Mapping cognitive structure onto the landscape of philosophical debate: An empirical framework with relevance to problems of consciousness, free will and ethics

Jared P. Friedman and Anthony I. Jack

Department of Philosophy and Inamori International Center for Ethics and Excellence, Case Western Reserve University

[Please cite the published version of this paper]

[PDF of Jared Friedman and Tony Jack’s conference paper]

1. Introduction

This method of watching or even occasioning a contest between [mutually exclusive metaphysical] assertions, not in order to decide it to the advantage of one party or the other, but to investigate whether the object of the dispute is not perhaps a mere mirage at which each would snatch in vain without being able to gain anything even if he met with no resistance – this procedure, I say, can be called the skeptical method…[T]he skeptical method aims…to discover the point of misunderstanding in disputes that are honestly intended and conducted with intelligence by both sides… (Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 1787/1999, A423/B451-A424/B452; emphasis in original).   Continue reading Mapping cognitive structure onto the landscape of philosophical debate: An empirical framework with relevance to problems of consciousness, free will and ethics