Experimental philosophy is a movement within the analytic tradition that calls into question traditional methodology and offers new methods in its place. A recent volume in the genre, Experimental Philosophy, Rationalism, and Naturalism: Rethinking Philosophical Method, includes twelve papers, which were first presented at a conference organized by the editors, Eugen Fischer and John Collins, that explore the pressing methodological questions that have been raised by experimental philosophy.

As its name implies, experimental philosophy differs from traditional “armchair” philosophy in that its practitioners perform social science experiments in pursuit of philosophical quarry. In the beginning, these experiments were mostly surveys which investigated ordinary people’s intuitions about philosophical thought experiments. Philosophers have long used thought experiments to explore and develop the conceptual space around philosophical issues; perhaps more significantly, philosophers have also used these intuitions to support particular arguments or positions.  Early experimental philosophers were skeptical that the intuitions of professional philosophers – a very narrow slice of the demographic pie, consisting mainly of white men with a very particular kind of education – were widely shared with the masses.

Having now been around for a couple of decades, experimental philosophers have explored the intuitions of laypeople on many topics, including the trolley problem, Gettier cases, body-switching cases, and attributions of consciousness to robots. Many of the findings of experimental philosophers show that the intuitions of professional philosophers are not always a match for the intuitions of laypeople; there are differences between genders, cultures, education levels, etc. Adding fuel to the fire, as experimental philosophers grew more familiar with the empirical literature, they also started looking for known psychological confounds, like order effects and framing effects, which can bias our responses. These effects have been found among lay people and professional philosophers alike.   

These findings have led to fascinating discussions about philosophical methodology, many of which can be found in this volume. Even those who are not a fans of experimental philosophy can still appreciate that its existence has forced the discipline to reflect more deeply on the role of intuitions in philosophical methodology and why and under what conditions we might have good reason to accept intuitions as reliable. And as the movement matures, experimental philosophers are being pushed to reconsider their relationship to naturalism, which has reinvigorated old debates about how naturalism is best understood.

This collection, especially in its first half, covers all these issues – contributions include defense of at least part of the traditional role that intuitions have played in conceptual analysis, attempts to work out the relationship between experimental philosophy and naturalism, and efforts to determine under what conditions our intuitions can be said to constitute knowledge. The first two articles, by David Papineau and Tim Crane, illustrate the richness of the discussion which has been provoked by experimental philosophy. In very different ways, both take on the challenge of explaining what makes a question or issue philosophical. These kinds of metaphilosophical discussions are signs of health in a sometimes sclerotic discipline.

In the second half of the volume, contributors tackle what the editors call the “two-fold relevance challenge” (24-25). First, many philosophers have questioned whether the intuitions of laypeople are relevant to the project of conceptual analysis. The intuitions of philosophers, this argument states, are the product of training and practice, and thus, are likely to be far more reliable than the intuitions of untutored laypeople.  On this view, the kinds of philosophical intuitions that matter for philosophy are those that are the result of reflection and careful thought; the intuitions measured by experimental philosophers are hastily generated responses to surveys. Second, there is the challenge of establishing the evidentiary value of the measured intuitions. Ultimately, philosophers are interested in what philosophical theories we should accept and it is hard to see how knowing the statistical distribution of a set of intuitions is likely to provide reasons for accepting a particular philosophical view. Most of the articles focus on the second fold, but Edouard Machery directly confronts the first fold when he argues that philosophers likely suffer from an “illusion of expertise” in their claims to be particularly killed in the application of philosophically important concepts.

Experimental philosophy has come a long way since its early days, when much of its focus was on showing the unreliability of intuition.  It’s notable that many of the contributions supplement the results of experimental philosophy with other psychological theories.  Danielle Sgaravatti, for example, relies on the psychology of concepts in developing her theory that our intuitive judgments about thought experiments are of the same kind as our ordinary judgments about actual situations. Bence Nanay uses research in the cognitive neuroscience of action to explain the possibility of a naturalist experimental philosophy. Both Jonathan Weinberg and Machery rely on the psychological literature on expertise to explain the value of scientific investigation into the reliability of our intuitions. And Fischer, Paul Engelhardt, and Aurélie Herbelot, rely on linguistics research and psychological work in cognitive illusions to explain a certain class of phenomenal judgments. One of the strengths of this volume is showcasing the wide range of interests of experimental philosophers and their allies.

I would not recommend this volume as an introduction to the field of experimental philosophy.  If you are new to the field, then I would recommend starting with either a collection of early papers, Experimental Philosophy, edited Joshua Knobe and Shaun Nichols, or a general overview of the field by Joshua Alexander, Experimental Philosophy: An Introduction.  Unlike the reviewed volume, both of these books are written for the reader new to experimental philosophy. The current volume discusses experimental findings in the context of methodological issues, rather than on their own terms. While understanding the nature, role, and epistemological value of our philosophical intuitions, as well as how this new movement relates to more established traditions, is of deep significance for professional philosophers and graduate students, I’m not sure how interesting these issues are for those not working in the field (or nearby fields, like psychology). But for those who are working in the field, I can strongly recommend this collection.

© 2016 Emily Esch

Emily Esch, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Philosophy, College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University