The Fourfold Route to Empirical Enlightenment: Experimental Philosophy’s Adolescence and the Changing Body of Work Cover Image

The Fourfold Route to Empirical Enlightenment: Experimental Philosophy’s Adolescence and the Changing Body of Work
The Fourfold Route to Empirical Enlightenment: Experimental Philosophy’s Adolescence and the Changing Body of Work

Author(s): Robert Barnard, Joseph Ulatowski, Jonathan Weinberg
Subject(s): Philosophy
Published by: Uniwersytet Warszawski - Wydział Filozofii i Socjologii, Instytut Filozofii
Keywords: metaphilosophy; experimental philosophy; methodology; history of analytic philosophy; empirical philosophy; ordinary language philosophy;Arne Naess; J. L. Austin;

Summary/Abstract: The time has come to consider whether experimental philosophy’s (“x-phi”) early arguments, debates, and conceptual frameworks, that may have worn well in its early days, fit with the diverse range of projects undertaken by experimental philosophers. Our aim is to propose a novel taxonomy for x-phi that identifies four paths from empirical findings to philosophical consequences, which we call the “fourfold route.” We show how this taxonomy can be fruitfully applied even at what one might have taken to be the furthest edges of possible applications of x-phi in metaphysics and formal philosophy. Ultimately, the fourfold route helps us understand a different kind of empirical fact: the development of x-phi itself.

  • Issue Year: 29/2021
  • Issue No: 2 (114)
  • Page Range: 77-113
  • Page Count: 37
  • Language: English