Experimental Philosophy 2.0

Abstract

© 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc and the Northern Institute of Philosophy I recommend three revisions to experimental philosophy's ‘self-image’ which I suggest will enable experimentalist critics of intuition to evade several important objections to the 'negative' strand of the experimental philosophy research project. First, experimentalists should avoid broad criticisms of ‘intuition’ as a whole, instead drawing a variety of conclusions about a variety of much narrower categories of mental state. Second, experimentalists should state said conclusions in terms of epistemic norms particular to philosophical inquiry, rather than attempting to, for example, deny that intuitions produce justified belief. Third, experimentalists should acknowledge the limitations of the ‘method of cases’ model of philosophical inquiry, and expand their experimental work accordingly.