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03, 2020;44 (3): e12818.

Teleological Essentialism: Generalized.

David Rose, Shaun Nichols
Author Information
  1. David Rose: Department of Philosophy, Florida State University.
  2. Shaun Nichols: Department of Philosophy, Cornell University.
PMID: 32090376 DOI: 10.1111/cogs.12818

Abstract

Natural/social kind essentialism is the view that natural kind categories, both living and non-living natural kinds, as well as social kinds (e.g., race, gender), are essentialized. On this view, artifactual kinds are not essentialized. Our view-teleological essentialism-is that a broad range of categories are essentialized in terms of teleology, including artifacts. Utilizing the same kinds of experiments typically used to provide evidence of essentialist thinking-involving superficial change (study 1), transformation of insides (study 2), and inferences about offspring (study 3)-we find support for the view that a broad range of categories-living natural kinds, non-living natural kinds, and artifactual kinds-are essentialized in terms of teleology. Study 4 tests a unique prediction of teleological essentialism and also provides evidence that people make inferences about purposes which in turn guide categorization judgments.

Keywords

Artifacts Essentialism Natural kinds Teleology

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MeSH Term

Adolescent
Adult
Aged
Artifacts
Concept Formation
Female
Humans
Judgment
Male
Middle Aged
Models, Psychological
Young Adult
Journal Article
Article has an altmetric score of 1

Word Cloud

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