SEKOWSKI PHILOSOPHY

PROJECTS

The Role of Intuitions and Thought Experiments in Philosophical Methodology

Most of my projects are somehow related to the role of intuitions or thought experiments in philosophy. I’ve been working on these issues from several angles:

The Role of Intuitions in Philosophical Methodology and the Use of Thought Experiments: First, I provided a normative interpretation of the method of cases and argued that this method should be seen as part of conceptual engineering rather than a conceptual analysis endeavor. I urge that this interpretation of the method of cases rules out the critique posed by the Negative Program in Experimental Philosophy, which highlights the instability of people’s intuitions. I argue that what should justify arguments involving thought experiments are not intuitions about cases (intuitions of extension), but rather intuitions about general features of a certain concept (intuitions of intension). I’m still working on this, particularly in relation to the mischaracterization objection and various forms of modal skepticism. These considerations are explored in the following papers:

Concept Revision, Concept Application and the Role of Intuitions in Gettier Cases, Episteme.
Overcoming Modal Skepticism via Conceptual Engineering, Facets of Reality — Contemporary Debates. Contributions of the 45th International Wittgenstein Symposium.
Analiza empirycznych argumentów na rzecz tezy o zróżnicowaniu kulturowym intuicji epistemicznych, Studia Philosophica Wratislaviensia. (in polish)
Przynależność kulturowa i język. O metodologicznych problemach międzykulturowej filozofii eksperymentalnej, Filozofia Nauki.

The Role of Intuitions in the Philosophy of Language: I argue that intuitions play a unique role in the philosophy of language. Specifically, in the theory of reference, intuitions about reference serve as data, rather than as a source of justification for philosophical claims. As a result, philosophical theories of reference should capture or explain ordinary intuitions about reference. This means that the normative, conceptual-engineering approach to the method of cases cannot be applied to the theory of reference. However, based on a corpus study of intuition-talk in reference theory literature, I’ve shown that when addressing issues beyond “reference,” intuition-talk can be consistent with the normative interpretation of the method of cases and philosophical methodology. In other words, philosophers often argue for what concepts should be like, rather than what they are like. These results are presented here:

The Structure of Thought Experiments and the Problem of Deviant Realizations: I analyzed the structure of thought experiments and offered a pragmatic solution to the problem of deviant realizations, which points out to the difficulty to exclude far-fetched interpretations of thought experiments. I argue that thought experiments involve two stages: first, the interpretative procedure, where the state of affairs in the experiment is established, and second, the ultimate conclusion. By incorporating the interpretative procedure, deviant realizations can be ruled out using semantic intuitions. The following paper explains how this process works and discusses the contextual dependence of these intuitions, as well as the methodological consequences for both armchair and experimental philosophy.

Thought Experiments, Semantic Intuitions, and the Overlooked Interpretative Procedure, Episteme.

The Meta-Problem of Consciousness and Intuitions: Together with Wiktor Rorot, I explored the role of intuitions in Chalmers’ reformulation of the hard problem of consciousness into the “meta-problem of consciousness,” which focuses on intuition on why the hard problem seems actually hard. We argue that this approach fails, as its outcome depends on one’s epistemological and ontological views on intuitions. However, we suggest that studying “positive” intuitions (typically intuitions on what consciousness is (intuitions of intension)) could move these debates forward. We call this approach “The Canberra Plan for Consciousness,” which borrows from the methodological “Canberra Plan,” and we argue that it reveals how discussions on the hard problem of consciousness may actually be a form of metalinguistic negotiation.

Intuition-Driven Navigation of the Hard Problem of Consciousness, Review of Philosophy and Psychology. (w/ Wiktor Rorot)

Philosophy as Conceptual Engineering (Historically and Methodologically)
I work on the methodology of conceptual engineering, advocating for a normative approach to philosophical methodology. In addition to defending the use of thought experiments when interpreted normatively (see the section on intuitions in philosophical methodology), I have argued, along with Ethan Landes, that interpreting both historical and contemporary works in this normative light is methodologically fruitful and epistemologically safer than descriptive approaches. We also examined how the claim that conceptual engineering is not new should be understood, considering perspectives from consumers, producers, and the texts themselves. We discuss several examples from the literature that clearly, or can be interpreted as, adopting or arguing for conceptual engineering. Moreover, I argue that one historical source of the conceptual engineering approach can be found in the works of the Lvov-Warsaw School, that might have inspired Carnap in his works on explication, and which I discuss in detail, including its relevance to modern accounts.

Conceptual Engineering is Old News, The Philosophical Quarterly. (w/ Ethan Landes)
Conceptual Engineering in the Lvov-Warsaw School, Inquiry.

Epistemology of Modality – Modal Normativism, Thought Experiments and Essence
I view my work on modal skepticism and the Negative Program in experimental philosophy as contributions to the epistemology of modality. However, more recently, I’ve begun a project aimed at showing how the normative epistemology of thought experiments can be expressed within the framework of modal normativism, enriching this view. I also aim to develop a deflationary account of “essence” and the epistemology of essence, making it compatible with modal normativism. Given the natural fit between modal normativism and conceptual engineering, I plan to explain the epistemology of thought experiments in terms of modal normativism and demonstrate its benefits for methodologies like conceptual engineering. All of these works are currently in progress.

Experimental Philosophy
I am also interested in empirical data on people’s philosophical intuitions. In addition to the corpus study mentioned above, I collaborated with Maciej Tarnowski and Adrian Ziółkowski on a successful replication of one of the classic results from Jonathan Weinberg, Shaun Nichols, and Stephen Stich, which explores cross-cultural differences in intuitions about the Zebra Case. We provided an explanation of these results based on the different roles of skepticism in Western and Eastern cultures and philosophical traditions. I am currently involved in few other empirical projects (on semantic intuitions and two-dimensional semantics, as well as the distinction between intuitions of intension and extension), though they are still in progress

Western Skeptic vs Indian Realist. Cross-Cultural Differences in Zebra Case Intuitions, Review of Philosophy and Psychology. (w/ Adrian Ziółkowski and Maciej Tarnowski)