Pragmatic experimental philosophy

Abstract

AbstractThis paper considers three package deals combining views in philosophy of mind, meta-philosophy, and experimental philosophy. The most familiar of these packages gives center-stage to pumping intuitions about fanciful cases, but that package involves problematic commitments both to a controversial descriptivist theory of reference and to intuitions that "negative" experimental philosophers have shown to be suspiciously variable and context-sensitive. In light of these difficulties, it would be good for future-minded experimental philosophers to align themselves with a different package deal. This paper suggests two alternatives. Experimentalists might help fans of "naturalized" approaches discover what natural kinds have been playing an appropriate role in causing us to use concepts as we do. Or, better still, experimentalists might instead help pragmatists and teleo-semanticists discover how our concept usage regularly yields beneficial outcomes, so that we can then craft philosophical analyses that will enable us to yield such beneficial outcomes more consistently. Using free will and explanation as instructive examples, this paper offers concrete guidance and suggestions for how experimental philosophers can pursue new positive projects that will be both pragmatically and philosophically useful.Keywords:: DescriptivismExperimental PhilosophyExplanationFree WillMeta-PhilosophyNaturalized SemanticsReferenceTeleosemantics AcknowledgementsI am grateful to helpful comments from many people, including Shaun Nichols, Ron Mallon, Joshua Knobe, Tania Lombrozo, and other participants at the 2009 NEH summer institute on experimental philosophy and the 2011 bootcamp on experimental philosophy of free will. I am also grateful for helpful feedback from my colleagues at SMU, and audiences at the Eastern APA (including helpful commentary from Thomas Nadelhoffer), the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology, and Florida International University.Notes [1] I think of concepts as mental particulars that play a folder-like information-coordinating role in cognition. In this, I follow a rich tradition in cognitive psychology and the philosophy of cognitive science. For a good introduction to this tradition see Margolis and Laurence (Citation1999), and for a view of concepts very similar to my own see Millikan (Citation1998, Citation2000). This tradition may be contrasted against an equally rich philosophical tradition that takes concepts to be abstract entities. [2] Descriptivist views include Frege (Citation1892/1996), Russell (Citation1996), and Strawson (Citation1996). [3] The exodus from descriptivism was spurred in part by classic examples by Burge (Citation1979), Kripke (Citation1972), and Putnam (Citation1996). These include examples where people don't have in mind descriptions sufficient to pick out their referents uniquely (e.g., Kripke's Feynman case, Putnam's Twin Earth), and examples where the descriptions people do have in mind don't even fit their actual referents (e.g., Kripke's Gödel/Schmidt case, Burge's arthritis case). [4] Causal/Informational approaches include Boyd (Citation1988), Evans (Citation1973), Fodor (Citation1990), Kripke (Citation1972), and Rupert (Citation1999). [5] Teleo/Pragmatic semantic theories include Appiah (Citation1986), Blackburn (Citation2005), Dretske (Citation1988), James (Citation1907), Millikan (Citation1984), Papineau (Citation1987), Ramsey (Citation1931), and Whyte (Citation1990). [6] In a moment we'll see that "nay-saying" experimental philosophers have further called into question the reliability of some particular philosophical intuitions by showing that these intuitions vary across people and/or contexts. [7] Some contemporary philosophers intend to do just that, including Chalmers (Citation2002, Citation2004) and Lewis (Citation1984). [8] Philosophers have proposed "naturalized" analyses of many philosophical concepts, including knowledge (Kornblith, Citation2002; Quine, Citati