Justifying Intuitive Judgments: Why Experimental Political Philosophy is Not a Threat to Reflective Equilibrium

It is often believed that experimental philosophy poses a serious challenge to reflective equilibrium as a valid philosophical method. In a recent paper, Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen presents a radical version of this challenge, which (if true) implies that political philosophers should drastically change the way they appeal to intuitions in their work. In this paper, I argue against this challenge in part by drawing on experiences from experimental philosophy itself. I argue both that the challenge from diversity is less troubling than often believed, and that the function of appeal to intuition in traditional analytical political philosophy is misunderstood by its critics. Upon this, I conclude that experimental political philosophy is no threat to the methodology of reflective equilibrium.