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A Defence of Experimental Philosophy in Aesthetics

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A Defence of Experimental Philosophy in Aesthetics Inquiry An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy ISSN: 0020-174X (Print) 1502-3923 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/sinq20 A defence of experimental philosophy in aesthetics Clotilde Torregrossa To cite this article: Clotilde Torregrossa (2017): A defence of experimental philosophy in aesthetics, Inquiry, DOI: 10.1080/0020174X.2017.1385527 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0020174X.2017.1385527 Published online: 08 Oct 2017. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=sinq20 Download by: [2.126.27.182] Date: 09 October 2017, At: 00:16 INQUIRY, 2017 https://doi.org/10.1080/0020174X.2017.1385527 A defence of experimental philosophy in aesthetics Clotilde Torregrossa Department of Philosophy, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Scotland ABSTRACT Although experimental philosophy is now over a decade old, it has only recently been introduced to the domain of philosophical aesthetics. So why is there already a need to defend it? Because, as I argue in this paper, we can anticipate the three main types of objection generally addressed to experimental philosophy and show that none of them concern experimental philosophers in aesthetics. I begin with some general considerations about experimental philosophy and its, sometimes conflicting, characteristics. This framework is designed to help me situate the experimental practice in aesthetics within the general movement. I then present the objections and respond to them in turn. Their failure should convince aestheticians to embrace the practice early on and opponents of experimental philosophy to revise their usual objections before addressing them to experimental philosophers in aesthetics. ARTICLE HISTORY Received 8 March 2017; Accepted 21 August 2017 KEYWORDS Aesthetics; experimental philosophy; metaphilosophy; intuitions 1. Introduction In the last 15 years or so philosophers have witnessed, with mixed feelings, the Downloaded by [2.126.27.182] at 00:16 09 October 2017 steady rise of a new method for philosophy: experimental philosophy (hence- forth X-Phi). The recently published A Companion to Experimental Philosophy (Systsma and Buckwalter 2016) lists contributions to philosophy of action and free will, moral and political philosophy, philosophy of mind, epistemol- ogy, philosophy of language, metaphysics, philosophy of science, logic and reasoning and metaphilosophy. One omission is the contribution of X-Phi to aesthetics. Possibly, this is because the implementation of X-Phi in aesthetics postdates the development of the volume. Nonetheless it cannot be ignored, as is shown in Cova, Garcia, and Liao’s (2015) overview of the subject. CONTACT Clotilde Torregrossa [email protected] © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group C. TORREGROSSA 2 It is then fair to say that this movement has taken many different direc- tions since its birth. Thus, defining X-Phi in precise terms, encompassing its numerous forms, is a challenge. One seminal definition is Knobe’s: ‘exper- imental philosophy focuses on many of the same types of intuitions that have long been at the center of philosophical study, but it examines those intuitions using the methods associated with contemporary cognitive sci- ence – systematic experimentation and statistical analysis’ (2007, 81). This early definition clearly states that philosophical intuitions are X-Phi’s primary objects of investigation.1 But as the discussions in this paper will show, X-Phi in aesthetics does not fit this definition. Another important feature of the X-Phi movement has been its classifi- cation between two different types of programmes: negative and positive. The distinction itself is debated. In a post from 2011 on the Experimental Philosophy blog entitled ‘Are There Two Kinds of Experimental Philosophy?’, Nadelhoffer argues that the distinction mainly serves a historical purpose, as the few papers that existed in the early days of X-Phi required a relatively coarse-grained classification system to be easily identified by outsiders to the literature. Nevertheless, the distinction has been widely adopted and discussed in the X-Phi literature.2 The majority of the discussion, though, has surrounded the negative programme, for obvious reasons. Its goal loosely, has been to undermine traditional philosophy by showing that its meth- ods and practices, more often than not, rely on unjustified evidence. One observed strategy, for instance, has been to show that intuitions shared in philosophical community were in fact contrary to the intuitions of the folk or varied across cultures and gender.3 Thus philosophical intuitions became controversial when their purpose was precisely to provide uncontroversial evidence for certain claims. This would explain why most of the war between experimental philosophers and their opponents has raged over the negative Downloaded by [2.126.27.182] at 00:16 09 October 2017 programme. However, more recently, Knobe (2016) showed that out of more than 400 X-Phi papers published between 2009 and 2013, only 1.1% made the negative conclusion about philosophical intuitions. So maybe it is now safe to say that we should shift our attention towards the potentially positive contributions of X-Phi to armchair philosophy. However, we can do this while retaining the strength of X-Phi’s negative programme. Weinberg argues that X-Phi, whatever’ the programme, can still be relevant and dangerous: 1For a recent overview of the methodology of intuitions and its issues, see Weinberg (2016a). 2See Alexander, Mallon, and Weinberg (2010). 3The most recognized example of this is Weinberg, Nichols, and Stich (2001), although it has failed replication multiple times. INQUIRY 3 The threat of x‐phi is thus best understood more methodologically than episte- mologically – it is not aimed at anything like the potential for intuitions to confer justification or not, but rather at the prospects of a methodologically autono- mous approach to philosophy that relies substantively on intuitions in anything like the manner of current philosophical practice. (2016b, 72) Thus, the role of X-Phi is not simply to deny the evidence of philosophers, but more importantly to look for and provide the additional evidence nec- essary to complete certain philosophical claims. In this paper, I will discuss how X-Phi in aesthetics positions itself in the general debate about positive and negative debate and show that it instantiates something of Weinberg’s claim. That is, X-Phi in aesthetics has the potential to highlight the shortcom- ings of certain armchair theories, as well as to provide the complementary information to build the adequate theory. The final characteristic of X-Phi I wish to mention is another, more recent, distinction, which in certain ways overlaps with the distinction between negative and positive programmes. I am referring to a distinction between ‘broad’ and ‘narrow’ X-Phi. Rose and Danks (2013) formally introduce the dis- tinction and defend the former conception, but two entries from 2007 and 2012 on the subject can be found on Schwitzgebel’s blog, Splintered Mind. Schwitzgebel identifies intuition-based X-Phi, i.e. X-Phi as defined by Knobe, as narrow and not intuition-based empirical work with a view to inform phil- osophical theories as broad X-Phi. Rose and Danks are more condemning of narrow X-Phi, characterizing it as being exclusively concerned with the study of folk intuitions and guilty of ‘arbitrary disciplinary chauvinism’ (2013, 514). They favour broad X-Phi, as for them it is ‘simply an instantiation of the long tradition of philosophical naturalism – the view that empirical data are relevant to certain philosophical questions – coupled with actually conduct- ing some of the relevant experiments, as necessary’ (515). One might point Downloaded by [2.126.27.182] at 00:16 09 October 2017 out that under the broad conception of X-Phi, researchers in other disci- plines, like psychology, could earn the title of experimental philosophers. I will show that, on this spectrum, X-Phi in aesthetics is a particularly good instantiation of the broad conception. This is good news for aesthetics as it looks like the broad conception is taking over as the current practice of X-Phi. Sytsma and Livengood (2015) precisely set out to gather empirical data from both armchair and experimental philosophers about their con- ception of X-Phi. On average, everyone neither agreed nor disagreed that X-Phi must be intuition-based, and they especially tended to disagree that X-Phi must be folk intuition-based. Moreover, the experimental philosophers were less likely to adopt this narrow conception. This evidence bodes well for X-Phi in aesthetics. C. TORREGROSSA 4 What might become clear now is that X-Phi is far from being a unified practice with unified characteristics. We can observe certain departures from the original conception of X-Phi as well as interesting developments in specific areas of application. And given that the application of X-Phi in aesthetics is particularly recent, there are reasons to believe that what we will find there will instantiate the most contemporary forms of the experimental practice. The point of this paper is precisely to provide this contemporary treatment for X-Phi in aesthetics. 2. The objections I will now introduce what I take to be the three main strands of objection usually addressed to experimental philosophers, in order of strength. The most problematic is the objection that the methods of traditional philosophy and the methods of X-Phi are incompatible, the former being ‘from the armchair’ and the latter experimental. This incompatibility entails that whatever information X-Phi brings to a philosophical debate will be irrelevant. Tied in with this type of argument is an assumption about philo- sophical progress. If an opponent of X-Phi makes such an argument, it must be because she wants to preserve, if not all, at least some of the methods of armchair philosophy.
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