IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB887783684

The Curious Case of the Decapitated Frog: On Experiment and Philosophy (2018)

Klein, Alexander Mugar (Author)

British Journal for the History of Philosophy
Volume: 26
Issue: 5
Pages: 890-917

URI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2017.1378866

DOI: 10.1080/09608788.2017.1378866

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Academia.edu

Philosophy Case studies Research institutes; research stations Science and society Consciousness Animal physiology Experimental philosophy Experiments and experimentation Frogs 19th century Huxley, Thomas Henry Lewes, George Henry Pflüger, Eduard Friedrich Wilhelm

Physiologists have long known that some vertebrates can survive for months without a brain. This phenomenon attracted limited attention until the nineteenth century when a series of experiments on living, decapitated frogs ignited a controversy about consciousness. Pflüger demonstrated that such creatures do not just exhibit reflexes; they also perform purposive behaviours. Suppose one thinks, along with Pflüger's ally Lewes, that purposive behaviour is a mark of consciousness. Then one must count a decapitated frog as conscious. If one rejects this mark, one can avoid saying peculiar things about decapitated animals. But as Huxley showed, this position leads quickly to epiphenomenalism. The dispute long remained stalemated because it rested on conflicting sets of intuitions that were each compatible with the growing body of experiments. What eventually resolved it is that one set of intuitions supported a research programme in physiology that came to seem more fruitful on the whole. So my case study suggests an alternative model for experimental philosophy as compared with more recent practice. Rather than using experiment to bolster our philosophical intuitions directly, we should explore how our philosophical intuitions might bolster (or block) fruitful experimental inquiry in science.

...More

Included in

Article Alberto Vanzo (2018) Introduction. British Journal for the History of Philosophy (pp. 805-811). unapi

Citation URI

https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB887783684/

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Article Guy Longworth; (2018)
The Ordinary and the Experimental: Cook Wilson and Austin on Method in Philosophy (/isis/citation/CBB482153359/)

Article Alberto Vanzo; (2018)
Introduction (/isis/citation/CBB104149827/)

Book Michael Davis; (2006)
George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Psychology: Exploring the Unmapped Country (/isis/citation/CBB890472950/)

Book Alicia Puglionesi; (2020)
Common Phantoms: An American History of Psychic Science (/isis/citation/CBB698438603/)

Article Hagop Sarkissian; (2018)
Neo-Confucianism, Experimental Philosophy and the Trouble with Intuitive Methods (/isis/citation/CBB499524958/)

Article Siobhan Chapman; (2018)
The Experimental and the Empirical: Arne Naess' Statistical Approach to Philosophy (/isis/citation/CBB172340733/)

Book Dario Generali; (2016)
Le Radici della Razionalità Critica: Saperi, Pratiche, Teleologie. Studi offerti a Fabio Minazzi (/isis/citation/CBB605863308/)

Article Vanessa Heggie; (December 2016)
Higher and colder: The success and failure of boundaries in high altitude and Antarctic research stations (/isis/citation/CBB453806040/)

Article Campbell, N.; (2001)
What Was Huxley's Epiphenomenalism? (/isis/citation/CBB000100666/)

Book Dario Generali; (2016)
Le Radici della Razionalità Critica: Saperi, Pratiche, Teleologie. Studi offerti a Fabio Minazzi (/isis/citation/CBB543052276/)

Article Joshua August Skorburg; (2018)
Jane Addams as Experimental Philosopher (/isis/citation/CBB515488518/)

Article Greenwood, John; (2010)
Whistles, Bells, and Cogs in Machines: Thomas Huxley and Epiphenomenalism (/isis/citation/CBB001250186/)

Article Ramalingam, Chitra; (2010)
Natural History in the Dark: Seriality and the Electric Discharge in Victorian Physics (/isis/citation/CBB001023532/)

Article Kaiserfeld, Thomas; (2012)
Why New Hybrid Organizations Are Formed: Historical Perspectives on Epistemic and Academic Drift (/isis/citation/CBB001211969/)

Article Raoul Gervais; Erik Weber; (2015)
The Role of Orientation Experiments in Discovering Mechanisms (/isis/citation/CBB693743530/)

Chapter Finkelstein, Gabriel; (2014)
Emil du Bois-Reymond's Reflections on Consciousness (/isis/citation/CBB001214145/)

Chapter Lightman, Bernard; (2014)
Huxley and the Devonshire Commission (/isis/citation/CBB001422048/)

Article Elwick, James; (2003)
Herbert Spencer and the Disunity of the Social Organism (/isis/citation/CBB000340656/)

Book Andrea Strazzoni; (2019)
Burchard de Volder and the Age of the Scientific Revolution (/isis/citation/CBB530504995/)

Article Arianna Borrelli; (2020)
Giovan Battista Della Porta's Construction of Pneumatic Phenomena and His Use of Recipes as Heuristic Tools (/isis/citation/CBB375390325/)

Comments

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}