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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.
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.
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
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).
The book is bold, provocative, engaging, ambitious and well
written.
*Herman Cappelen, Philosophical Studies*
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*
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