Philosophers' Thinking (Experimental Philosophy and Qualitative Tools Volume 4)

So-called Experimental Philosophy‭ (‬X-Phi‭) ‬is one of the latest fashions or fads in philosophy.‭ ‬It gives people who wish to do‭ ‘‬philosophy‭’ ‬but do not find something in the other types of doing philosophy something to do.‭ ‬The other types are,‭ ‬apart from a handful of original-‭ ‬and creative thinking individuals,‭ ‬the usual academic publications,‭ ‬theses,‭ ‬conferences,‭ ‬etc that keep professional philosophers busy and enable them to maintain their obligatory lists of publications,‭ ‬dealing with minute‭ ‘‬analysis‭’ ‬of aspects of other microscopic‭ ‘‬analysis‭’‬. Much of so-called Experimental Philosophy appears to me like some kind of rather superficial social surveys and drawing,‭ ‬mostly philosophically irrelevant conclusions from them.‭ ‬I present a number of sources on this kind of doing of‭ ‘‬philosophy‭’‬. As I myself was trained as a scientist and for years did work as scientific researcher I find much of what is passed off as so-called experimental philosophy very amateurish,‭ ‬not-methodological,‭ ‬lacking scientific research methods and naïve.‭ ‬I intended to add a second section to this volume,‭ ‬entitled scientific method,‭ ‬but the volume will already be too large without it. I include different definitions of this sub-domain of philosophy,‭ ‬criticism of it and its methods and reasons for the practising of it.‭ ‬I conclude with a number of studies on the philosophy of sex and two articles of my own on the feeling accompanying male ejaculation and male orgasm. I end with a Brian Leiter post/s and very interesting comments by a number of philosophers.‭ ‬THAT says more about philosophy/izing and the state and nature of this discipline than many so-called X-Phi‭ ‘‬experiments‭’‬. Just as there are a few good,‭ ‬outstanding or excellent original-‭ ‬and creative-‭ ‬thinking‭ ‘‬traditional‭’ ‬philosophers,‭ ‬a great number of average ones and a mass of forgotten poor ones,‭ ‬and this go for all‭ ‘‬fields‭’ ‬or kinds of philosophy/izing,‭ ‬including experimental philosophy‭; ‬we find in the‭ ‘‬field‭’ ‬of experimental philosophy that there are a few worthy of the name of philosopher,‭ ‬who ask significant and original questions and deal with them in creative ways,‭ ‬the usual great number of lesser ones jumping on the fashionable bandwagon‭ (‬as they have no original problems to concern themselves with and creative ways to deal with them‭) ‬and the great mass not to be taken seriously at all.‭