Psychology and Experimental Philosophy

Review of Philosophy and Psychology 1(2-3), 2010

Edouard Machery, Tania Lombrozo & Joshua Knobe (eds.)

This double issue is forthcoming in the
Review of Philosophy and Psychology [ISSN 1878-5158]
the new series of the ERP published by Springer.

Guest authors:

• John Darley and Geoffrey Goodwin, Princeton University
• Sean Kelly, Harvard University
• Dan Osherson, Princeton University

Over the last decade, philosophers have started using experimental and quasi-experimental methods to obtain data that are relevant for philosophical controversies. Surprising results have been obtained for a large range of topics, including intuitions about reference, intuitions about free will and responsibility, and the relation between judgments of causation and moral judgments. Meanwhile, psychologists are increasingly paying attention to aspects of our folk theories that directly bear on philosophy, such as the nature of folk explanation, the nature of causal judgments, the processes underlying moral judgments, the folk concept of race, and the nature of imagination. This movement, unified by a common desire to apply experimental methods to philosophical issues, is known as “experimental philosophy.”

The goal of this special issue of the EUROPEAN REVIEW OF PHILOSOPHY is to bring together contributions from psychologists and philosophers that are inspired by this new approach to philosophy. We welcome articles applying experimental methods to philosophically-relevant topics. We particularly welcome articles applying these methods to issues that have been underrepresented in experimental philosophy, such as those in philosophy of science or aesthetics, and from those who are new to experimental philosophy. We also welcome critical discussions of experimental philosophy.

Submissions concerning the following foundational questions about psychology and experimental psychology are especially encouraged:

• What can experimental data show about the ordinary understanding of consciousness? Or of aesthetics? Or of explanation? Or of some new area that experimentalists have not even begun to examine? We would be most interested either in papers that report new experimental data or in papers that examine the implications of results that have already been reported elsewhere.
• What should be the role of experimentation in philosophy, and in particular how should descriptive facts constrain normative theories?
• Are there new objections to the project of experimental philosophy and how sound are the existing objections to experimental philosophy?
• What is the relationship between experimental philosophy and related research programs, such as cognitive psychology and Quinean naturalism?