12.13.07
Experimental philosophy
The New New Philosophy
It could be that this will lead to something, but the suspicious must be that philosophy in decline wishes to ape scientism. What it should be doing is exposing it.
It’s part of a recent movement known as “experimental philosophy,” which has rudely challenged the way professional philosophers like to think of themselves. Not only are philosophers unaccustomed to gathering data; many have also come to define themselves by their disinclination to do so. The professional bailiwick we’ve staked out is the empyrean of pure thought. Colleagues in biology have P.C.R. machines to run and microscope slides to dye; political scientists have demographic trends to crunch; psychologists have their rats and mazes. We philosophers wave them on with kindly looks. We know the experimental sciences are terribly important, but the role we prefer is that of the Catholic priest presiding at a wedding, confident that his support for the practice carries all the more weight for being entirely theoretical. Philosophers don’t observe; we don’t experiment; we don’t measure; and we don’t count. We reflect. We love nothing more than our “thought experiments,” but the key word there is thought. As the president of one of philosophy’s more illustrious professional associations, the Aristotelian Society, said a few years ago, “If anything can be pursued in an armchair, philosophy can.”
Alf Janszoon said,
May 15, 2008 at 1:28 pm
The question is: do philosophers need to be scientists (specialists) beside being philosophers? Can philosophers follow the example of Aristotle one of the first empirical scientists cum philosophers? Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was philosopher and paleoanthropologist. Philosophers don’t need to be empirical scientists although it would help. They can use (with the appropriate amount of gratitude) the work of the scientists. For example: Ortega y Gasset used to speculate about the difference between man and monkeys he observed in the Retirio. Nowadays philosophers can use the results of comparative cognitivists, neurologists etc. If Ortega had lived today he would have studied “From Monkey Brain To Human Brain : A Fyssen Foundation Symposium” for example. The task of the philosopher is confronting reality in the form of scientific results, not in producing empty abstractions.