Experimental Turn in Philosophy

Experimental philosophy is not a distinct subfield but a radical methodological shift that synthesizes traditional philosophical analysis with empirical methods from cognitive science. This approach allows philosophers to participate in all research stages, from modeling phenomena to designing experiments and interpreting results, making it applicable across epistemology, ontology, logic, and philosophy of language. The authors highlight (neuro)phenomenology as particularly fruitful because its focus on subjective experience aligns methodologically with natural sciences. The paper introduces a special journal issue and provides an overview of its studies.

Study at a glance

Abstract

The research serves as an introduction to experimental philosophy and introduces a special journal issue on this topic. We trace a brief history of experimental philosophy and consider different variants of its interpretation. Building upon this, we propose the interpretation of experimental philosophy not as a particular direction or stage in the development of philosophical thought but rather as a radical change in the method of philosophical inquiries, involving the synthesis of traditional philosophical research methods and methodology of empirical (primarily cognitive) science to solve philosophical problems. An important characteristic feature of experimental philosophy, so defined, is its interdisciplinarity. The philosopher does not just use the results of empirical research but can participate in research at all stages, starting with constructing a model of the phenomenon or process under study and hypothesizing, consistently going through the selection of stimulus material and the design of the experiment towards the interpretation of the results and their philosophical understanding. This interpretation of experimental philosophy opens up the possibility of experimental philosophical research in any field, from epistemology or ontology to logic and philosophy of language, without a far-fetched division into analytical and experimental versions. At the same time, the authors emphasize the remarkable fruitfulness of (neuro)phenomenology, which, due to its appeal to direct subjective experience, turns out to be methodologically close to the natural sciences. The final part provides a brief overview of the studies in the thematic issue.