Ethan Landes will be presenting his paper: How Philosophers Learn From Each Other.

Abstract:

Experimental philosophers and metaphilosophers have overwhelmingly focused on the consumption of philosophical arguments as opposed to the original production of those arguments. Recently, Max Deutsch and Herman Cappelen have taken the opposite position, arguing facts about the production of philosophical arguments make lots of work in experimental philosophy and metaphilosophy pointless. Despite the disagreement between metaphilosophers and Cappelen and Deutsch, neither side provides particularly clear or compelling reasons for thinking that focus should be on the producers or consumers of philosophical arguments. I will try to determine what, if anything, is the epistemic relationship between producers and consumers in philosophy. I will argue that while philosophers may be able to gain knowledge from one another via testimony, a significant amount of time, the epistemic grounding of consumers’ resulting knowledge comes from the consumers own epistemic abilities. This means that the actual knowledge and intention of producers of philosophy likely does not matter, and consumer-focused metaphilosophy and experimental philosophy has been on the right track.