Experimental Philosophy and External Contradictions
This blog post is now a chapter in my book The Apple of Knowledge. Today I would like to introduce two related concepts: experimental philosophy, and external contradictions. Many philosophers claim to want to introduce the "scientific method" into philosophy. Hume said this. So did Kant. But philosophers have been notoriously lazy in terms of actually using science in philosophy. The scientific method begins with a belief, theory, assumption, premise, hypothesis or postulate, and then looks at experience, usually in the form of empirical data from tests and experiments, and science asks: "is our experiences exactly what we would have expected them to be if our theory was correct?" If not, throw out the theory and try a new one. If it is confirmed, always be looking for more verification from other new tests. What would experimental philosophy look like? Well, if Kantian subjectivism is true and the mind creates the experience of space and time, then you could...