Philosophy professors and scholars from around the world will gather at the U this summer for a four-week crash course in a new method of philosophy.
Ronald Mallon, a philosophy professor at the U, said the National Endowment for the Humanities granted him $180,000 to host a summer institute at the U on experimental philosophy, a type of philosophy that makes use of quantitative research such as opinion polling to answer questions.
Mallon said the grant money will provide travel and lodging stipends for a group of guest faculty from England, Australia, Boston, California and other locations who will lecture visiting scholars on this philosophical school of thought from June 22 to July 17.
“Experimental philosophy is a growing but relatively new movement in which philosophers produce empirical data in an attempt to resolve philosophical questions,” Mallon said. “By empirical, I mean something measurable or something that has to do with the way the world is.”
Philosophers have been making use of information from doctors, scientists and psychologists in their studies for a long time, but experimental philosophy moves philosophers a step forward by encouraging them to produce data themselves rather than only speculating from their own intuition or the work of others, Mallon said.
Because experimental philosophy is somewhat new, Mallon said many professors are unfamiliar with the basic idea behind it.
“It wasn’t around when many of these professors were in graduate school, so it’s a perfect topic for an institute for faculty members from all kinds of institutions,” Mallon said. “Different faculty members in different specialties from different universities are going to be giving interactive lectures on different topics and participating in discussion.”
Tania Lombrozo, a cognitive psychologist and psychology professor at University of California, Berkeley, will be one of the guest faculty members. She said the institute will provide an excellent opportunity for her to show how her research in psychology can assist philosophers in discovering how the world works.
Lombrozo will be focusing on the topic of causation, which has interested philosophers for centuries.
“I’m going to teach some survey methods and experimental methods that might not be very familiar to philosophers, which I think can help answer questions about why we do what we do,” Lombrozo said.
As an example, Lombrozo said, “Let’s say you’re trying to figure out why you’re having trouble sleeping at night. It could be because you’re drinking too much caffeine or because you aren’t exercising, or because you’re watching action-packed television before bed. You’ve got all these factors that might be impacting your sleep. Psychologists and philosophers are interested in how we go about trying to figure out what the cause is and how that affects our reasoning.”
Through her research, Lombrozo hopes to show the visiting scholars how psychological research and information can answer philosophical questions.
“The workshop is structured to address many different topics, but the common thread is that they are all approached through experimental methods,” Lombrozo said.
Mallon said the National Endowment for the Humanities turned down a previous proposal to hold the summer institute on experimental philosophy at the U, but he was encouraged to try again by the College of Humanities.
“There were a lot of people involved in getting this grant secured,” Mallon said. “We had great support from the College of Humanities staff here at the U and from my department; not enough can be said about how much they helped.”