fieldus

Appiah introduces the trend towards a more experimental approach to philosophy and uses the famous sense and reference debate to illustrate how this has been applied:

In one of the most famous arguments of postwar philosophy of language, Saul Kripke addressed a question that had long preoccupied philosophers: how do names refer to people or things? (The larger question here is: How does language get traction on reality?) In a theory that Bertrand Russell made canonical, a name is basically shorthand for a description that specifies the person or thing in question. Kripke was skeptical. He suggested that the way names come to refer to something is akin to baptism: once upon a time, someone or some group conferred the name on an object, and, through the causal chains of history, we borrow that original designation.

To support his case, Kripke offered a thought experiment:

Quote:

Suppose, he asked us to imagine, that Gödel’s theorem was actually the work of a fellow named Schmidt; it’s just that Gödel somehow got hold of the manuscript and thereafter was wrongly credited with its authorship. When those of us who know about “Gödel” only as the theorem’s author invoke that name, whom are we referring to?

According to Russell’s view of reference, we’re actually referring to Schmidt: “Gödel” is merely shorthand for the fellow who devised the famous theorem, and Schmidt is the creature who answers to that description. “But it seems to me that we are not,” Kripke declared. “We simply are not.”

To which experimentalists reply: What do you mean “we,” kemo sabe? Recently, a team of philosophers led by Machery came up with situations that had the same form as Kripke’s and presented them to two groups of undergraduates — one in New Jersey and another in Hong Kong. The Americans, it turned out, were significantly more likely to give the responses that Kripke took to be obvious; the Chinese students had intuitions that were consonant with the older theory of reference.Maybe this relates to the supposed individualism of Westerners; maybe their concern that we get Schmidt’s name right isn’t shared by the supposedly more group-minded East Asians. Whatever the explanation, it’s a discomforting result. “We simply are not”: well, that may be so at Princeton or Rutgers. On the other side of the planet, it might seem we are. What should philosophers make of that?

And Appiah’s conclusion?

X-phi helps keep us honest and enforces a useful modesty about how much weight to give one’s personal hunches, even when they’re shared by the guy in the next office. But — this is my own empirical observation — although experiments can illuminate philosophical arguments, they don’t settle them.

I guess it’s just a question of utility - I can imagine that the experimental approach might offer extremely banal results, if it isn’t deployed judiciously.

Imagine all the uninspired PhDs this might springboard!

Idea Lab - Philosophy - New York Times

Technorati Tags: appiah, philosophy, kripke,