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Department of |
History and Philosophy of Science |
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Edouard Machery |
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Assistant
Professor of Philosophy My research centers on the theoretical
issues that are raised by psychology and cognitive science. I focus particularly
on the following themes: Concepts: The class of concepts divides into several kinds
of data structures that are very different from each other. The notion of
concept is at best useless to study the mind. I have pushed this idea in my
French dissertation and I have now finished a book on the topic (Forthcoming
with Oxford University Press). Evolution, Culture and Cognition: Cognition is the product of evolution.
Nonetheless, cognition does not boil down to a toolkit of domain-specific,
canalized systems. We have evolved to acquire a substantial part of our
psychological endowment by cultural transmission. I have a strong interest in
the interactions between evolved cognition and culture in the moral and
social domains. I have for instance been working on the nature and origins of
racial categorization. Experimental philosophy: in many areas, e.g., moral philosophy, semantics
etc., philosophical arguments rest often on untested empirical assumptions. Testing
these empirical assumptions may ground far-reaching conclusions (see at the
bottom of this page). Philosophy: Philosophy without science is blind. Criticizing
confused notions, assumptions and controversies within philosophy and within science is one of the few
decent functions of philosophy. Media coverage of my work For a description of my education, the
complete list of publications, etc., see my CV.
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Contact Information |
University of Pittsburgh Tel: + (1) 412 624 5883 Fax: + (1) 412 624 6825 |
Books |
Machery, E., forthcoming, Doing
Without Concepts, Werning, M.,
Hinzen, W., & Machery, E. under contract, The Oxford Handbook of Compositionality. |
Selected
Articles
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UNDER REVIEW The Vernacular Concept of Innateness, with Paul Griffiths and Stefan Linquist. How to study Folk
Intuitions about Phenomenal Consciousness, with Justin Sytsma. Simple Heuristics for Concept Combination (with L. Lederer). In M. Werning, W. Hinzen, and E.
Machery (Eds.), The Two Conceptions of Subjective Experience, with Justin Sytsma. FORTHCOMING Machery, E. Philosophy of Psychology. In F. Allhoff (Ed.), Philosophy of the Special Sciences.
SUNY Press. Machery, E. A plea for human nature. Philosophical Psychology. Mallon, R., Machery, E., Nichols, S., &
Stich, S. Against
Arguments from Reference. Philosophy
and Phenomenological Research. Katsikopoulos, K., Pachur, T., Machery, E.,
& Wallin, A. From Meehl (1954) to Fast
and Frugal Heuristics (And Back): New Insights into How to Bridge the
Clinical-Actuarial Divide. Theory
& Psychology. Fessler, D., & Machery, E. Culture and Cognition. In E.
Margolis, S. Laurence and S. Stich (Eds.),
Kelly, D., Machery, E., & Mallon, R. Racial Cognition and Normative Theory. Machery, E. Discovery and Confirmation in Evolutionary
Psychology. In J. Prinz (ed.), Machery, E. Massive
Modularity and Brain Evolution. Philosophy
of Science. 2008 Machery, E. Modularity and the Flexibility of Human
Cognition. Mind &
Language, 23, 263-272. Machery, E. 2008. The Folk
Concept of Intentional Action: Philosophical and Experimental Issues.
Mind & Language, 23, 165-189. 2007 Livengood, J., & Machery, E. 2007. The Folk Probably Don’t Think What You Think They Think: Experiments on
Causation by Absence. Machery, E. 2007. Concept Empiricism: A
Methodological Critique. Cognition,
104, 19-46. Machery, E. 2007. 100 Years of Psychology of
Concepts: The Theoretical Notion of Concept and Its Operationalization.
Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences,
38, 63-84. Machery, E. 2007.
Review of Robert J. Stainton, Words and Thoughts: Subsentences,
Ellipsis, and the Philosophy of Language. Notre Dame
Philosophical Reviews. 2006 Machery, E. 2006. How to
Split Concepts. Reply to Piccinini and Scott. Philosophy of Science, 73, 410-418. Machery, E., & Barrett, C. 2006. Debunking Adapting Minds. Philosophy of Science, 73, 232-246. Machery, E. 2006. Two Dogmas of
Neo-Empiricism. Philosophy
Compass, 1, 4, 398-412. Machery, E. 2006.
Review of A. Zilhao, ed., Evolution, Rationality and Cognition.
Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. Kelly, D., Machery, E., Mallon, R., Mason,
K., & Stich, S. P. 2006, The Role of
Psychology in the Study of Culture. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 29, 4, 355. 2005 Machery, E., & Faucher, L. 2005. Social Construction and the Concept of Race. Philosophy
of Science, 1208-1219. Machery, E., & Faucher, L. 2005. Why do we Think Racially?. In H. Cohen and C.
Lefebvre (eds.), Handbook of Categorization in Cognitive Science, Elsevier
(pp. 1009-1033). Machery, E. 2005. Concepts are Not a Natural Kind. Philosophy
of Science, 72, 444-467. Machery, E. 2005. You don’t Know How you Think: Introspection and Language
of Thought. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 56, 469-485. Machery, E., Kelly, D., & Stich, S. P.
2005. Moral
Realism and Cross-Cultural Normative Diversity, Comment on Henrich et al.,
Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 28,
6, 830. Machery, E. 2005. Review of R. Boyd and P.
Richerson, The Origin and Evolution of
Cultures. Notre Dame
Philosophical Reviews. 2004 Machery, E., Mallon, R., Nichols, S., &
Stich, S. P. 2004. Semantics,
Cross-cultural Style. Cognition, 92, 3, B1-B12. NB: Please, quote only the
published versions of these articles. |
Works in Preparation |
Trusting and
Punishing Artifacts, with Lévan
Sardjevéladzé, under revision. The
Natural History of Morality. The Concept of Intentional Action in Asperger Syndrome, with T. Zalla. The Bleak Implications of Moral Psychology. Do we Talk to be Relevant? How Null Hypothesis Testing Obstructs
Progress in Psychology. |
Conference Organizations |
Adaptations in Psychology and in Biology,
First meeting of the IHPST (Paris)/HPS-Center for Philosophy of Science
(Pittsburgh) Workshop Series, Paris, June 4-5, 2008. Bi-annual meeting of the Moral Psychology
Research Group, Member of the program committee for the
annual congress of the Human Behavior &
Evolution Society (HBES 2004), NAC 2004: New Aspects of Compositionality,
Paris, June, 18-20, 2004, coorganized with Pr. M.
Werning (financial support: the RESCIF, the Ecole Normale Superieure, Department
of Cognitive Studies, the University of Paris-Sorbonne, and the Institut Jean-Nicod) CoCoCo: Compositionality, Concepts, and Cognition,
Düsseldorf, February, 28-March, 3, 2004, coorganized
with Pr. M. Werning and Pr. G. Schurz (financial support: the Thyssen Foundation and the University Heinrich-Heine of
Düsseldorf) |
Forthcoming &
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Two Conceptions of Subjective Experience,
Society for Philosophy and Psychology (with Justin Sytsma), June 25-29, 2008. Comments on Nadelhoffer and Feltz, June 25-29, 2008. Intuitions about consciousness, Pre-SPP
Workshop on Experimental Philosophy, Three Neuroscientific Arguments against the
Massive Modularity Hypothesis, Adaptations in Psychology and in Biology, Why Morality did Not Evolve, Workshop on
Moral Psychology, Three Neuroscientific Arguments against the
Massive Modularity Hypothesis, Commentary, What
we all think about knowing: Cross-cultural uniformity and diversity in
epistemic assessments, The Bleak Implications of Moral Psychology,
Workshop on A. Appiah’s Experiments in Ethics, The Folk Concept of Race, New Perspectives
in Race Theory, Session Author-Meets-Critics on J.L. Dessalles’s Why we
Talk?, APA Central Division, The Folk Concept of Race, APA Central
Division, Two Concepts of Subjective Experience,
UCSC, March 6, 2008. Is the Concept of Race a By-Product of our
Evolved Coalitional Cognition?, John Hopkins, February 28, 2008. How Null Hypothesis Testing Obstructs
Progress in Psychology, Center for Philosophy of Science, 48th
Annual Lecture Series, |
Experimental
Philosophy
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The annual meeting of the Society for Philosophy
and Psychology organizes a pre-conference workshop on experimental philosophy
(June 25-26). See here. Edouard Machery, Joshua Knobe, and Tania
Lombrozo are editing a special issue of The
European Review of Philosophy dedicated to experimental philosophy.
Deadline: September 01, 2008. Call for Paper here.
Introduction to
experimental philosophy
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Psychology Today (Experiments in
Philosophy) Brains,
On Mind and Related Matter |
Links |
People I have been
working with, places, links… |
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