Experimental Philosophy

[spike]

I’ve wondered about Experimental Philosophy and how it works. Now I think I know. My grasping the concept began with me being underwhelmed, underwhelmed by some recent issues of PN magazine.

As a lark I decided to combine three recent issues of PN magazine, the ones on “Liberty and Equality, “Humor” and “Free Will”. It was in bringing those topics together that made me think I was experimenting, because I was tinkering with separate philosophical ideas in hope of spicing things up . It was like a science experiment, mixing different compounds to see what might emerge.

I was thinking, does one need free will to have a sense of humor or to tell a joke? Just asking! Or does humour improve our sense of free will or that of liberty and equality? Do we need a sense of humour to cope with those concepts?

Do I have any conclusions? Not yet! But I'll continue experimenting.

[Skip]

It's an interesting idea.
Did you use the content of the articles for your comparison or just the topics?
And why humour in particular?

[spike]

I just used the topics to play around.

I don't think I used humour in particular. I just used it like the other elements as means of discovering something more interesting than the articles offered in the magazine. And as I said , I feel underwhelmed by what I have been reading.

Sometimes I find that the scope of philosophy written narrow; it takes the usual worn paths. I wish it could be expanded on, thus the idea of Experimental Philosophy.