Thought Experiments, Arguments, and the Role of Argumentation in Philosophy (TAR) – Renewal Project for a Sixth Year of the Emmy Noether Project "Experimental Philosophy and the Method of Cases – Theoretical Foundations, Responses, and Alternatives (EXTRA)"

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Joachim Horvath
• Subject Area: Theoretical Philosophy
• Term: since 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 391304769

This project is a sequel of the Emmy Noether project EXTRA. The core idea of EXTRA is to investigate the method of hypothetical cases – or thought experiments – in light of the challenge from experimental philosophy. This method, one of the oldest and most central of philosophy, is typically understood as follows: intuitive verdicts about hypothetical cases are often decisive for philosophical theory-construction, depending on how well those theories accommodate the intuitive verdicts in question. However, the method of cases has attracted severe criticism in recent decades, up to the point where many philosophers doubt that it can be sustained at all. A crucial movement for this turn of the tide is experimental philosophy, which was initiated in the early 2000s by testing intuitive verdicts about famous philosophical thought experiment cases in psychological experiments. This work suggests a surprising variation of intuitions about hypothetical cases with philosophically irrelevant factors, such as order of presentation. Since these findings are difficult to reconcile with the trustworthiness of intuitive verdicts about cases, some philosophers have argued that the method of cases should be restricted or even abandoned. As a result, the method of cases has slipped into a metaphilosophical crisis – not least because its theoretical foundations have turned out to be problematically unclear. One main motivation of the EXTRA project is thus to provide theoretical foundations for the method of cases, which would also help to answer the challenge from experimental philosophy. The experimental investigation of crucial metaphilosophical premises, such as the assumption of intuitive expertise in philosophy, is another key part of EXTRA. An important insight from EXTRA is that the presumed central role of intuitions about hypothetical cases is largely a myth. Rather, philosophers argue for their judgments about such cases. This motivates both a shift of metaphilosophical attention from intuitive judgments to the argumentative content of thought experiments, and a reassessment of the crucial role of argumentation as a philosophical method. For, the exaggerated importance of intuitions in philosophy is a fairly recent trend, but the key role of argumentation in philosophy is a commonplace since Plato’s dialogues. In light of this history, it is surprising that argumentation theory – in contrast to formal logic – has received much less philosophical attention. Many perceived problems with philosophy – such as its lack of progress or the persistence of foundational disagreements – are also intimately related to argumentation as a philosophical method. In the renewal project TAR, we will thus bring argumentation to the center of the stage in the debate about the method of cases and in metaphilosophy more generally. As in the EXTRA project, we plan to do this again by combining work in experimental metaphilosophy with foundational theoretical work.

• DFG Programme: Independent Junior Research Groups