Philosophical Conceptual Analysis as an Experimental Method

Abstract

Philosophical conceptual analysis is an experimental method. Focusing on this helps to justify it from the skepticism of experimental philosophers who follow Weinberg, Nichols & Stich (2001). To explore the experimental aspect of philosophical conceptual analysis, I consider a simpler instance of the same activity: everyday linguistic interpretation. I argue that this, too, is experimental in nature. And in both conceptual analysis and linguistic interpretation, the intuitions considered problematic by experimental philosophers are necessary but epistemically irrelevant. They are like variables introduced into mathematical proofs which drop out before the solution. Or better, they are like the hypotheses that drive science, which do not themselves need to be true. In other words, it does not matter whether or not intuitions are accurate as descriptions of the natural kinds that undergird philosophical concepts; the aims of conceptual analysis can still be met. Experimental philosophers have called into question the use of intuitions in philosophical conceptual analysis, which is claimed to be a cornerstone of traditional philosophical methodology. They argue that intuitions about philosophical concepts are unreliable because we cannot calibrate them against the world. What this or that group of people think of justice, is not necessarily what justice is. We need a way for conceptual analysis to make contact with the object of study—and bringing our culturally-indoctrinated and unstable intuitions into reWective equilibrium is not the way. Philosophy, it is claimed, is most reliable when it operates like science: collecting empirical data, testing hypotheses, and formalizing empirical generalities into mathematical relationships. Perhaps conceptual analysis should be left behind.