Further thoughts on Pragmatist Philosophy and Experimental Philosophy

Following up on some earlier thoughts about Appiah’s book about X-Phi where I made the case that the pragmatists and the experimentalists (x-phi-ers) have more in common than has thus far been explored.  Now I want to air a point of possible divergence.  The divergence, in short, is that experimental philosophy wants to use experiment to help resolve certain pressing philosophical issues whereas pragmatist philosophy presses experiment into service for two somewhat different reasons: a) to help resolve pressing social-cultural problems, b) to help transform philosophy itself so that it may take these more socially-culturally attuned problems as its subject matter.

Pragmatism Returns to Princeton: Appiah’s New Book

Below is a working rough draft of a review essay I am writing on Appiah’s new Experiments in Ethics (Harvard UP, 2008). As my title here suggests, I discern more than just a shade of pragmatism in Appiah’s ‘experimental philosophy’. I’ve thought for awhile now that Appiah was headed toward a kind of pragmatism, for instance in his The Ethics of Identity (Princeton UP, 2005). The point though is not to show that James, Dewey, and Rorty ‘got there first’ but rather to show how the pragmatists can help the experimentalists achieve the sort of interdisciplinary philosophical practice they seem to be aiming for. The piece is a little long (3000 words) so you may just want to skim it.