Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Sorell, Tom

Titel

Experimental philosophy and the history of philosophy

Ist Teil von

• British journal for the history of philosophy, 2018-09, Vol.26 (5), p.829-849

Ort / Verlag

Routledge

Erscheinungsjahr

2018

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Taylor & Francis Journals Auto-Holdings Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Contemporary experimental philosophers sometimes use versions of an argument from the history of philosophy to defend the claim that what they do is philosophy. Although experimental philosophers conduct surveys and carry out what appear to be experiments in psychology, making them methodologically different from most analytic philosophers working today, techniques like theirs were not out of the ordinary in the philosophy of the past, early modern philosophy in particular. Or so some of them (Knobe, Nichols, Sytsma and Livengood) argue. This paper disputes the argument, citing important differences between early modern philosopher-scientists - Descartes, Hobbes and Boyle - and their supposed modern counterparts. Although there is some continuity between early modern philosopher-scientists and the contemporary experimentalists, it is mostly a continuity of interest in empirically informed philosophy, not a distinctively experimental philosophy.