Experimental philosophy is not a new philosophy

In the past ten years, experimental philosophy has risen rapidly and has become a new hot topic that the domestic philosophy community has been concerned. Among them, many scholars were "ecstatic" about this, so they boldly asserted that "experimental philosophy foreshadows a new philosophical change", or claims that "philosophical experiments are becoming a new method that affects contemporary philosophy." They basically believe that experimental philosophy is a new way of doing philosophy that is obviously different from traditional philosophy. There is a prerequisite behind this view: traditional philosophy is a handrail chair philosophy that is sitting on the way. Except for philosophy demonstrations and conceptual speculation, it does not involve any experimental methods to test philosophical claims. This view ignores the complexity and richness of the philosophy itself. This article intends to demonstrate the experimental philosophy from the perspective of the history of philosophy is not a new philosophy. It has always been an important part of traditional philosophy.

Wide understanding of experimental philosophy

At present, the academic circles are basically used to studying the experimental philosophy back to the research of scholars such as J. Knobe, S. Nichols, and S. Stich. These studies are particularly noticeable in the early 21st century. They mainly study the intuition judgment of general people on philosophical propositions or philosophical cases through questionnaires, in order to obtain a folk understanding that is different from philosophers' intuition, and then obtain philosophy inspiration from related propositions inspiration Essence At the same time, this experimental method can also be used to study the psychological model and cognitive mechanism of related intuition. The latter allows Nobel to directly attribute experimental philosophy as cognitive science. This is easy to make people mistakenly believe that all experimental philosophy belongs to the research field of "cognitive science". In fact, many experimental philosophical research has nothing to do with cognitive science.

However, this is a quite narrow experimental philosophy. In a broad sense, experimental philosophy is not a research field. On the contrary, it should be appropriately understood as a philosophical method, a way to do philosophy, no matter what its theme or field is. Experimental philosophy mainly clarifies or help answer philosophy questions through experimental methods. In other words, experimental philosophers have a basic methodology commitment -empirical commitment. It neither explains what these experiments are, nor what the purpose of the philosophy of research must be. Therefore, it is not limited to the method used by the current experimental philosophy -questionnaire survey method, nor is it limited to studying people's intuition, let alone people's intuition about philosophy experiments. For example, in addition to the questionnaire survey method, other new methods such as qualitative interviews, computer simulation, corpus analysis have been developed recently. However, the expansion of the method has not changed the standard image of experimental philosophy: experimental philosophy is an empirical study of the intuition of philosophy cases. Only when you return to the history of philosophy can you discover the long tradition of experimental philosophy, and then completely change the current stereotype.

Aristotle's experimental philosophy

Experimental philosophy can be traced back to the ancient Greek period. At that time, philosophers were found to achieve systematic experience to achieve philosophical purposes. Aristotle provides a quite obvious example. The ancient philosopher made a philosophical conclusion based on the empirical survey of the system in his philosophical research. Darwin once wrote in a letter to his friends: "Lin Nai and Ju Wei Ye have always been my two gods ... but they are just a elementary school student in Aristotle's eyes." This sentence helps Remind us to pay attention to the great achievements of Aristotle in biology. In fact, about one -fifth of Aristotle's existing works are related to biology, including more than 500 natural species that impressive knowledge. Obviously, these biological works and related knowledge need to rely on the empirical research of the system. However, Aristotle did not leave us too many detailed research descriptions, such as detailed records of experimental research. But we still have enough evidence that he does depend on animal anatomy, as well as testimony of beekeeper, fishermen and divers closely related to animals. Therefore, Aristotle is a great experimental philosopher.

But some people may refute: we do not know what substantial connection between Aristotle's biological research and its philosophical exploration; maybe he is just a scholar -sometimes wearing biologists' hats, sometimes sometimes Wear the hat of a philosopher (and many other hats). The problem of this refutation is that it failed to capture the close connection between Aristotle's biology research and its philosophical thoughts, so that such a vague distinction was appeared. In fact, Aristotle's biology and its philosophy have a deep connection. Greni (M.Grene) and D. Depew correctly pointed out: "When the core philosophy issues that did not see him (Aristotle) ​​were closely related to his biology interest, one It is difficult for people to understand their works. "J. Lennox also believes:" The theoretical method of the relationship between the body and the soul in the "On the Soul" is There is an important connection between. "Therefore, Aristotle's method of engaging in and relying on systematic biological research to obtain philosophical conclusions is completely belonging to the category of experimental philosophy.

Early modern experimental philosophy

In the early days, especially in the middle of the 17th century, the experimental method really began to flourish in Western philosophy. The so -called "early modern experimental philosophy" is just like contemporary experimental philosophy. It is a extensive movement that avoids the exploration of speculative philosophy, especially in the field of natural philosophy. It emphasizes any natural philosophy that is not based on observation and experiments, especially the "assumptions" formed by not resorting to experience should be rejected because they are the historical roots of fallacy. The strong control of these studies against schools eventually affects the fields of medicine, moral philosophy and aesthetics. Like the early modern experimental philosophy, an important factor behind the rejuvenation of the contemporary experimental philosophy is the dissatisfaction of the accidental appeal of the philosopher's own intuition. These intuitions are often considered widely shared and considered highly reliable. But there are important differences between the two. On the one hand, the ambitions of early experimental philosophy are even more ambitious, trying to regard themselves as a common method of studying nature, and the attitude of contemporary experimental philosophy is more gentle, focusing on people's intuitive understanding of various philosophical propositions. On the other hand, early experimental philosophy generally believes that experimental philosophy should be guided by the experience methods of bacon, but with the deepening of scientific understanding and the complexity of scientific methods, experiments are becoming more professional. This allows contemporary experimental philosophy to have a set of complex, powerful and tested methodological practice principles, and at the same time, it can also learn from the scientific knowledge of various industries. Descartes is often depicted as an armchair philosopher in this period, but he is also an experimental philosopher. If we only pay attention to Descartes' contemplation and common doubts, we may think that he is anti -experimental because its method exclude any experience in knowledge. But in fact, Descartes' experiments and scientific work are an important part of its philosophical research. In "Optics", Descartes used experimental methods during the interpretation of visual perception. For example, Descartes believes that although the images in the mind do not have to be similar to the perceived things, they still print very perfect images behind our eyes. To prove this, he subsequently described the process of understanding the eyes of those who had just died, or the process of dissecting cattle and other large animals. Descartes believes that this experiment plays a key role in clarifying the visual process and has become part of its philosophical treatment of perception.

The short -term silence of experimental philosophy and contemporary revival

Starting from the end of the 19th century, short -term silence began to have experimental philosophy. There are at least two reasons for this phenomenon: on the one hand, looking at the history of philosophy since modern times, as science continues to break away from the philosophy mother and gradually move towards professionalism, the field of using experimental methods in philosophy becomes increasingly narrow. On the other hand, analyzing the rise of philosophy also prompted philosophers to eliminate any remaining empirical work from mainstream philosophy. Although some philosophers (such as Pierce, James, Bergson, etc.) use experimental methods to make progress in emerging psychology, analyzing the overwhelming impact of philosophy has made the eyes of most philosophers turn to language, body theory, and mathematical foundation. Waiting for the direction. Therefore, compared with experience or experimental methods, conceptual analysis and formal reasoning methods occupy the mainstream of philosophy. It can be said that this effect has continued until the contemporary. But it is important to realize that empirical work has never completely disappeared from philosophy. In addition to the psychology mentioned earlier, philosophical research is still full of many unproper experimental activities. Many philosophers conduct experiments on various philosophical themes, including aesthetics, beliefs and knowledge, happiness, logic, memory, and the vertical effects of moral argumentation to students, and so on.

The label "experimental philosophy" was almost forgotten throughout the 20th century. It was not until the beginning of the 21st century that a group of new researchers began to accept this term, but very little about its previous use and its tradition. The new experimental philosophy is mainly opened by several pioneering papers by Nino, Nicars, and Stek. The research themes include cross -cultural differences of cognitive intuition, intentional intuition of the introduction of side effects, and the introduction of side effects. The intuition of free will, etc., has formed a unique field of current philosophical research, which has attracted the attention and joining of many scholars. But we should not permanently understand this kind of forgetting or narrow understanding of experimental philosophy; on the contrary, we should admit that contemporary experimental philosophy is not a new philosophy.

(This article is the results of the Renmin University of China in 2022, the results of the cultivation of talents of innovative talents)

(Author Unit: Academy of Philosophy of Renmin University of China)

Source: China Social Science Network-Journal of Social Sciences of China

Author: Peng Jiafeng

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