LANCASTER, Pa. - Thomas Nadelhoffer, assistant professor of philosophy at Dickinson College, will discuss "Experimental Philosophy: A House Divided" on Thursday, March 20 at 4:30 p.m. in Stager Hall 114. The talk is part of a philosophy/scientific and philosophical study of the mind colloquium and is free and open to the public.
Experimental philosophy is the name for a recent movement whose participants use the methods of experimental psychology to probe the way people make judgments that bear on debates in philosophy. Although the movement has a name, it includes a variety of projects driven by different interests, assumptions, and goals. All of this work shares a commitment to using controlled and systematic experiments to explore people’s intuitions and conceptual usage and to examining how the results of such experiments bear on traditional philosophical debates. However, while some experimental philosophers use data about ordinary intuitions to support philosophical theories, others use such data to better understand the psychological mechanisms that generate such intuitions, while still others gather such data to show that some intuitions may be too unreliable to support philosophical theories in the first place. My goal in this talk will be flesh out the details concerning the growing tension that exists within experimental philosophy. Nadelhoffer is one of the leading figures in the growing experimental philosophy movement. His research is primarily in the philosophy of law, philosophy of mind and action, and moral psychology. Nadelhoffer has published articles in Analysis, Journal of Consciousness Studies, Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Mind and Language, Philosophical Explorations, Philosophical Psychology, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, and elsewhere.
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