Contemporary Philosophy				Final Assignment: X-Phi

Knobe and Nichols, in their “Experimental Philosophy Manifesto,” write: “Philosophical inquiry has never been a popularity contest, and experimental philosophy is not about to turn it into one” (p.6).

(a) What do they mean by ‘philosophical inquiry has never been a popularity contest’?  That is, what would philosophy look like if it were a ‘popularity contest’?

(b) Assuming experimental philosophy does not turn philosophy into a popularity contest, what (if anything) is the philosophical payoff of these surveys?  That is, are there any philosophical lessons that we learn (directly or indirectly) from these studies, that we would not learn without them?
(To answer this question, it may help to see exactly what a no answer looks like.  Janet Levin gives a clear no answer, in her recent review (Analysis, 2009) of an experimental philosophy anthology: “the results of the most methodologically sound and philosophically relevant studies discussed in this volume could have been obtained from the armchair, and thus experimental philosophy may not present a serious challenge to the traditional methods of analytic philosophy.” And later: “it seems that traditional analytic methods may well suffice for identifying the judgements that provide the right sorts of data for philosophical theories.”  Thus question (b) becomes: is Levin’s assertion correct?)
You must give evidence/ arguments for your answer.  If you think, contra Levin, that experimental philosophy does provide philosophical insights we could not get elsewhere, then you must give specific examples of those insights.

(c) IF experimental philosophy does not turn philosophy into a popularity contest, then must some people’s intuitions be better than others?  That is, do some people have to be ‘expert’ intuiters?