Anthony Appiah's Idea Lab article about experimental philosophy has received lots of attention. It's an exciting trend in philosophy--a revitalized empiricism--and Appiah describes some of the interesting experiments from Knobe, Machery and others. What I like most about the x-phi movement is that it highlights, as serious empiricism should do, the character and credibility of intuitions. Ordinary language philosophy offered up claims about what ordinary intuitions were, but it assumed an authority on these matters that seems to me to be undeserved. Armchair introspection can only go so far. And asking philosophical colleagues what they think a term means risks the problems of small samples biased toward a narrow tradition. X-phi does the actual work by digging more deeply into the cognitive sciences to uncover the relevant intuitions. Of course, one still has to decide which intuitions are relevant and to attend to what connects intuitions to theory and explanation. Intuitions may shift as theorizing becomes more sophisticated and available (philosophical and pre-philosophical intuitions frequently differ); and theories change as they confront new intuitions about new problems.

Surprisingly, I haven't seen much comment on Appiah's most critical comment.

The best work in experimental philosophy would be valuable and suggestive even if it skipped the actual experiments. ("It would be natural to say," Knobe might have written, "that the chairman in one situation had harmed the environment intentionally, whereas. . . .") X-phi helps keep us honest and enforces a useful modesty about how much weight to give one's personal hunches, even when they're shared by the guy in the next office. But -- this is my own empirical observation -- although experiments can illuminate philosophical arguments, they don't settle them.

I don't see where skipping the actual experiments preserves what's novel about experimental philosophy. That's the point, isn't it? Empirical access to intuitions (as opposed to introspective access alone) is a valuable part of the philosophical enterprise of solving problems, contributing more than mere illumination. No one denies there's got to be some theorizing regarding the data one finds--but one has to collect data accurately and carefully. Good theorizing depends on it. I must admit, it does seem that most of the attention in the press has been directed at the empirical collection of intuitive data and less attention placed on what one does with the data (and how the data relate to philosophical theory). But by my lights, what settles philosophical arguments is attention to both intuition and argument.

Idea Lab - Philosophy - New York Times

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