The Psychology of Philosophy
Spring 2016
5 Washington Place Room 202 (2nd floor)
Monday 11–1 PM
What is going through the heads of philosophers doing a priori philosophy? Focusing on the classic case of philosophical analysis (aka the method of cases, conceptual analysis
, and so on), we will bring empirical psychology, and in particular the psychology of concepts, to bear on answering the question. Naturally, we will give special attention to the epistemology of it all: does empirical psychology debunk philosophical claims to a priori knowledge? I am especially interested in the contrary possibility, that such claims can be defended by recourse to empirical psychology (and a few other things). Note that this is not a class about experimental philosophy as such, but we will be reading work from experimental philosophers that bears on the big epistemological issue.