The experimental turn in philosophy of language

Authors

  • Xiang Zhou

    College of Foreign Languages, Shanghai Maritime University

  • Ya Gao

    College of Foreign Languages, Shanghai Maritime University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18063/fls.v2i1.1201

Abstract

With the rise of experimental philosophy in the twenty-first century, the past two decades have witnessed the experimental turn in the field of philosophy of language. We delineate in this paper the experimental turn in philosophy of language before distinguishing armchair theorizing from empirical testing and highlighting the complementarity between the two approaches, and then carry out an analysis of the experimental tools and methods available for philosophical experiments with examples by classifying them into three major types, viz., the method of survey, the method of big data, and the method of cognitive neuroscience.

Keywords:

experimental philosophy, philosophy of language, experimental method

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