“The kind of approach I take is different from much of experimental philosophy. Although the experimental philosophers and I are certainly in agreement about the relevance of empirical work to philosophy, a good deal of their work is devoted to understanding features of our folk concepts, and in this respect, at least, I see them as making the same mistake as those armchair philosophers who are interested in conceptual analysis.” KindDifferentPhilosophyUnderstandingDealsMistakeApproachConceptsFolksPhilosopherFeaturesAnalysisAgreementDevotedRelevanceSame MistakesArmchairsMaking The Same Mistakes Author:Hilary Kornblith
“The experimentalists think that we can only get at our concepts by way of empirical investigation, while the armchair philosophers think that we can skip the experiments and figure things out from our armchairs. What they have in common, however, is regarding our concepts as the targets of philosophical theorising, and I just don't think that, in the vast majority of cases, the subject matter of philosophy has our concepts as its target.” ThinkingWayMatterPhilosophyCommonCasesSubjectsFiguresConceptsPhilosophicalMajorityPhilosopherExperimentsTargetInvestigationSubject MatterSkipArmchairs Author:Hilary Kornblith
“Epistemologists should be concerned with knowledge and justification and so on, not our concepts of them; philosophers of mind should be concerned with various features of our mental life and the large-scale structure of the mind, not our concepts of mind, or consciousness, or anything else” ShouldMindConsciousnessConceptsConcernedStructurePhilosopherVariousScalesFeaturesJustificationLarge Scale Author:Hilary Kornblith
“The role of empirical work in informing our philosophical theories, as I see it, is not that it gives us a better view of our folk concepts, but that it gives us a better view of knowledge, and the mind, and so on.” GivingMindViewsRolesTheoryConceptsPhilosophicalFolksInforming Author:Hilary Kornblith
“I am quite wedded to the view that epistemologists should concern themselves with knowledge rather than our concept of knowledge. The analogy I like to draw here is with our understanding of (other) natural kinds.” ShouldKindUnderstandingNaturalViewsDrawsConceptsConcernAnalogies Author:Hilary Kornblith
“Chemists in earlier centuries were quite interested in the nature of acids. They had no interest in analysing their concept of acid. After all, they knew that their understanding of acids was at a fairly primitive level, and what they wanted to do was understand something about the world better - the nature of acidity - not something about their own concepts.” WorldWantedUnderstandingInterestLevelsCenturyConceptsPrimitiveAcidChemistAnalysing Author:Hilary Kornblith
“One of the goals of scientific theorising is to develop concepts which are adequate to the phenomena under study. In my view, things should work the same way in epistemology. We want to know what knowledge actually amounts to, not what our folk concept of knowledge is, since, just as with our pretheoretical concept of acidity, it might contain all sorts of misunderstandings and leave out all manner of important things.” KnowsWayWantShouldImportantMightGoalViewsStudyAmountConceptsImportant ThingsFolksMisunderstandingAdequateEpistemology Author:Hilary Kornblith
