Philosophy and the Empirical

This volume focuses on a current issue of central important in contemporary philosophy, the relationship between philosophy and empirical studies. In recent years an older paradigm – philosophy as conceptual analysis – is giving way to a more varied set of models of philosophical work, and the current volume explores in detail a range of exciting examples. As with other volumes of Midwest Studies , each of the essays is a previously unpublished contribution by a major scholar.

The Use of Empirical Evidence to Assess and Critique Judicial Decisions. From My Lai to Abu Ghraib:The Moral Psychology of Atrocity. Render Unto Philosophy that which is Philosophy’s. Philosophical Thought Experiments, Intuitions and Cognitive Equilibrium. Reason Explanation in Folk Psychology. The Folk Probably Don’t Think What You Think They Think:Experiments on Causation by Absence. The Epistemology of Thought Experiments: First vs. Third Person ApproachArguments from Reference and the Worry About Dependence. INTENTIONAL ACTION, FOLK JUDGMENTS, AND STORIES:SORTING THINGS OUT. Folk Intuitions, Slippery Slopes, and Necessary Fictions: An Essay on Saul Smilansky’s Free Will Illusionism. Free Will, Moral Responsibility, and Mechanism: Experiments on Folk Intuitions. Do We Have A Coherent Set of Intuitions About Moral Responsibility?. The Rise of Compatibilism:. A Case Study in the Quantitative History of Philosophy. Can Moral Obligations Be Empirically Discovered?. Pragmatic Abilities in Autism Spectrum Disorder:A Case Study in Philosophy and the Empirical. How To Challenge Intuitions Empirically Without Risking Skepticism. The Cosmic Ensemble: Some reflections on the nature–mathematics symbiosis

Howard K. Wettstein is Professor of Philosophy, and Director of the University Honors Program at the University of California, Riverside. He holds a B.A. degree in Philosophy from Yeshiva College, an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the City University of New York. Wettstein has published two books, The Magic Prism: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language (2004) and Has Semantics Rested On a Mistake?, and Other Essays (1991) and a number of papers in the philosophy of language, for many years the focus of his research. During the last decade he has also worked in the philosophy of religion, publishing papers on topics like awe, doctrine, the problem of evil, and the viability of philosophical theology. He is currently at work on a book in the philosophy of religion. He is a senior editor (with Peter French) of Midwest Studies in Philosophy , and has edited a number of other volumes including Themes From Kaplan (1989, co–edited) and Diasporas and Exiles (2002)