Experimental Philosophy

Newton's book, ``Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica'', was the beginning of Theoretical Physics.

Now I read in the NYT, that philosophers finally understood what Newton meant.

``Back in September, Joshua Knobe of Yale University, writing here at The Stone, outlined a new experimental approach to doing philosophy in his post, “Experiments in Philosophy.” Philosophers, he argued, have spent enough time cogitating in their armchairs. Knobe described how he and a group of like-minded colleagues in the discipline have undertaken a more engaged approach, working with cognitive scientists and designing experiments that will “test” people’s intuitions about traditional philosophic puzzlers such as the existence of God, the objectivity of ethics and the possibility of free will. The result: new, empirically-grounded insights available to philosophers and psychologists.''

Philosophy choses to consider everything, the problem, in my mind, has been that sometimes one does not know if that particular endeavorer will lead anywhere. If one chooses to besides the thinking, and together with it, one goes to the world and pokes around, one can learn more. Writing this, I remembered my friend Vinod Janghiani at UCSB. He is a very intelligent man, but he was really curious about the take of other people. I guess he was up to something.

The way I see it, every single human brain near us, is one of the most interesting structures in this universe of ours, one has to try to poke brains.

Welcome to Science, dear Philosophers, a little late, but better late than never.