In light of a recent discussion about how to construe experimental philosophy, readers might be interested in a forthcoming paper by David Danks and I where we take up some of these issues. Here's the abstract:
Experimental philosophy is often held out as a new movement that avoids many of the difficulties that face traditional philosophy. We distinguish two views of experimental philosophy—a narrow view in which philosophers conduct empirical investigations of intuitions and a broad view which says that experimental philosophy is just the co-location in the same body of (i) philosophical naturalism and (ii) the actual practice of cognitive science. These two positions are rarely clearly distinguished in the literature about experimental philosophy, both pro and con. We argue first that the broader view is the only plausible one; discussions of experimental philosophy should recognize that the narrow view is a caricature of experimental philosophy as it is currently done. We then show both how objections to experimental philosophy are transformed and how positive recommendations can be provided by adopting our broad conception of experimental philosophy.
David, the abstract of this paper seems right on! I look forward to reading it.
Posted by: Mark Phelan | 02/27/2013 at 11:17 PM