Experimental philosophy and the method of cases

Abstract

In this paper, we first briefly survey the main responses to the challenge that experimental philosophy poses to the method of cases, given the common assumption that the latter is crucially based on intuitive judgments about cases. Second, we discuss two of the most popular responses in more detail: the expertise defense and the mischaracterization objection. Our take on the expertise defense is that the available empirical data do not support the claim that professional philosophers enjoy relevant expertise in their intuitive judgments about cases. In contrast, the mischaracterization objection seems considerably more promising than its largely negative reception has suggested. We argue that the burden of proof is thus on philosophers who still hold that the method of cases crucially relies on intuitive judgments about cases. Finally, we discuss whether conceptual engineering provides an alternative to the method of cases in light of the challenge from experimental philosophy. We argue that this is not clearly the case, because conceptual engineering also requires descriptive information about the concepts it aims to improve. However, its primarily normative perspective on our concepts makes it largely orthogonal to the challenge from experimental philosophy, and it can also benefit from the empirical methods of the latter.

Philosophical Expertise Put to the Test

“…The effect sizes measured in this study were mostly small or moderate, quite in keeping with results produced by experimental philosophy ]. Some critics of the armchair and of the expertise defence have argued that philosophical expertise -if it existed -would have to be shown to be as pronounced as in other fields of expertise, for example playing chess [Weinberg et al 2010;Horvath and Koch forthcoming]. Those critics may not be swayed by our results.…”

Folk Intuitions about Reference Change and the Causal Theory of Reference

“…Whereas a majority think that case judgments are usually based on intuitions, some claim that they are instead based on arguments (cf. Cappelen 2012;Deutsch 2015;Horvath & Koch 2021). We will not delve into this large metaphilosophical debate here.…”

Reflective reasoning & philosophy

“…There is at least one empirical obstacle for such a broad normative appeal to reflection: it is not obvious how dispositions to overcome faulty impulses about basic mathematical and logical questions entail or even imply normatively superior reasoning in higher‐order domains such as academic philosophy. This challenge to the appeal to reflection resembles a challenge to the appeal to expert intuition (Clarke, 2013; Horvath & Koch, 2021; Machery, 2017, Chapter 5; Nado, 2014; Weinberg et al., 2010). Specifically, appeals to reflection tests still lack an empirically adequate account of how someone's reflection about contrived questions about bats and balls shows that their philosophical beliefs have also benefitted from reflection (De Neys, 2020).…”