Edouard Machery
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 92459 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Edouard Machery |
| PRENOMES | Edouard |
| SOBRENOME | Machery |
| ASSINATURA | MACHERY E |
| AFILIAÇÕES | University of Pittsburgh |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9944-6138 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 54 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 227 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 52 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 2 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2002 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 7 |
The Wicked and the Ill
This study investigates the influence of evaluative judgments, specifically regarding an individual’s moral character, on judgments of health and disease. Though it might seem that judgments of health and disease should be impervious to evaluative judgments, two hypotheses suggest that health and disease judgments could be influenced by evaluative judgments: the “naturalization hypothesis” which centers on our inclination to assign blame, and the…
Contextualizing, eliminating, or glossing
In this article, we respond to Rosa Cao's, Frances Egan's, and John Krakauer's comments, defending our interpretation of our experimental results and the significance of an epistemology of the imprecise
The concept of representation in the brain sciences
This article outlines the motivations and main findings of Favela and Machery's “Investigating the concept of representation in the neural and psychological sciences”, and discusses what to do with the concept of representation in the brain sciences moving forward
A puzzle about knowledge ascriptions
Philosophers have argued that stakes affect knowledge: a given amount of evidence may suffice for knowledge if the stakes are low, but not if the stakes are high. By contrast, empirical work on the influence of stakes on ordinary knowledge ascriptions has been divided along methodological lines: “evidence‐fixed” prompts rarely find stakes effects, while “evidence‐seeking” prompts consistently find them. We present a cross‐cultural study using bot…
A new challenge to conceptual engineering
This article examines a new challenge for the feasibility of conceptual engineering: ‘the attractor challenge’. I argue that the prospects of reforming some concepts are poor because of their psychological nature. They are attractors: The mind is drawn to think with them, and engineering efforts are unlikely to succeed in replacing these concepts. The attractor challenge is illustrated by a substantial body of experimental research on the concept…
On On Folk Epistemology
This commentary focuses on two main points in Gerken's remarkable book, On Folk Epistemology: his appeal to dual process theories of cognition and his alleged identification of some case judgments as normatively deficient. The first point leads to a friendly amendment of his proposal, the second to a more serious challenge
Concepts of health and disease
The aim of the paper is to explore how people understand the concepts of health and disease, including the factors that influence their judgments about whether a condition is a disease or a healthy state. The study investigates whether health and disease judgments come apart, and whether they are affected by factors such as typicality, dysfunction, and disvalue. We conclude that the folk concept of health is positive (such that being healthy is c…
Does God know our future sins
In this article, we examine the extent to which Christians and Muslims endorse divine foreknowledge for neutral, good, and bad actions. If they do, the problem of theological fatalism is not a mere (albeit important) philosophical difficulty, but a problem rooted in lay believers’ intuitive understanding of God
Science Without Trust
It is often said that successful scientific research must be built on trust. Focusing on the alleged necessity of trust for successful scientific communication and thus for scientific cooperation (which underlies much of contemporary science), I argue that science mustn’t be built on trust. Appearances to the contrary come from a failure to distinguish different attitudes toward scientists’ testimony, in particular trusting and relying on other s…
Demographic Differences in Philosophical Intuition
Truetemp cooled down
In this paper, we report the results of three high-powered replication studies in experimental philosophy, which bear on an alleged instability of folk philosophical intuitions: the purported susceptibility of epistemic intuitions about the Truetemp case (Lehrer, Theory of knowledge. Westview Press, Boulder, 1990) to order effects. Evidence for this susceptibility was first reported by Swain et al. (Philos Phenomenol Res 76(1):138–155, 2008); fur…
Précis of philosophy within its proper bounds
Responses to Herman Cappelen and Jennifer Nado
Response to Chris Crandall and John Symons
This article responds to Chris Crandall's and John Symons's critical discussions of Philosophy Within Its Proper Bounds. I examine the significance of experimental-philosophy research for philosophy and for psychology and discuss the methodological shortcomings of experimental philosophy. I also consider how we can come to know metaphysical necessities of philosophical importance and defend a pragmatist take on conceptual engineering
Love and Power
What do plants and bacteria want? Commentary on Carrie Figdor ' s Pieces of mind
In Pieces of mind , Figdor examines how to interpret psychological predicates that scientists assign to entities that commonsensically do not have a mind such as neurons and plants. She claims that these predicates are used literally to refer to the same structures in humans and non‐human entities. I argue on the contrary that most uses of this kind are merely the extension of preexisting, possibly behaviorist senses of the relevant psychological…
What Is a Replication
This article develops a new, general account of replication (the Resampling Account of replication). I argue that a replication is an experiment that resamples the experimental components of an original experiment that are treated as random factors and that the function of replications is, narrowly, to assess the reliability of the replicated experiments. On this basis, I argue that the common notion of conceptual replication is confused and that…
Beyond mind–body dualism
Response to Janet Levin and Michael Strevens
Précis of Philosophy Within Its Proper Bounds
Long-term tracking of biodiversity is more important than ever
Philosophy Within Its Proper Bounds
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 reorient itself toward more humble, but ultimately more important intellectual endeavors. Attempts to resolve such issues are modally immodest: Any resolution would require an epistemic access to metaphysical possibilities and necessities, which, Edouard Mach…
Redefine statistical significance
A deterministic worldview promotes approval of state paternalism
Current Controversies in Experimental Philosophy
Redefine statistical significance
Concepts Are Not a Natural Kind
In cognitive psychology, concepts are those bodies of knowledge that are stored in long-term memory and are used by default in human beings’ higher cognitive processes (categorization, inductive and deductive reasoning, etc.). Most psychologists of concepts assume that these mental representations share many scientifically important properties, and the psychology of concepts is expected to describe those properties. Psychologists assume thereby t…
Against Arguments from Reference
It is common in various quarters of philosophy to derive philosophically significant conclusions from theories of reference. In this paper, we argue that philosophers should give up on such ‘arguments from reference.’ Intuitions play a central role in establishing theories of reference, and recent cross‐cultural work suggests that intuitions about reference vary across cultures and between individuals within a culture ( Machery et al. 2004 ). We …
Social Construction and the Concept of Race
There has been little serious work to integrate the constructionist approach and the cognitive/evolutionary approach in the domain of race, although many researchers have paid lip service to this project. We believe that any satisfactory account of human beings’ racialist cognition has to integrate both approaches. In this paper, we propose to move toward this integration. We present an evolutionary hypothesis that rests on a distinction between …
In Defense of Reverse Inference
Reverse inference is the most commonly used inferential strategy for bringing images of brain activation to bear on psychological hypotheses, but its inductive validity has recently been questioned. In this article, I show that, when it is analyzed in likelihoodist terms, reverse inference does not suffer from the problems highlighted in the recent literature, and I defend the appropriateness of treating reverse inference in these terms. 1 Introd…
Racism
In this article, we argue that it can be fruitful for philosophers interested in the nature and moral significance of racism to pay more attention to psychology. We do this by showing that psychology provides new arguments against Garcia's views about the nature and moral significance of racism. We contend that some scientific studies of racial cognition undermine Garcia's moral and psychological monism about racism: Garcia disregards (1) the ric…
What Is a Replication
This article develops a new, general account of replication (the Resampling Account of replication). I argue that a replication is an experiment that resamples the experimental components of an original experiment that are treated as random factors and that the function of replications is, narrowly, to assess the reliability of the replicated experiments. On this basis, I argue that the common notion of conceptual replication is confused and that…
The Motives Underlying Stereotype-Based Discrimination Against Members of Stigmatized Groups
You Don't Know How You Think
The question ‘Is cognition linguistic?’ divides recent cognitive theories into two antagonistic groups. Sententialists claim that we think in some language, while advocates of non-linguistic views of cognition deny this claim. The Introspective Argument for Sententialism is one of the most appealing arguments for sententialism. In substance, it claims that the introspective fact of inner speech provides strong evidence that our thoughts are lingu…
If Folk Intuitions Vary, Then What
We have recently presented evidence for cross‐cultural variation in semantic intuitions and explored the implications of such variation for philosophical arguments that appeal to some theory of reference as a premise. Devitt (2011) and Ichikawa and colleagues (forthcoming) offer critical discussions of the experiment and the conclusions that can be drawn from it. In this response, we reiterate and clarify what we are really arguing for, and we sh…
Power and Negative Results
The use of power to infer null hypotheses from negative results has recently come under severe attack. In this article, I show that the power of a test can justify accepting the null hypothesis. This argument also gives us a new powerful reason for not treating p -values and power as measures of the strength of evidence
Dissociations in Neuropsychology and Cognitive Neuroscience
In this article, I compare the epistemic standing of the function-to-structure inferences found in cognitive neuroscience and of the inferences based on dissociations in neuropsychology. I argue that the former have a poorer epistemic standing than the latter
An Evidence-Based Study of the Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences
The disagreement between philosophers about the scientific worth of the evolutionary behavioral sciences (evolutionary psychology, human behavioral ecology, etc.) is in part due to the fact that critics and advocates of these sciences characterize them very differently. In this article, by analyzing quantitatively the citations made in the articles published in Evolution & Human Behavior between January 2000 and December 2002, we provide some evi…
Truetemp cooled down
In this paper, we report the results of three high-powered replication studies in experimental philosophy, which bear on an alleged instability of folk philosophical intuitions: the purported susceptibility of epistemic intuitions about the Truetemp case (Lehrer, Theory of knowledge. Westview Press, Boulder, 1990) to order effects. Evidence for this susceptibility was first reported by Swain et al. (Philos Phenomenol Res 76(1):138–155, 2008); fur…
Précis of Philosophy Within Its Proper Bounds
A deterministic worldview promotes approval of state paternalism
Massive Modularity and Brain Evolution
Quartz (2002) argues that some recent findings about the evolution of the brain (Finlay and Darlington 1995) are inconsistent with evolutionary psychologists’ massive modularity hypothesis. In substance, Quartz contends that since the volume of the neocortex evolved in a concerted manner, natural selection did not act on neocortical systems independently of one another, which is a necessary condition for cognition to be massively modular. In this…
Years of Psychology of Concepts
This article examines the notion of concept in psychology over the past century. Machery argues that psychologists have relied on two fundamentally different theoretical notions of concepts-the inferential and the representational views-and that each view has led to different operationalizations of concepts in empirical research. He analyzes the historical development of these views, highlighting the tensions and shifts in their application. Mach…
Beyond mind–body dualism
Two Dogmas of Neo-Empiricism
This article critically examines the contemporary resurgence of empiricism (or "neo-empiricism") in philosophy, psychology, neuropsychology, and artificial intelligence. This resurgence is an important and positive development. It is the first time that this centuries-old empiricist approach to cognition is precisely formulated in the context of cognitive science and neuroscience. Moreover, neo-empiricists have made several findings that challeng…
Return to reason
Semantics, cross-cultural style
Pour une approche évolutionniste de la cognition animale
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Concepts Are Not a Natural Kind
In cognitive psychology, concepts are those bodies of knowledge that are stored in long-term memory and are used by default in human beings’ higher cognitive processes (categorization, inductive and deductive reasoning, etc.). Most psychologists of concepts assume that these mental representations share many scientifically important properties, and the psychology of concepts is expected to describe those properties. Psychologists assume thereby t…
Social Construction and the Concept of Race
There has been little serious work to integrate the constructionist approach and the cognitive/evolutionary approach in the domain of race, although many researchers have paid lip service to this project. We believe that any satisfactory account of human beings’ racialist cognition has to integrate both approaches. In this paper, we propose to move toward this integration. We present an evolutionary hypothesis that rests on a distinction between …
You Don't Know How You Think
The question ‘Is cognition linguistic?’ divides recent cognitive theories into two antagonistic groups. Sententialists claim that we think in some language, while advocates of non-linguistic views of cognition deny this claim. The Introspective Argument for Sententialism is one of the most appealing arguments for sententialism. In substance, it claims that the introspective fact of inner speech provides strong evidence that our thoughts are lingu…
How to Split Concepts
In “Concepts Are Not a Natural Kind” (2005), I argued that the notion of concept in psychology and in neuropsychology fails to pick out a natural kind. Piccinini and Scott (2006, in this issue) have criticized the argument I used to support this conclusion. They also proposed two alternative arguments for a similar conclusion. In this reply, I rebut Piccinini and Scott's main objection against the argument proposed in “Concepts Are Not a Natural …
Essay Review
David Buller's recent book, Adapting Minds , is a philosophical critique of the field of evolutionary psychology. Buller argues that evolutionary psychology is utterly bankrupt from both a theoretical and an empirical point of view. Although Adapting Minds has been well received in both the academic press and the popular media, we argue that Buller's critique of evolutionary psychology fails
Two Dogmas of Neo-Empiricism
This article critically examines the contemporary resurgence of empiricism (or "neo-empiricism") in philosophy, psychology, neuropsychology, and artificial intelligence. This resurgence is an important and positive development. It is the first time that this centuries-old empiricist approach to cognition is precisely formulated in the context of cognitive science and neuroscience. Moreover, neo-empiricists have made several findings that challeng…
Naturalisme versus constructivisme
Peut-on penser autrement que de façon binaire les phénomènes - construits sociaux ou réalités naturelles ? Anthropologues, sociologues, historiens et philosophes invitent à surmonter l’opposition entre constructivisme et naturalisme, proposent des voies possibles. L’enjeu est pour les sciences sociales de relever le défi que leur posent aujourd’hui le néo-darwinisme et l’évolutionnisme des sciences de la vie. L’ambition ici est d’accompagner le m…
Massive Modularity and Brain Evolution
Quartz (2002) argues that some recent findings about the evolution of the brain (Finlay and Darlington 1995) are inconsistent with evolutionary psychologists’ massive modularity hypothesis. In substance, Quartz contends that since the volume of the neocortex evolved in a concerted manner, natural selection did not act on neocortical systems independently of one another, which is a necessary condition for cognition to be massively modular. In this…
Years of Psychology of Concepts
This article examines the notion of concept in psychology over the past century. Machery argues that psychologists have relied on two fundamentally different theoretical notions of concepts-the inferential and the representational views-and that each view has led to different operationalizations of concepts in empirical research. He analyzes the historical development of these views, highlighting the tensions and shifts in their application. Mach…
From Meehl to Fast and Frugal Heuristics (and Back)
It is difficult to overestimate Paul Meehl's influence on judgment and decision-making research. His `disturbing little book' (Meehl, 1986, p. 370) Clinical versus Statistical Prediction: A Theoretical Analysis and a Review of the Evidence (1954) is known as an attack on human judgment and a call for replacing clinicians with actuarial methods. More than 40 years later, fast and frugal heuristics—proposed as models of human judgment—were formaliz…
Doing without Concepts
"Over recent years, the psychology of concepts has been rejuvenated by new work on prototypes, inventive ideas on causal cognition, the development of neo-empiricist theories of concepts, and the inputs of the budding neuropsychology of concepts. But our empirical knowledge about concepts has yet to be organized in a coherent framework." "In Doing without Concepts, Edouard Machery argues that the dominant psychological theories of concepts fail t…
Racism
In this article, we argue that it can be fruitful for philosophers interested in the nature and moral significance of racism to pay more attention to psychology. We do this by showing that psychology provides new arguments against Garcia's views about the nature and moral significance of racism. We contend that some scientific studies of racial cognition undermine Garcia's moral and psychological monism about racism: Garcia disregards (1) the ric…
Against Arguments from Reference
It is common in various quarters of philosophy to derive philosophically significant conclusions from theories of reference. In this paper, we argue that philosophers should give up on such ‘arguments from reference.’ Intuitions play a central role in establishing theories of reference, and recent cross‐cultural work suggests that intuitions about reference vary across cultures and between individuals within a culture ( Machery et al. 2004 ). We …
The Motives Underlying Stereotype-Based Discrimination Against Members of Stigmatized Groups
Replies to Lombrozo, Piccinini, and Poirier and Beaulac
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Précis de Doing without Concepts
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The Oxford Handbook of Compositionality
Compositionality is a key concept in linguistics, the philosophy of mind and language, and throughout the cognitive sciences. Understanding how it works is a central element of syntactic and semantic analysis, and a challenge for models of cognition. In this book, scholars from every relevant field report on the state of the art in all aspects of the subject. They reveal the connections in different lines of research, and highlight its most chall…
On the relevance of folk intuitions
Formalizing the relationship between meaning and syntax
Reconceptualizing Human Nature
Why I stopped worrying about the definition of life… and why you should as well
Power and Negative Results
The use of power to infer null hypotheses from negative results has recently come under severe attack. In this article, I show that the power of a test can justify accepting the null hypothesis. This argument also gives us a new powerful reason for not treating p -values and power as measures of the strength of evidence
Philosophy (45 obras) · Epistemology (43 obras) · Psychology (36 obras) · Computer Science (24 obras) · Cognitive science (18 obras) · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment (15 obras) · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics (14 obras) · Metaphysics (13 obras) · Philosophy of science (11 obras) · Cognition (10 obras)