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This chapter deals with experimental philosophy, as represented in Gilbert on magnetism, Hobbes on the air pump, and Newton on the production of the spectrum. It is shown that experimental philosophy differs from mechanism in quite radical ways. In particular, it has explanatory success but in apparently very localized domains, and it construes causation not in terms of underlying causes but in terms of causes acting at the same level. Its difference from mechanism is manifest in the contrast between Descartes' and Newton's accounts of the production of the spectrum: Descartes provides a fully geometrical account of the separation of coloured rays, but then shifts into a different register, a qualitative and speculative one in attempting to provide a micro-corpuscularian account of the physical basis of colour production; Newton manages to account for the spectrum without leaving the phenomenal geometricized level, eschewing any recourse to ‘underlying’ causes.

Robert Boyle was the chief apologist of the 17th century for the corpuscularian or mechanical philosophy. He was also a pious, though doubting and tormented Christian, and his adoption of a semi-Epicurean ontology and his curiosity-driven experimentation with substances rich in sensory qualities caused him no little psychological conflict. His belief in the guiding hand of providence and in a future life were undermined by his commitment to the laws of nature and his difficulty in imagining what life in heaven would actually come to. This chapter discusses Boyle's theory of nature, his ambivalent relationship to the experimental life, and the philosophical strategies he employed to try to reconcile his intellectual conflicts and overcome his religious doubts.

The chapter explores the development of the thought of John Locke. It begins with his early medical concerns, showing how these became connected with the issue of the standing of ‘experimental natural philosophy’. The most comprehensive statement of the philosophy to which Locke was opposed was that of Nicolas Malebranche, and Locke's mature views can be seen as a response to Malebranche. The reading offered brings to light an understanding of empiricism as a successor to, and philosophical refinement of, seventeenth‐century ‘experimental’ natural philosophy, something which is intimately tied up with natural‐philosophical practice, and is quite distinct from the speculative epistemology to which it is reduced in the ‘rationalism/empiricism’ debates.

Experimental philosophers are right in thinking that if philosophers rely on intuitions as evidence, then we should attempt to find out whether philosophers’ intuitions are reliable, widely shared and subject to biases. It has, however, already been shown that philosophers do not in fact rely on intuitions. It follows that the experimental-philosophy research program of investigating people’s intuitions about cases (and the factors to which they are sensitive) is irrelevant to philosophical theorizing. Negative experimental philosophy attacks a practice that doesn’t exist. Positive experimental philosophers attempt to support a practice that doesn’t exist. When we try reworking the experimentalist’s challenge without mentioning ‘intuitions’ it collapses into either a general skepticism about judgment or the unsurprising claim that our judgments about difficult issues are less reliable than our judgments about the easier ones. Because it has been argued that philosophy can do without intuitions, this includes the intuitions of philosophers or so-called experts as much as the folk.

Moral and political philosophers commonly appeal to moral “intuitions” at crucial points in their reasoning. This chapter considers recent challenges to this practice—here referred to as “the Method”—based in empirical studies of moral intuitions. It contends that such studies do not justify radical or revisionary conclusions about the Method. A method is aimed at achieving certain goals. The key issue is the nature of the goals in relation to which the Method is to be evaluated. This chapter argues that the relevant goal is not the “realist goal” of discovering the truth about moral and political matters. The central point is that, the chapter argues, the systematic philosophical study of moral and political questions would be worthwhile even if it turned out that moral realism cannot be vindicated or that the Method cannot be vindicated in relation to the realist goal. If this is correct, then the goal relative to which it is crucial to vindicate the Method is not the realist goal. A Rawlsian view is more plausible, according to which the relevant goal is to “characterize our moral sensibility” as it would be in “reflective equilibrium.” It turns out, however, that this Rawlsian view has some, perhaps unwelcome, deflationary implications.

The chapter describes some new experimental techniques and results that shed light on our ordinary use of ‘knowledge’. The results presented can be elegantly explained by adopting an interest relative or ‘anti-intellectual’ understanding of knowledge, a new idea that has been gaining currency in philosophy.

David Hume was brought up as a Calvinist, and studied Newtonian physics and methodology at Edinburgh University and beyond. In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1748) and his posthumously published Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779), Hume attacked the foundations of post-Newtonian natural theology by exploiting both Newton's rules for reasoning in natural philosophy (Regulae Philosophandi) and Protestant critiques of natural reason, in order to attack the metaphysical and theological foundations of 18th-century natural religion. It is argued that while Coleridge never ceased to attack the ‘infidelity’ and corruption of the atheist Hume, he could not easily dismiss Hume's arguments against natural religion, since they were often couched in the language of ‘epistemological piety’ as practiced by Christian philosophers like Boyle, Locke, and Newton. The chapter concludes with a discussion of Coleridge's acknowledged intellectual debts to Kant's Critique of Judgment (1790).

This chapter explores Petty's work with Samuel Hartlib and others in London and his medical and academic career at Oxford and Gresham College. Drawing on extensive material from the Hartlib Papers, it shows Petty as a full participant in the Hartlib Circle's neo‐Baconian program of experimental philosophy, technological and economic improvement, and social reform. Through this activity he developed an empirical, practical and collaborative conception of natural philosophy, modeled on the work of Francis Bacon and marked by a distinct vision of the relationship between art and nature that would crucially inform Petty's later development of political arithmetic. At Oxford, he completed his medical studies and gained fame from his resuscitation of a hanged woman. His academic career, however, was short‐lived, and he left England in 1652 as Physician‐General to the Cromwellian Army in Ireland.

This chapter discusses the relevance of recent developments in experimental philosophy and social psychology to fundamental issues that arise in the criminal law — especially when it comes to the decisions made by juries and judges concerning crime and punishment. In light of the empirical research the chapter discusses, it concludes that philosophers and legal theorists alike need to pay more attention to folk intuitions about legal responsibility than has traditionally been the case. In the chapter's view, gaining a perspicuous view of the criminal law requires more work at the cross‐roads of philosophy, psychology, and cognate fields.

The claim that contemporary analytic philosophers rely on intuitions as evidence (Centrality) is widely accepted both in philosophical methodology or metaphilosophy and philosophy at large. This introductory chapter provides an overview and taxonomy of views about what intuitions are and what role they play in philosophical practices such as the method of cases, thought experimentation and conceptual analysis. It outlines two key arguments that can be appealed to in favor of Centrality: the first is based on how philosophers use “intuitions”-vocabulary, and the second on the kind of judgements that philosophers’ make about cases. Part I of the book explores the first argument and Part II the second.

This chapter challenges the claim that Locke's aim in writing the Essay was to defend or support mechanical philosophy. The chapter argues, instead, that Locke's stated aims have little to do with natural philosophy, though the famous under‐labourer passage in which he refers to the great Master‐Builders is an endorsement of the Experimental Philosophy.

This chapter explores potential implications of eighteenth-century sentimentalism for both academic research and public policy in the twenty-first century. It begins with the many potential contributions Enlightenment sentimentalism could make to today’s empirical social science, in disciplines from neuroscience to behavioral economics to descriptive moral and political psychology. It then goes on to explore sentimentalism’s potential contribution to normative moral and political philosophy, with a focus on the distinctive sentimentalist position on the proper relationship between facts and values, and hence between empirical science and normative theory. The chapter concludes by pointing out that, in addition to being of considerable academic interest, sentimentalist theory could also help improve political practice in matters including democratic deliberation and civic education.

Experimental philosophers of 17th-century England recognized a complex relationship between scientific values and civic virtues. Francis Bacon, motivated by his desire to promote the common good by producing useful knowledge, noted that the advancement of learning required a cooperative research effort guided by civility, charity, toleration, and intellectual modesty. This essay examines how the founders of the Royal Society of London, including Robert Boyle, put his advice into action by their efforts to establish an expanded and inclusive society of investigators that would strengthen the habits of discourse in a civil society, while furthering the economic, political, and social benefits of scientific inquiry.

Drawing upon work in experimental philosophy and evolutionary game theory, the chapter argues that one of the roles the concept of knowledge plays in our social cognitive ecology is that of enabling us to make adaptively important distinctions between different kinds of blameworthy and blameless behaviors. In particular, the chapter defends the view that knowledge enables us to distinguish which agents are most worthy of blame for inflicting harms, violating social norms, or cheating in situations of social exchange.

This chapter claims that the main theses of the book concerning Locke's commitment to the Experimental Philosophy are an important corrective to some interpretative trends in the secondary literature on Locke. The chapter discusses Locke's claim that the Essay is a study of human understanding written using the historical, plain method of the Experimental Philosophy.