealed in the readiness to express a judgment about this case. Then, I investigate step by step the frequently postulated methodological, phenomenological, and etiological conditions that could narrow down the initial definition. I show that the only condition coherent with experimental philosophy's assumptions and its practice is an etiological one, as the mental state that could be classified as intuition has to be shaped by pragmatic, and not only semantic factors. In the last parts of the text, I draw out some of the consequences of the position that I have presented, regarding the methodology of experimental philosophy and philosophy in general.

Experimental Philosophy and Philosophical Disputes

2012

One view of philosophy that is sometimes expressed, especially by scientists, is that while philosophers are good at asking questions, they are poor at producing convincing answers. And the perceived divide between philosophical and scientific methods is often pointed to as the major culprit behind this lack of progress. Looking back at the history of philosophy, however, we find that this methodological divide is a relatively recent invention. Further, it is one that has been challenged over the past decade by the modern incarnation of experimental philosophy. How might the reincorporation of empirical methods into philosophy aid the process of making philosophical progress? Building off of the work of Sytsma , we argue that one way it does so is by offering a means of resolving some disputes that arise in philosophy. We illustrate how philosophical disputes may sometimes be resolved empirically by looking at the recent experimental literature on intuitions about reference.