Experimental philosophy anthem
December 14th 2007 06:14
Says the Experimental Philosophy ("X-Phi") MySpace page:
"Instead of simply pondering abstract questions from the armchair, experimental philosophers go out and run systematic experiments on the intuitions of ordinary people. So far, research in experimental philosophy has helped to address questions involving free will, consciousness, morality, and many other central philosophical issues."
I won't attempt to discuss the various claims involved -- whether it's a new movement, how valuable it is, and so forth. But if you're interested in some reading on the topic, check out (and thanks to MH for the last two links):
-- My post on Michael Devitt and linguistic intuitions;
-- Stanford entry on empirical approaches to moral psychology;
-- New York Times article on "The new new philosophy" by Kwame Anthony Appiah (Sunday 9 December 2007);
-- Stephen Stich on replacing intuitions with experiment: "Moral philosophy and mental representation", published in M Hechter and L Michod (edd), The origin of values, 1993, pp 215-28;
-- Stephen Stich and Jonathan Weinberg (director of the Experimental Epistemology Laboratory, "EEL") on conceptual analysis: "Jackson's empirical assumptions", Philosophy and phenomenological research, vol 62, 2001, pp 637-43.
I'm also planning a report/discussion (but it'll be a few months yet) on a moral psychology conference.
X-Phi on Youtube (basically repeating the claim stated above; and I think the speaker is Joshua Knobe):
The experimental philosophy anthem:
-- Sung by the awesome Alina Simone (MySpace here; homepage here). Alina has so far released an EP, "Prettier in the dark" and an album, "Placelessness", both available from Amazon.
"Instead of simply pondering abstract questions from the armchair, experimental philosophers go out and run systematic experiments on the intuitions of ordinary people. So far, research in experimental philosophy has helped to address questions involving free will, consciousness, morality, and many other central philosophical issues."
I won't attempt to discuss the various claims involved -- whether it's a new movement, how valuable it is, and so forth. But if you're interested in some reading on the topic, check out (and thanks to MH for the last two links):
-- My post on Michael Devitt and linguistic intuitions;
-- Stanford entry on empirical approaches to moral psychology;
-- New York Times article on "The new new philosophy" by Kwame Anthony Appiah (Sunday 9 December 2007);
-- Stephen Stich on replacing intuitions with experiment: "Moral philosophy and mental representation", published in M Hechter and L Michod (edd), The origin of values, 1993, pp 215-28;
-- Stephen Stich and Jonathan Weinberg (director of the Experimental Epistemology Laboratory, "EEL") on conceptual analysis: "Jackson's empirical assumptions", Philosophy and phenomenological research, vol 62, 2001, pp 637-43.
I'm also planning a report/discussion (but it'll be a few months yet) on a moral psychology conference.
***
X-Phi on Youtube (basically repeating the claim stated above; and I think the speaker is Joshua Knobe):
The experimental philosophy anthem:
-- Sung by the awesome Alina Simone (MySpace here; homepage here). Alina has so far released an EP, "Prettier in the dark" and an album, "Placelessness", both available from Amazon.
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