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augusti 05, 2004
Experimentell filosofi
Experimentell filosofi är en ny forskningsgren där man försöker att testa filosofiska teorier med empiriska metoder.
Det finns en gruppblogg: Experimental Philosophy A blog dedicated to interdisciplinary research in legal theory, philosophy, and psychology som ägnas åt ämnet. En mer strukturerad referenslista kan man läsa i Dictionary Entry (där "Dictionary" hänvisar till Dictionary of Philosophy of Mind).
Presentationspaper: What Is Experimental Philosophy? (PDF) skriven av Joshua Knobe.
Since the earliest days of analytic philosophy, it has been a common practice to appeal to intuitions about particular cases. Typically, the philosopher presents a hypothetical situation and then makes a claim of the form: In this case, we would surely say.... This claim about people s intuitions then forms a part of an argument for some more general theory about the nature of our concepts or our use of language.
One puzzling aspect of this practice is that it so rarely makes use of standard empirical methods. Although philosophers quite frequently make claims about what people would ordinarily say, they rarely back up those claims by actually asking people and looking for patterns in their responses. In recent years, however, a number of philosophers have tried to put claims about intuitions to the test, using experimental methods to figure out what people really think about particular hypothetical cases. At times, the results have been extremely surprising.
Here I discuss applications of this new methodology to three areas of philosophy the philosophy of language, the theory of action, and the free will debate.
De där forskningsområdena "experimentell X" är spännande. Experimental Mathematics skrevs om för några månader sedan. Experimentell ekonomi var det forskningsområde som erkändes med Sveriges Riksbanks pris i ekonomisk vetenskap till Alfred Nobels minne 2002, då pristagarna var Daniel Kahneman och Vernon Smith. (Se även Att förutsäga framtiden i efterhand - hindsight bias/creeping determinism samt andra anteckningar i kategorin Kognitiva illusioner.)
Posted by hakank at augusti 5, 2004 07:14 FM Posted to Filosofi