Open AccessThe Experimental Turn in Philosophy of Language
Author(s) -
Xiang Zhou,
Ya Gao
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
forum for linguistic studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2705-0610
pISSN - 2705-0602
DOI - 10.18063/fls.v2i1.1201
Subject(s) - experimental philosophy , complementarity (molecular biology) , ordinary language philosophy , cognition , field (mathematics) , philosophy of science , experimental science , epistemology , linguistic turn , cognitive science , computer science , western philosophy , psychology , philosophy , mathematics , neuroscience , genetics , pure mathematics , biology
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.