Research Theme: Metaphilosophical empiricism and pragmatism

Eric Schwitzgebel

I am disposed to think that metaphysical claims (broadly construed to include traditional metaphysics and philosophy of mind as well as the non-normative aspects of philosophy of science and philosophy of psychology) are of two often not cleanly separable varieties: factual claims and conceptual claims.  Factual claims must ultimately be evaluated empirically, and may be assessed by philosophers if (a.) the relevant empirical facts are readily accessible without special research or (b.) the relevant empirical facts are broadly dispersed through a scientific discipline, or between disciplines, or are subject to widely divergent interpretation, so that it requires a heavily theoretical or synthetic approach to discover their implications.  Conceptual claims may be read either merely as claims about ordinary linguistic usage (and one should not assume that ordinary usage embodies an accurate or coherent account of the world) or as recommendations for the adoption of a particular way of classifying things.  In the latter case, the recommendations are to be evaluated pragmatically: What purpose is the proposed conceptual apparatus meant to serve?  How well does it serve that purpose?

Such pragmatism and empirical sensitivity permeate all my work (I hope!), but I also have written several papers that are more explicitly metaphilosophical.  In "Whose Concepts Are They, Anyway?  The Role of Philosophical Intuition in Empirical Psychology", Alison Gopnik and I discuss the relation of philosophical intuition and empirical psychology, emphasizing the unreliability of philosophical intuition as a guide to the mind, despite its usefulness as a guide to what we think about the mind.  In "Zhuangzi's Attitude Toward Language and His Skepticism", I suggest that the classical Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi should be read as thoroughly pragmatic in his approach to writing philosophy, not necessarily (or even often) believing what he says, but rather writing things that he think will have a beneficial effect on his readers.