Brain Science Institute, Tamagawa University Tokyo, Japan ; Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Tokyo, Japan.
Department of Basic Science, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo Tokyo, Japan.
Front Psychol. 2014 Jul 22;5:799. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00799. eCollection 2014.
Philosophers have often appealed to intuitive judgments in various thought experiments to support or reject particular theses. Experimental philosophy is an emerging discipline that examines the cognitive nature of such intuitive judgments. In this paper, we assess the methodological and epistemological status of experimental philosophy. We focus on the Knobe effect, in which our intuitive judgment of the intentionality of an action seems to depend on the perceived moral status of that action. The debate on the philosophical implications of the Knobe effect has been framed in terms of the distinction between the competence and performance of the concept of intentionality. Some scholars seem to suggest that the Knobe effect reflects the competence (or otherwise, the performance error) of the concept of intentionality. However, we argue that these notions are purely functional and thus do not have philosophical implications, without assuming normativism, which we see as problematic in a psychological methodology. Finally, focusing on the gap between competence and rationality, we suggest future directions for experimental philosophy.
哲学家们经常在各种思想实验中诉诸直观判断来支持或反对特定的论题。实验哲学是一门新兴的学科，研究这种直观判断的认知性质。在本文中，我们评估了实验哲学的方法论和认识论地位。我们专注于诺布效应，即我们对行为意向性的直观判断似乎取决于对该行为的道德地位的感知。关于诺布效应的哲学意义的争论是根据意向性概念的能力和表现之间的区别来构建的。一些学者似乎认为，诺布效应反映了意向性概念的能力（或者说，表现错误）。然而，我们认为，这些概念纯粹是功能性的，因此在不假设规范性的情况下，没有哲学意义，而规范性在心理学方法论中是有问题的。最后，我们关注能力和理性之间的差距，为实验哲学提出了未来的方向。
