• Doubling down on the nomological notion of human nature
    In Elizabeth Hannon & Tim Lewens (eds.), Why We Disagree About Human Nature, Oxford University Press. 2018.
  •  104
    The Method of Cases’ Feet of Clay
    Analysis 82 (2): 335-343. 2022.
  •  12
    Response to Chris Crandall and John Symons
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 65 (5): 615-630. 2022.
    ABSTRACT 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.
  •  131
    Demographic Differences in Philosophical Intuition: a Reply to Joshua Knobe
    Review of Philosophy and Psychology 14 (2): 401-434. 2023.
    In a recent paper, Joshua Knobe (2019) offers a startling account of the metaphilosophical implications of findings in experimental philosophy. We argue that Knobe’s account is seriously mistaken, and that it is based on a radically misleading portrait of recent work in experimental philosophy and cultural psychology.
  •  273
    In this paper, we call for a new approach to the psychology of free will attribution. While past research in experimental philosophy and psychology has mostly been focused on reasoning- based judgment (“the courtroom approach”), we argue that like agency and mindedness, free will can also be experienced perceptually (“the perceptual approach”). We further propose a new model of free will attribution—the agency model—according to which the experience of free will is elicited by the perceptual cue…Read more
  •  36
    A mistaken confidence in data
    European Journal for Philosophy of Science 11 (2): 1-17. 2021.
    In this paper I explore an underdiscussed factor contributing to the replication crisis: Scientists, and following them policy makers, often neglect sources of errors in the production and interpretation of data and thus overestimate what can be learnt from them. This neglect leads scientists to conduct experiments that are insufficiently informative and science consumers, including other scientists, to put too much weight on experimental results. The former leads to fragile empirical literature…Read more
  •  31
    Philosophy Within Its Proper Bounds By Edouard Machery
    Analysis 80 (4): 735-737. 2020.
  •  42
    I am grateful for Joshua Alexander and Jonathan Weinberg’s, Avner Baz’s and Max Deutsch’s insightful comments on Philosophy Within Its Proper Bounds. I have lea.
  •  53
    An Evidence-Based Study of the Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences
    with Kara Cohen
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 63 (1): 177-226. 2012.
    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 evidence that undermines the characterization of the …Read more
  •  27
    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 predicates.
  •  30
    Responses to Herman Cappelen and Jennifer Nado
    Philosophical Studies 179 (1): 329-342. 2020.
  •  31
    Précis of philosophy within its proper bounds
    Philosophical Studies 179 (1): 305-307. 2020.
  •  104
    What Is a Replication?
    Philosophy of Science 87 (4): 545-567. 2020.
    This article develops a new, general account of replication. I argue that a replication is an experiment that resamples the experimental components of an ori...
  •  339
    Concepts are not a natural kind
    Philosophy of Science 72 (3): 444-467. 2005.
    In cognitive psychology, concepts are those data structures that are stored in long-term memory and are used by default in human beings.
  •  598
    Love and Power: Grau and Pury (2014) as a Case Study in the Challenges of X-Phi Replication
    with Christopher Grau and Cynthia L. Pury
    Review of Philosophy and Psychology (4): 1-17. 2020.
    Grau and Pury (Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 5, 155–168, 2014) reported that people’s views about love are related to their views about reference. This surprising effect was however not replicated in Cova et al.’s (in press) replication study. In this article, we show that the replication failure is probably due to the replication’s low power and that a metaanalytic reanalysis of the result in Cova et al. suggests that the effect reported in Grau and Pury is real. We then report a large, …Read more
  •  365
    You Don't Know How You Think: Introspection and Language of Thought
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 56 (3): 469-485. 2005.
    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 linguistic. This article challenges this argument. I c…Read more
  •  31
    Response to Akagi, Hughes, and Springle (review)
    International Journal of Philosophical Studies 27 (4): 608-623. 2019.
    I am extremely grateful to Mikio Akagi, Nick Hughes, and Alison Springle for their insightful and challenging comments on Philosophy Within Its Proper Bounds (Machery 2017). In this response, I wil...
  •  18
    Precis of Philosophy Within Its Proper Bounds (review)
    International Journal of Philosophical Studies 27 (4): 581-584. 2019.
    Volume 27, Issue 4, October 2019, Page 581-584.
  •  21
    Exploring the Folkbiological Conception of Human Nature
    with Stefan Linquist, Paul E. Griffiths, and Karola Stotz
    Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences 366 (1563): 444. 2011.
    Integrating the study of human diversity into the human evolutionary sciences requires substantial revision of traditional conceptions of a shared human nature. This process may be made more difficult by entrenched, 'folkbiological' modes of thought. Earlier work by the authors suggests that biologically naive subjects hold an implicit theory according to which some traits are expressions of an animal's inner nature while others are imposed by its environment. In this paper, we report further st…Read more
  •  17
    Representational systems such as language, mind and perhaps even the brain exhibit a structure that is often assumed to be compositional. That is, the semantic value of a complex representation is determined by the semantic value of their parts and the way they are put together. Dating back to the late 19th century, the principle of compositionality has regained wide attention recently. Since the principle has been dealt with very differently across disciplines, the aim of the two volumes is to …Read more
  •  35
    The Alpha War
    Review of Philosophy and Psychology 12 (1): 75-99. 2019.
    Benjamin et al. Nature Human Behavior 2, 6–10 proposed decreasing the significance level by an order of magnitude to improve the replicability of psychology. This modest, practical proposal has been widely criticized, and its prospects remain unclear. This article defends this proposal against these criticisms and highlights its virtues.
  •  27
    This chapter contains sections titled: Abstract Introduction Semantics, Cross ‐ Cultural Style Metalinguistic and Linguistic Intuitions Speaker's Reference and Semantic Reference The Vacuity of Ontological Disagreements Conclusion References.
  • The concept of intentional action in high-functioning autism
    with Tiziana Zalla
    In Tania Lombrozo, Joshua Knobe & Shaun Nichols (eds.), Oxford Studies in Experimental Philosophy, Volume 1, Oxford. pp. 152-172. 2014.
  •  37
    The normative sense: What is universal? What Varies?
    In Aaron Zimmerman, Karen Jones & Mark Timmons (eds.), Routledge Handbook on Moral Epistemology, Routledge. 2018.
    The extent to which normative cognition varies across cultures has implications for a number of important philosophical questions. This chapter examines several striking commonalities and differences in normative cognition across cultures. We focus on cross-cultural commonality and difference in norm typologies (especially the moral-conventional distinction); the externalization of norms; which aspects of life are normativized; and some of the concepts and principles associated with the normativ…Read more
  •  31
    A deterministic worldview promotes approval of state paternalism
    with Ivar Hannikainen, Gabriel Cabral, and Noel Struchiner
    Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 70 251-259. 2017.
    The proper limit to paternalist regulation of citizens' private lives is a recurring theme in political theory and ethics. In the present study, we examine the role of beliefs about free will and determinism in attitudes toward libertarian versus paternalist policies. Throughout five studies we find that a scientific deterministic worldview reduces opposition toward paternalist policies, independent of the putative influence of political ideology. We suggest that exposure to scientific explanati…Read more
  •  109
    Creating Scientific Concepts, by Nancy J. Nersessian
    with Hyundeuk Cheon
    Mind 119 (475): 838-844. 2010.
    (No abstract is available for this citation)