ABSTRACT
This chapter concerns the empirical study of responses to thought experiments (TEs) drawn from the literature on philosophical analysis. It distinguishes different strands in experimental philosophy and reviews some ways in which experimental philosophy has been criticized. The chapter considers what would have to be true for experimental philosophy to have one or another sort of relevance to philosophy, whether the assumptions required are true and the ideal limits of the usefulness experimental philosophy to philosophy. Broadly construed, experimental philosophy is philosophy informed by empirical work. The most important division among experimental philosophers is between those who conceive of its project negatively and those who conceive of it positively. The negative and the positive projects both share the assumption that a central philosophical activity involves eliciting intuitions about actual and hypothetical cases. There are two main ways of taking the positive project. The first is the Continuity Account, and the second the Psychological Account.
