Philosophy

What's the deal with "experimental philosophy"? Is it really the appropriate methodology for exploring folk concepts? Is it just a chapter of social psychology, revealing merely "mundane" details of how the mind works? What is its philosophical import?

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You ask good and tough questions for experimental philosophers like myself. I have addressed some of them in my paper with Thomas Nadelhoffer "The Past and Future of Experimental Philosophy" (which can be found at my outdated website), and some of them have been addressed by Joshua Knobe and Shaun Nichols in the introduction to their collection Experimental Philosophy and by Jonathan Weinberg in several papers.

My own view is that "experimental philosophy" does not represent a radical departure from what "empirically informed" philosophers have been doing for some time--i.e., drawing on information from the sciences to inform philosophical discussions. The main difference is that the exp phils do their own empirical work (usually just surveys of non-philosophers' responses to scenarios and questions relevant to philosophical debates). And this methodology, of course, means it is, in one sense, "a chapter of social psychology." Indeed, several psychologists have been labeled experimental philosophers. Here, the difference with most work in psychology is that the empirical work in exp phil is designed specifically to understand (a) what the folk think about issues directly related to philosophical debates, (b) why they think what they think (e.g., the psychological sources of their intuitions), (c) whether their intuitions are reliable, and (d) why different people or different cultures may have different intuitions. Another difference with psychology is that exp philosophers generally do a lot more philosophy--that is, they consider how this information about ordinary people's views can inform philosophical debates.

I don't think this work is just revealing 'mundane' details about how the mind works (of course, I don't think revealing how the mind works is mundane in any sense!). Often, it also informs us about how our concepts work (or should work or should not work) and hence tells us something about whether a philosophical theory is capturing, perhaps systematizing, our pre-philosophical concepts and theories or revising them. In the free will debate, my own area of interest, I think it would be a mistake to develop a philosophical theory that drifts too far away from our ordinary intuitions as well as the related practices of praising, blaming, punishing, etc. So, I find it important and useful to understand in a systematic way (rather than armchair reflection) what non-philosophers think about free will, moral responsibility, determinism, etc.

For a ridiculous discussion of how experimental philosophy is killing "armchair philosophy" (which it is not doing or trying to do!), go here.

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