Experimental Philosophy is an extension of the psychological and neurological studies being done by Joshua Greene to me. It shows how the wording and order of a scenario, can lead to very different ways of thinking. If seems that the art of harming is intentional, and the act of helping is unintentional to the majority of people. (Experimental Philosophy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHoyMfHudaE). Just as Greene showed biologically that an emotional moral response can be different even if the outcome is the same, by conducting brain scans and showing that different areas of the brain, for the same problem, are used depending on the emotion and scenario of the problem; experimental philosophers have began to do empirical studies on subjects like intent, and obligation. They have found just as Greene did, that certain key elements of an unconscious set of morals are in all humans, and that critical reason may be pushed aside depending on the scenario of the encounter.
Thus the president of our fictional company, who does not care about the environment and harms it, receives the judgment that his non-action is an intent to harm the environment. In the case of his our president not caring about the environment but helping it anyway to make money, we give him no credit for helping the environment, even though his actions did, because it was not his intention to help. The math is the same except for one variable, but both answers come out negative. It would be interesting to me, to see if this scenario under Greene’s brain scans would show two distinct areas being used for each of our president of the company’s decisions, like Greene’s experiments have previously done. (philosophy bites: http://philosophybites.com/2010/08/joshua-knobe-on-experimental-philosophy.html)
Thus Experimental Philosophy is the cognitive empirical approach which addresses the same problems that Dr. Greene showed us from both biological and psychological paradigms, and it seems, both parties have found very similar results. It’s not just what we think, but how we feel about what we think at some primitive level, which determines our determination and reactions to choices, even if the outcome is basically the same.