Experimental philosophy and armchair philosophy

Thesis

Experimental Philosophers argue that the credibility of armchair methodology is undermined by recent empirical findings that show that people's intuitive judgments about thought experiments vary systematically with a host of factors, such as cultural or socioeconomic background. In this thesis, I argue that the experimentalists’ sceptical challenge (ESC) must be understood and evaluated as a philosophical—specifically epistemological—claim, and not as (experimental philosophers maintain) a “merely methodological” claim. To that end, I (1) summarize the findings of experimental philosophy, (2) articulate a formalization of ESC on behalf of experimental philosophers, (3) distinguish ESC from traditional forms of scepticism, and explain why traditional responses to intuition scepticism fail to adequately address it; (4) argue that ESC suffers from a threat of incoherence, drawing on results of a survey on people’s meta-intuitions about the significance of divergence; (5) suggest that the proponent of ESC, in defending the coherence of his own position, opens up the possibility of parallel defences on behalf of armchair philosophy; and (6) lay out possible epistemological considerations that the armchair philosopher can use to defend her traditional methodology against the experimentalist’s challenge.

Authors: Srinivasan, AP

• Publication date: 2009
• Type of award: BPhil
• Level of award: Masters
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: intuitions; experimental philosophy
• Subjects: Philosophy