experimental philosophy

Experimental philosophy is a new approach in analytic philosophy emerging in the last decade. Experimental philosophy emphasizes the intuitions of ordinary people and compares them with philosophers' intuitions to understand and analyze philosophical problems. One important philosophical and theological issue that can be addressed with such an approach is the problem of evil. Since in the philosophy of religion, the problem of evil is raised in two logical and evidential forms, the research questionnaires were designed to cover both accounts, although more emphasis was placed on the evidential problem of evil. The statistical population of this research was 100 people from different social groups who did not have special studies in philosophical and theological fields. The findings of this research show that the public's sympathy with the logical account of the problem of evil is more than their sympathy with the evidential one. However, the ratio between the answers and all the questions indicates a significant inconsistency in the folks' understanding of the problem of evil and its relationship with theism.

Many epistemologists acknowledge that the importance of Gettier’s counterexamples is in revealing the problem we encounter when analyzing the concept of knowledge. As they assert, the root of the problem lies in the way we evaluate our intuitions used for conceptual analysis. We, here, are to look into those intuitions which, more than the nature of knowledge, are related to knowledge attribution in ordinary language. It seems likely that they help us find out a way to remove Gettier’s counterexamples or other similar cases known today as Gettier-type counterexamples. The article consists of two main parts. First, we will explain three proposals that result in taking away the condition of justification, truth and belief, respectively. Taking away one of the traditional conditions of knowledge can be a possibe way to protect the conceptual analysis of knowledge from Gettier (Gettier-type) counterexamples. In the second part, we will clarify why these three proposals, and similar ones, have not yet been able to remove Gettier (Gettier-type) counterexamples. We believe that they have three main flaws. (1) Not all possible cases of knowledge are covered. (2) Some arguments are not conclusive. (3) They either involve some misunderstandings about the nature of ordinary language and the way its words work, or, from a methodological viewpoint, are ill-founded and have controversial consequences. Although the first and second flaws are limited to those proposals criticized in this article, we believe that the third one can go even further and include those proposals that pave the way to remove Gettier (Gettier-type) counterexamples by relying on our intuitions about the nature of knowledge.

Intuition is a philosophical judgment tool. Some accept it as a method in philosophy and others deny it. On the deniers' side, some philosophers, based on the diversity of responses to intuition pumps, consider it as an uncertain or invalid method. By contrast, the others claim that the incidental factors because distorted responses and there is not any wrong in intuitive method by itself. Here the level of expertise considered as one of the external factors that causes the accuracy or inaccuracy of intuitions. An accurate intuitive response can be found by questioning experts, not lay people. Avicenna’s view is compatible with the expertise-based view. In his rejoinder to a critic, he mentioned the intuitive arguments are not proper for all, but for those who possess perspicuity and subtle intelligence and his reply implies that he trusted the responses of meticulous philosophers more than others. This comparative work suggests a novel reading of Avicenna’s reply to his critic and reconsiders the interpretation that charges him with engaging in an ad hominem argument.

Intuition has a central role in philosophy، the role to arbitrating between different opinions. When a philosopher shows that «intuition» supports his view، he thinks this is a good reason for him. In contrast، if we show some contraries between intuition and a theory or some implications of it، we think a replacement or at least some revisions would be needed. There are some well-known examples of this role for intuition in many fields of philosophy; the transplant case in ethics، the chinese nation case in philosophy of mind and the Gettier examples in epistemology. But there is an assumption here; we suppose all people think in same manner، i. e. we think intuition (s) is universal. Experimental philosophy tries to study this assumption experimentally. This project continues Quine's movement to «pursuit of truth» from a naturalistic point of view and making epistemology «as a branch of natural science.» The work of experimental philosophy shows that in many cases people with different cultural backgrounds reflect to some specific moral or epistemological cases –like Gettier examples- differently and thus intuition is not universal. So، many problems that are based on this assumption maybe dissolved، have plural forms for plural cultures or bounded to some specific cultures –western culture in many cases.