Experimental philosophy is useful

but not in a specific way

Jacob Rosenthal

pp. 211-226

in: Christoph Luetge, Hannes Rusch, Matthias Uhl (eds), Experimental ethics, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014

Abstract

In this contribution I try to tentatively assess the relevance of experimental philosophy for systematic philosophy. Imagine that some philosophical claim is debated. Pros and cons are exchanged, thought experiments brought forth; implications are asserted, disputed, and evaluated; specifications and distinctions introduced; etc. — and now the disputants receive information on how ordinary people assess certain scenarios associated with the claim. That is, they learn about "folk intuitions' on the topic. (In rare cases they may also learn about behavioral data in the narrower sense, or about associated patterns of brain activity. But I will put this aside, as it raises different issues.) How should such findings affect the discussion? This is the question I am going to pursue here. The significance of experimental-philosophical results for philo-sophical debates could well depend on the debate in question, but as it happens, this is largely not the case — or so it seems to me. To my mind, a general diagnosis can be argued for.