Editorial: Formal epistemology meets experimental philosophy

Abstract

In the past few years, there has been an increasing tendency in the application of formal and experimentalmethods to tackle philosophical issues.Weverymuch approve of this trend,whichweviewas part and parcel of the recent renewal of “scientific philosophy”: In our mind, the aim of a scientifically oriented philosophy is to adopt formal and experimental methods to address philosophical questions. A distinguishing feature of contemporary scientific philosophy is that the use of formal and experimental methods is not confined to areas such as the philosophy of science, of mathematics, or of physics. Quite the contrary: This research program applies its broad toolkit of formal and experimental practices to a very large range of philosophical areas. For instance, in the philosophy of cognitive science, the development ofmathematicalmodels of concepts representation has proved to be an innovative way to compare normative theories against empirical results. In the philosophy of economics, agent-based models have been used to explore the notion of causality used in economics. More generally, different areas of philosophy—from the philosophy of language to the philosophy of cognitive science, and from ethics to the philosophy of economics—have become increasingly scientific and characterized by a highly interdisciplinary approach. In tandem with this methodological turn, the dispute about whether philosophy should appeal to formal or experimental methods has made a comeback: Experimental philosophers defend the use of empirical methods as a means of exploring