Here. The article is written by a professional philosopher (Prof. Justin Smith, of Concordia University), and so it engages the Nichols & Knobe and Appiah volumes with a level of sophistication that substantially outstrips other popular media engagements with x-phi, and Prof. Smith's historical points are, I think, particularly interesting & well-taken on the whole.
Nonetheless, there are a number of spots where I think he commits some of the common mistakes I see in people writing about x-phi. A major example of a common error in approaching x-phi is his taking its practitioners to be claiming to offer something vastly more than they actually do claim, and then, of course, pointing out that x-phi does not live up to its (misattributed) promises. Here is one selection:
"X-phi is packaged as revolutionary, while its defenders seem eager to
offer constant reassurances of its “continuity with traditional
philosophy.” One cannot help but think of the teenager who cuts loose a
bit, perhaps sporting the insignias of a radical party, or the symbols
of “Eastern” spirituality, but never going so far as to call his right
to the family inheritance into doubt. X-phi wants to stay within the
comfortable bounds of mainstream Anglo-American philosophy, while also
claiming to subvert many of its basic principles. It offers assurances
of its continuity with traditional (i.e., 20th-century Anglophone)
philosophy, while at the same time insisting upon its newness.
This is offered as complaint -- there is no other way to take the rather silly & insulting analogy of the second sentence quoted -- but is there actually any real tension here, or even a prima facie appearance of one? I mean, yes, it's true: some of the core commitments of x-phi are, in fact, pretty substantially at odds with aspects of current mainstream philosophical practice, even while many others are entirely consonant with other aspects. Were we somehow to think that philosophy as it stands at the early 21st century is a seamless unity, to be taken or rejected only as a whole? Surely not. There's only a tension here if one (mis)reads experimental philosophers as trying to do something different, and far more radical, than what they explicitly claim to be doing.
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