Thanks for Your Patience...

I just wanted to briefly follow up on a promissory note that I issued in one of the comment threads last week.  At the time, I stated that I would post something soon about some of the criticisms that were put forward at the recent SPP workshop.  I still plan to do so.  For now, both Brian Scholl and Ron Mallon have kindly agreed to share their presentations with the readers of the blog.  Once I have the presentations from each of them, I will post them along with links to some of the papers by Sosa that contain critical commentary on the methods we use and the conclusions we try to draw.  Michael Devitt also provided some critical remarks at the very end of the workshop that I will briefly (and likely incompetently!) summarize for the purposes of discussion.  In the meantime, hold fast!  I haven't forgotten the importance of collectively thinking more carefully about some of the issues that arose.  Hopefully, once everyone has had the opportunity to read through the salient material/remarks, we can have a productive discussion concerning the upsides and downsides of experimental philosophy!  For now, have fun participating in Eddy's thread on intuitions!

Comments

[Alex Leibowitz]

I don't get experimental philosophy. Why should I care what other people's intuitions are? I only care about my intuitions. And I only care about my intuitions insofar as they're true. And I only care about them insofar as they're true insofar as they're infallible. Are there "experimental philosophers" who are also rationalists about intuition?

[jonathan weinberg]

Alex, given those views, I think that experimental philosophy should be the least of your worries -- you should well be asking why you should care about a very large portion of what goes on in analytic epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of language....

I'm also not sure how much you pack into the term "rationalism about intuition". If it's just enough to endorse the existence of a priori justification for some intuitions, then I would count as being such a rationalist. But your mention of infallibility makes me think that you have something ... meatier, in mind.

[Jesse]

Hasn't "experimental" philosophy existed for a very long time? They call it physics, no?

[Alex Leibowitz]

Hmm -- well I don't like a great deal of analytic philosophy. But I am interested in philosophy.

I don't like the idea of fallible justification. I know it's important to allow for it, but I think it obscures the connection between justification and truth.