Edouard Machery (2017) argues that many traditional philosophical questions are beyond our capacity to answer. Answering them seems to require using the method of cases, a method that involves testing answers to philosophical questions against what we think about real or imagined cases. The problem, according to Machery, is that this method has proved unreliable; what we think about these kinds of cases is both problematically heterogeneous and volatile. His bold solution: abandon the method of cases altogether and with it many of the questions that we have come to associate with philosophy itself. Many of the critical responses to Machery’s book have focused on whether empirical work on judgements about philosophical cases supports his claim that the method of cases is unreliable. Our problem with these responses is that they accept that reliability is the right way to frame empirically informed concerns about the method of cases, and we think that it is not. The reason is simple: the kind of unreliability thesis that Machery needs proves to be empirically intractable, at least by anything like the current methods used by experimental philosophers, or so we shall argue here. While we have empirical grounds for thinking that unreliability arguments don’t give us reason to abandon the method of cases, we do think that there are empirical grounds for thinking that it needs to be reformed. There are other standards that we expect our methods to meet beyond mere reliability, especially standards of practical rationality, which are too often forgotten in metaphilosophical discussions that tend to focus exclusively on epistemological considerations. Methodological considerations, after all, are not just matters of epistemic normativity, but practical rationality as well. What’s more, considerations of practical rationality become particularly important when we move from the kind of extreme scepticism that Machery endorses to the kind of progressive reformation that we think should be pursued. And so we conclude by arguing that thinking about philosophical inquiry in terms of standards of practical rationality allows us both to better understand what kinds of problems recent empirical work on philosophical cognition raises for the method of cases and also how that work can point the way to reforming it.

中文翻译：

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您只是不能指望（联合国）可靠性

爱德华·马切里（Edouard Machery，2017）认为，许多传统的哲学问题超出了我们的回答能力。要回答这些问题似乎需要使用案例方法，该方法涉及根据我们对真实或想象中的案例的思考来检验哲学问题的答案。根据Machery的说法，问题在于这种方法已被证明不可靠; 我们对这类情况的看法既有问题，也有多变性。他大胆的解决方案是：完全摒弃案例方法，并抛弃与哲学本身相关的许多问题。对马切里的书的许多批判性回应都集中在对哲学案例的判断进行的实证研究是否支持他关于案例方法不可靠的主张。这些回应的问题在于，他们接受可靠性是构筑对案例方法以经验为依据的关注的正确方法，而我们认为并非如此。原因很简单：至少从类似于实验哲学家目前使用的方法之类的东西上，证明了马切里需要的那种不可靠的论点在经验上是棘手的，否则我们将在这里论证。尽管我们有经验依据，认为不可靠的论据并没有给我们放弃个案方法的理由，但我们确实认为，有经验依据认为需要对其进行改革。我们希望我们的方法能够满足其他一些标准，而不仅仅是可靠性，尤其是实践理性，这在元哲学讨论中常常被遗忘，这些讨论往往只集中在认识论的考虑上。毕竟，方法论上的考虑不仅是认知规范上的问题，而且也是实践上的合理性。而且，当我们从Machery认可的极端怀疑主义转向我们认为应该进行的渐进式改革时，对实践合理性的考虑变得尤为重要。因此，我们通过争论得出结论，以实践合理性标准来思考哲学探究，使我们不仅可以更好地理解近期关于哲学认知的实证研究为案例方法带来了哪些问题，而且该研究如何指出了解决问题的方法。改革它。