Philosophy Within Its Proper Bounds

Edouard Machery

A controversial reassessment of philosophy's aims and method - what it can and should do
Presents the first synthesis of experimental philosophy and its philosophical significance

Philosophy Within Its Proper Bounds

Edouard Machery

Description

In Philosophy Within Its Proper Bounds, Edouard Machery argues that resolving many traditional and contemporary philosophical issues is beyond our epistemic reach and that philosophy should re-orient itself toward more humble, but ultimately more important intellectual endeavors. Any resolution to many of these contemporary issues would require an epistemic access to metaphysical possibilities and necessities, which, Machery argues, we do not have. In effect, then, Philosophy Within Its Proper Bounds defends a form of modal skepticism. The book assesses the main philosophical method for acquiring the modal knowledge that the resolution of modally immodest philosophical issues turns on: the method of cases, that is, the consideration of actual or hypothetical situations (which cases or thought experiments describe) in order to determine what facts hold in these situations. Canvassing the extensive work done by experimental philosophers over the last 15 years, Edouard Machery shows that the method of cases is unreliable and should be rejected. Importantly, the dismissal of modally immodest philosophical issues is no cause for despair - many important philosophical issues remain within our epistemic reach. In particular, reorienting the course of philosophy would free time and resources for bringing back to prominence a once-central intellectual endeavor: conceptual analysis.

Philosophy Within Its Proper Bounds

Edouard Machery

Introduction
1:The method of cases
2:The empirical findings
3:Unreliability
4:Dogmatism and parochialism
5:Eight defenses of the method of cases: amateur psychology, reflection, expertise, limited influence, fallibility, reform, mischaracterization, and overgeneralization
6:Modal ignorance and the limits of philosophy
7:Conceptual analysis rebooted
Postscript

Philosophy Within Its Proper Bounds

Edouard Machery

Author Information

Edouard Machery, Distinguished Professor, University of Pittsburgh

Edouard Machery is Distinguished Professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, the Director of the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, and a member of the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition (University of Pittsburgh-Carnegie Mellon University). He has been the editor of the Naturalistic Philosophy section of Philosophy Compass since 2012 and was awarded the Chancellor's Distinguished Research Award (junior category) by the University of Pittsburgh in 2011, the Stanton Prize by the Society for Philosophy and Psychology in 2013, the Scots Philosophical Association Centenary Fellowship at the University of Edinburgh in 2016, a Humboldt Research Award in 2017, a Mercator Fellowship in 2017 and the Chancellor's Distinguished Research Award (senior category) by the University of Pittsburgh in 2018. He also sits on the Governing Board of the Philosophy of Science Association (2017-2020).

Philosophy Within Its Proper Bounds

Edouard Machery

Reviews and Awards

"what Machery presents is a manifesto — a tightly-and-powerfully-argued, eminently readable, innovative manifesto — for the X-Phi movement rather than a full-blown evidence-based policy. However, unlike the majority of contemporary political manifestos, it deserves to be taken seriously. By consolidating findings drawn from individual experimental studies, by incorporating various approaches to experimental philosophy and by advocating a particular picture of what the future of 'positive-X-Phi' could look like, this book serves not only as the foundations on which experimental philosophers can build, but as a provocative challenge to more common approaches to theorising in the tradition of analytic philosophy." - Jonathan Lewis, Metapsychology

"'In advocating the need for a modest approach to philosophical enquiry, this book will be a valuable resource for those wishing to engage with the empirical challenge that experimental philosophy claims to represent . . . It presents a manifesto for an experimental philosophy which can do important positive philosophical work motivated by an empirical dissatisfaction with the more traditional methods and aims of philosophy, and it also offers a picture of experimental philosophy as an empirical cognitive science which is, by the same token, conceptual analysis..' " - James Andow, LSE Review of Books