Free to Be Experimental Philosophy

“But is this actually philosophy?” Ethan Landes (Eindhoven University of Technology) is tired of experimental philosophers being asked The Question. And he’s tired of experimental philosophers “appeasing” those who ask it by “dressing up experimental scholarship up as relevant to armchair analytic philosophy.” Part of the cover of the book adaptation of “Free to Be… You and Me” (1974) He writes: Every experimental philosopher has tons of practice doing this. It is how we answer The Question in Q&As. It is how we write grant applications. It is how we pitch ourselves in cover letters for jobs: “Oh sure, if you hire me, I will be conducting empirical research, but actually this is super important to existing debates in philosophy because x, y, and z”. This is the strategy experimental philosophers advise each other to use. It is the strategy I advise others to use. This sort of appeasement is, by and large, what we see in the academic literature on experimental philosophy. Arguments for…