Methodological Confusion in Armchair and Experimental Philosophy

The chapter closely examines John Hawthorne’s introduction of the “lottery paradox” in Knowledge and Lotteries (2004) and Joshua Knobe and Sean Nichols’ “Experimental Philosophy Manifesto” (2008), together with other related works of experimental philosophers, with the aim of illustrating the deep confusion about the method of cases on the part of both its armchair practitioners and their experimental critics/reformers. The examination of these texts also serves to raise some of the main issues that will be discussed in subsequent chapters.