Much of experimental philosophy consists of surveying 'folk' intuitions about philosophically relevant issues. Are the results of these surveys evidence that the relevant folk intuitions cannot be predicted from the ‘armchair’? We found that a solid majority of philosophers could predict even results claimed to be 'surprising'. But, we argue, this does not mean that such experiments have no role at all in philosophy.

The tradition of semantic externalism that follows Kripke and Putnam is built on the assumption that the folk have essentialist commitments about natural kinds. Externalists commonly take the body of empirical data concerning psychological essentialism as support for this claim. However, recent empirical findings call the psychological theory of essentialism into question. This thesis examines the relevance of these findings to both essentialism and semantic externalism. I argue that these findings suggest that these theories fail to reflect folk beliefs about (...) natural kinds and folk natural kind term usage. This leads me to propose an alternative thesis-- the Ambiguity Thesis-- that is better able to accommodate the existing body of empirical data. (shrink)

The development of increasingly intelligent and autonomous technologies will eventually lead to these systems having to face morally problematic situations. This is particularly true of artificial systems that are used in geriatric care environments. The goal of this article is to describe how one can approach the design of an elder care robot which is capable of moral decision-making and moral learning. A conceptual design for the development of such a system is provided and the steps that are necessary to (...) implement it are described. (shrink)

En este trabajo muestro la existencia de un "giro experimentalista" en ética que pertenece a una tendencia de la filosofía en general hacia la experimentación. Explicito la conexión entre este giro y un tipo de naturalismo que denominaré "débil". En el trabajo reflexiono sobre la manera en que este giro experimental, en tanto forma de un tipo de naturalismo, tiene un doble impacto en la ética como disciplina filosófica. En realidad, examino la manera en que el naturalismo subyacente al experimentalismo (...) afecta la naturaleza del análisis conceptual y el carácter normativo de la ética. In this paper I show the existence of an "experimental turn" in ethics belonging to a trend of general philosophy towards experimentation. I specify the connection between this turn and a type of naturalism that I will name "weak". In this work I reflect on how this experimental turn, shaped as a type of some sort of naturalism, has a double impact on ethics as a philosophical discipline. Actually, I examine how the type of naturalism that underlies experimentalism, affects the nature of the conceptual analysis and the normative character of ethics. (shrink)

McTaggart's ideas on the unreality of time as expressed in "The Nature of Existence" have retained great interest for many years for scholars, academics and other philosophers. In this essay, there is a brief discussion which mentions some of the high points of this philosophical interest, and goes on to apply his ideas to modern physics and neuroscience. It does not discuss McTaggart's C and D series, but does emphasise how the use of derived versions of both his A and (...) B series can be of great virtue in discussing both the abstract physics of time, and the present and future importance of McTaggart's ideas to the subject of time. Indeed an experiment using human volunteers and dynamic systems modelling which was carried out is described, which illustrates this fact. The Many Bubble Interpretation, which also derives from McTaggart's ideas, is discussed and various examples of its use and effectiveness are referred to. The Schrodinger Cat paradox is essentially resolved in principle, the quantum Zeno effect interpretable, Kwiat's recent result referred to, and the newly discovered reverse Stickgold effect described. (shrink)

This paper investigates the working-method of three important philosophers of explanation: Carl Hempel, Philip Kitcher and Wesley Salmon. We argue that they do three things: construct an explication in the sense of Carnap, which then is used as a tool to make descriptive and normative claims about the explanatory practice of scientists. We also show that they did well with respect to, but that they failed to give arguments for their descriptive and normative claims. We think it is the responsibility (...) of current philosophers of explanation to go on where Hempel, Kitcher and Salmon failed. However, we should go on in a clever way. We call this clever way the “pragmatic approach to scientific explanation.” We clarify what this approach consists in and defend it. (shrink)