Abstract
Experimental philosophy, at least in its ‘negative’ variety, has standardly been portrayed as presenting a dramatic challenge to traditional philosophical methodology. As such, it has prompted a large variety of counter-arguments and defenses of intuition. In this paper, I argue that many of these objections to experimental philosophy rest on various oversimplifications that both experimental philosophers and their opponents have made regarding intuitions and philosophical methodology. Once these oversimplifications are abandoned, I argue that the experimentalist critique of current philosophical methods becomes somewhat less dramatic, but also much less open to objection.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Though Bonjour prefers to use the term ‘rational insight.’
But see also Deutsch (2015) for discussion.
Both Cappelen and Deutsch acknowledge this alternate interpretation, but reject it. Nonetheless, I think the example of the Gettier literature, as discussed below, implies that this interpretation deserves further consideration.
Note that, in many cases, the practice of blinding an experiment serves to correct for exactly this issue—experimental researchers are keenly aware of the fact that they may be biased in favor of their own hypotheses, and that this bias may color their gathering and interpretation of evidence. Philosophers, by contrast, do not employ any standard methods to control against these biases.
Note that these points also imply that the aforementioned empirical evidence of bias in philosophers doesn’t defeat the idea that philosophers have expertise—they may have expertise in certain types of intuition, but not others; and they almost certainly have certain forms of non-intuitive philosophical expertise (say, in tasks like the careful construction of well-controlled thought experiments).
References
Ahlenius, H., & Tännsjö, T. (2012). Chinese and Westerners respond differently to the trolley dilemmas. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 12(3–4), 195–201.
Alexander, J., Mallon, R., & Weinberg, J. (2010). Accentuate the negative. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 1(2), 297–314.
Alexander, J., & Weinberg, J. M. (2007). Analytic epistemology and experimental philosophy. Philosophy Compass, 2(1), 56–80.
Bealer, G. (1992). The incoherence of empiricism. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume, 66, 99–138.
Bengson, J. (2013). Experimental attacks on intuitions and answers. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 86(3), 495–532.
BonJour, L. (1998). In defense of pure reason. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Brogaard, B. (2014). Intuitions as intellectual seemings. Analytic Philosophy, 55(4), 382–393.
Buckwalter, W., & Stich, S. (2014). Gender and philosophical intuition. In J. Knobe & S. Nichols (Eds.), Experimental philosophy (Vol. 2, pp. 307–346). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cappelen, H. (2012). Philosophy without intuitions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Chalmers, D. (2014). Intuitions in philosophy: A minimal defense. Philosophical Studies, 171(3), 535–544.
Cokely, E., & Feltz, A. (2009). Individual differences, judgment biases, and theory of mind: Deconstructing the intentional action side effect asymmetry. Journal of Research in Personality, 43(1), 18–24.
Deutsch, M. (2009). Experimental philosophy and the theory of reference. Mind and Language, 24(4), 445–466.
Deutsch, M. (2010). Intuitions, counterexamples, and experimental philosophy. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 1(3), 447–460.
Deutsch, M. (2015). The myth of the intuitive. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Devitt, M. (2011). Experimental semantics. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 82, 418–435.
Haidt, J., Koller, S., & Dias, M. (1993). Affect, culture, and morality, or is it wrong to eat your dog? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65(4), 613–628.
Horvath, J. (2010). How (not) to react to experimental philosophy. Philosophical Psychology, 23, 447–480.
Lam, B. (2010). Are Cantonese speakers really descriptivists? Revisiting cross-cultural semantics. Cognition, 115, 320–329.
Ludwig, K. (2007). The epistemology of thought experiments: First person versus third person approaches. Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 31, 128–159.
Machery, E., Mallon, R., Nichols, S., & Stich, S. (2004). Semantics, cross-cultural style. Cognition, 92, B1–B12.
Machery, E., & O’Neill, E. (2014). Introduction: Experimental philosophy: What is it good for? In E. Machery & E. O’Neill (Eds.), Current controversies in experimental philosophy. New York: Routledge.
Nadelhoffer, T., & Nahmias, E. (2007). The past and future of experimental philosophy. Philosophical Explorations, 10(2), 123–149.
Nado, J. (2014). Why intuition? Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 89, 15–41.
Nichols, S., & Knobe, J. (2007). Moral responsibility and determinism: The cognitive science of folk intuitions. Nous, 41(4), 663–685.
Nichols, S., Stich, S., & Weinberg, J. (2003). Metaskepticism: Meditations in ethno-epistemology. In S. Luper (Ed.), The Skeptics (pp. 227–247). Aldershot, England: Ashgate Publishing.
Pust, J. (2000). Intuitions as evidence. Abingdon: Taylor & Francis.
Pust, J. (2001). Against explanationist skepticism regarding philosophical intuitions. Philosophical Studies, 106(3), 227–258.
Sarkissian, H., Chatterjee, A., De Brigard, F., Knobe, J., Nichols, S., & Sirker, S. (2010). Is belief in free will a cultural universal? Mind and Language, 25(3), 346–358.
Schnall, S., Haidt, J., Clore, G. L., & Jordan, A. H. (2008). Disgust as embodied moral judgment. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34, 1096–1109.
Schulz, E., Cokely, E. T., & Feltz, A. (2011). Persistent bias in expert judgments about free will and moral responsibility: A test of the expertise defense. Consciousness and Cognition, 20(4), 1722–1731.
Schwitzgebel, E., & Cushman, F. (2012). Expertise in moral reasoning? Order effects on moral judgment in professional philosophers and non-philosophers. Mind and Language, 27(2), 135–153.
Seyedsayamdost, H. (2015). On normativity and epistemic intuitions: Failure of replication. Episteme, 12(01), 95–116.
Sosa, E. (1998). Minimal intuition. In M. DePaul & W. Ramsey (Eds.), Rethinking intuition: The psychology of intuition and its role in philosophical inquiry. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.
Sosa, D. (2006). Scepticism about intuition. Philosophy, 81(318), 633–647.
Sosa, E. (2007). Experimental philosophy and philosophical intuition. Philosophical Studies, 132(2007), 99–107.
Swain, S., Alexander, J., & Weinberg, J. (2008). The instability of philosophical intuitions: Running hot and cold on Truetemp. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 76(1), 138–155.
Tobia, K., Buckwalter, W., & Stich, S. (2013a). Moral intuitions: Are philosophers experts? Philosophical Psychology, 26, 629–638.
Tobia, K., Chapman, G., & Stich, S. (2013b). Cleanliness is next to morality, even for philosophers. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 20(11–12), 195–204.
Weinberg, J. (2014). Cappelen between a rock and a hard place. Philosophical Studies, 171(3), 545–553.
Weinberg, J., Nichols, S., & Stich, S. (2001). Normativity and epistemic intuitions. Philosophical Topics, 29, 429–460.
Wheatley, T., & Haidt, J. (2005). Hypnotic disgust makes moral judgments more severe. Psychological Science, 16(10), 780–784.
Wiegmann, A., Okan, Y., & Nagel, J. (2012). Order effects in moral judgment. Philosophical Psychology, 25(6), 813–836.
Williamson, T. (2007). The philosophy of philosophy. Oxford: Blackwell.
Williamson, T. (2011). Philosophical expertise and the burden of proof. Metaphilosophy, 42(3), 215–229.
Williamson, T. (2015). Philosophical criticisms of experimental philosophy. In J. Sytsma & W. Buckwalter (Eds.), A companion to experimental philosophy. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell.
Wright, J. C. (2010). On intuitional stability: The clear, the strong, and the paradigmatic. Cognition, 115(3), 491–503.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Nado, J. How To Think About Philosophical Methodology. J. Indian Counc. Philos. Res. 34, 447–463 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40961-017-0116-8
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40961-017-0116-8