Advances In Experimental Philosophy Of Science

This volume gathers together leading philosophers of science and cognitive scientists from around the world to provide one of the first book-length studies of this important and emerging field. Specific topics considered include learning and the nature of scientific knowledge, the cognitive consequences of exposure to explanations, climate change, and mechanistic reasoning and abstraction. Chapters explore how experimental methods can be applied to questions about the nature of science and show how to fruitfully theorize about the nature and role of science with well-grounded empirical research. Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Science presents a new direction in the philosophical exploration of science and paves a path for those who might seek to pursue research in experimental philosophy of science.

The past decade has witnessed an exciting (and controversial) new approach to philosophy: Experimental philosophers aim to supplement, and perhaps to supplant, traditional philosophical approaches by employing empirical methods from the social sciences. In Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Mind, leading experimental philosophers apply these methods to questions about the nature of the mind, the self, consciousness, moral judgment, and concepts. By bringing empirical methods to bear on key issues, Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Mind pushes the debates forward, casting new insight on perennial problems. This is an essential resource for professors, graduate students, and advanced undergraduates interested in either philosophy of mind or the burgeoning field of experimental philosophy.

In recent years, developments in experimental philosophy have led many thinkers to reconsider their central assumptions and methods. It is not enough to speculate and introspect from the armchair—philosophers must subject their claims to scientific scrutiny, looking at evidence and in some cases conducting new empirical research. The Theory and Practice of Experimental Philosophy is an introduction and guide to the systematic collection and analysis of empirical data in academic philosophy. This book serves two purposes: first, it examines the theory behind “x-phi,” including its underlying motivations and the objections that have been leveled against it. Second, the book offers a practical guide for those interested in doing experimental philosophy, detailing how to design, implement, and analyze empirical studies. Thus, the book explains the reasoning behind x-phi and provides tools to help readers become experimental philosophers.

The past decade has witnessed an exciting (and controversial) new approach to philosophy: Experimental philosophers aim to supplement, and perhaps to supplant, traditional philosophical approaches by employing empirical methods from the social sciences. In Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Mind, leading experimental philosophers apply these methods to questions about the nature of the mind, the self, consciousness, moral judgment, and concepts. By bringing empirical methods to bear on key issues, Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Mind pushes the debates forward, casting new insight on perennial problems. This is an essential resource for professors, graduate students, and advanced undergraduates interested in either philosophy of mind or the burgeoning field of experimental philosophy.

Until recently, experimental philosophy has been associated with the questionnaire-based study of intuitions. This volume brings together established and emerging research leaders from several areas of experimental philosophy to explore how new empirical methods from the behavioural sciences and digital humanities can contribute to philosophical debates. Each chapter offers an accessible overview of these exciting innovations, demonstrating their application in a key area of philosophy and discussing their strengths and limitations. Methods covered include eye tracking, virtual reality technology, neuroimaging, statistical learning and experimental economics as well as corpus linguistics, visualisation techniques and data and text mining. The volume explores their use in moral philosophy and moral psychology, epistemology, philosophy of science, metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind and the history of ideas. Methodological Advances in Experimental Philosophy is essential reading for undergraduates, graduate students and researchers working in experimental philosophy.

"Introduces an experimental approach to philosophy of medicine, showcasing current empirical work and future research directions for the field"--

Advances in Experimental Moral Psychology brings together leading scholars in the field to provide fresh theoretical perspectives on research in philosophy and psychology. Reflecting a diverse and active field of study, contributors are drawn from across both subjects to pursue central questions concerning moral psychology. Covering a wide-ranging selection of arguments, issues and debates, topics includes the role of emotion in moral judgment (both at a general theoretical level and with regards to specific topics); the moral psychology behind political orientation; the nature and content of moral character and more higher-order questions concerning the status of morality itself. For philosophers and researchers in the social and behavioral science, this exciting new volume reveals the beneficial results of integrating these two disciplines and illustrates the promise of this experimental approach to moral psychology.

Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Free Will and Responsibility brings together leading researchers from psychology and philosophy to present new findings and ideas about human agency and moral responsibility. Their contributions reflect the growth of research in these areas over the past decade and highlight both the ways that philosophy can be relevant to empirical research and how empirical work can be relevant to philosophical investigations. Mixing new empirical work with the meta-philosophical and philosophical upshot of the latest research being done, chapters cover motivated cognition and free will beliefs, folk intuitions about manipulation and agency, mental control in assessments of responsibility, the importance of skilled decision making to free will judgments and the relationship between free will and substance dualism. Blending cutting-edge research from philosophy with methods from psychology, this collection is a compelling example of the value of interdisciplinary approaches, contributing to our understanding of the complex networks of attitudes, beliefs, and judgments that inform how we think about agency and responsibility.