Eight Defenses of the Method of Cases

Chapter 5 examines eight different ways of defending the method of cases against Unreliability, Dogmatism, and Parochialism, and finds them wanting. It defends the experimental bona fides of experimental philosophy, provides evidence that reflective judgments do not differ from the judgments reported by experimental philosophers, shows that philosophers are not expert judgers, explains why their findings generalize beyond the cases that have been examined, argues that the lesson to be drawn from experimental philosophy can’t just be that judgments are fallible, explains why the prospects for a reform of the method of cases are dim, makes the point that Unreliability, Dogmatism, and Parochialism do not rest on a mischaracterization of the use of cases in philosophy, and defuses the threat that if sound these three arguments would justify an unacceptable general skepticism about judgment.