Philosophy Now Forum

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.

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?

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.