?: can we really say that that experimental philosophy is actually a form of philosophy….
Take, for instance, the experiment that was carried out around the Trolley Problem in which test subjects were given the scenario of a group of children standing on a track just beyond a switch and a runaway trolley was coming at them. They were then told that they were witnessing this from a bridge and a fat man was standing beside them. They were then asked if they would throw the fat man over the bridge to change the switch and thereby divert the trolley to another track away from the children.
We see a similar situation/ ethical issue brought up by Jeremy Waldron in the latest issue of The Harvard Review of Philosophy, “What are Moral Absolutes Like”, called The Ticking Bomb issue in which the question of whether torture would be justified in a case where someone had information that could help find an atom bomb that could kill thousands.
The thing is, as ethical issues, both would be legitimate philosophical territory. However, when you, in the name of experimental philosophy, ask a selection of people how they would react in such situations, when you basically take a survey, and even if you note the different contexts or wordings under which people respond differently, isn’t that still just social science which involves psychology?
I am, of course, asking you to engage in a form of nit-picking in that, in the big picture, it really doesn’t matter. I mean call it whatever you want; in the bigger picture, it still provides us useful information about the human condition and situation.
But then nit-picking can be a productive form of philosophical play.
At the same time, I can’t help but feel that it’s just an expression of the inferiority complex philosophy seems to feel, as an armchair discipline, in the face of science -a notion I have to question given philosophy’s potential as troubleshooter of all aspects of culture.
To me, experimental philosophy would involve creatively inventing a metaphysical framework, and discovering what would follow if people thought and acted according to that framework. Trope theories come to mind, for instance. Seems to me what you’ve described is just a form of psychological inquiry.