Against Teleological Essentialism

Neufeld, Eleonore

doi:10.1111/cogs.12961

Cited by 10 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…This perspective can explain both why people are puzzled about cases where only a creature's telos or only its insides changed (see Experiment 2), and why their intuitions about 'insides' changes appear more stable than their intuitions about telos changes (see Experiments 3a-b). Thus, consistent with the argument made by Neufeld (2021), we find that the effects observed by Rose & Nichols (2019) may in fact be consistent with standard views of essentialism.…”

Section: Scientific Vs Teleological Essentialismsupporting

confidence: 91%

“…We present participants with simplified vignettes in an effort to minimize the extent to which they may infer any additional changes, and find that (at least in some cases) information about 'insides' changing matters more to people's essence judgments than information about teleology. Across these experiments, we have opted to focus on the canonical example of a bee-turned-spider because this example speaks most meaningfully to the broader debate on essentialism (see Neufeld, 2021). That is, for artifacts, unlike animals, category membership based on functions makes more sense as a general principle, and does not pose any challenge to the view of scientific essentialism more broadly.…”

Section: Current Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Are we Teleologically Essentialist?

Joo

Yousif

2022

Cognitive Science

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People may conceptualize certain categories as held together by a category-specific 'essence'-some unobservable, critical feature that causes the external features of a category to emerge. Yet there remains an open question about what comprises this essence. Recently, Rose and Nichols have argued that this essence is comprised of tele, or purposes, (and, in turn, that teleology is the internal force that gives rise to external features). However, Neufeld has challenged this work on theoretical grounds, arguing that these effects arise only because people infer an underlying internal change when reasoning about a change in telos. On Neufeld's view, it is the underlying internal cause, and not the telos itself, that serves as an essence (consistent with classic views of scientific essentialism). Here, we ask: Is teleology the primary force behind psychological essentialism? We begin by successfully replicating Rose and Nichols' key findings in support of teleological essentialism. In two further experiments, however, we demonstrate that teleology may not the central way that people understand the essences of living things: Internal changes matter at least as much as changes to teleology. These findings suggest that while teleology may be one important cue to category membership and the essences of living things, it may be premature to say that we are 'teleologically essentialist.'

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Section: Scientific Vs Teleological Essentialismsupporting

confidence: 91%

Section: Current Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Are we Teleologically Essentialist?

Joo

Yousif

2022

Cognitive Science

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“…In response, Neufeld (2021) has argued that Rose and Nichols' results are directly predicted by standard psychological essentialism. According to her, their experiments don't rule out that participants simply use information about the ‘telos’ to reason diagnostically about scientific essences, which is why telos affects category judgements.…”

Section: New Theoretical Developmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Psychological essentialism and the structure of concepts

Neufeld

2022

Philosophy Compass

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Psychological essentialism is the hypothesis that humans represent some categories as having an underlying essence that unifies members of a category and is causally responsible for their typical attributes and behaviors. Throughout the past several decades, psychological essentialism has emerged as an extremely active area of research in cognitive science. More recently, it has also attracted attention from philosophers, who put the empirical results to use in many different philosophical areas, ranging from philosophy of mind and cognitive science to social philosophy. This article aims to give philosophers who are new to the topic an overview of the key empirical findings surrounding psychological essentialism, and some of the ways the hypothesis and its related findings have been discussed, extended, and applied in philosophical research.

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“…Participants judged that the resulting entity was now a spider because it had the functional essence of a spider (when Suzy made the bee look like a spider but preserved its bee-functions, they judged that it remained a bee). Rose and Nichols (2020) have also argued that adults essentialize other living species (e.g., vultures and hummingbirds), as well as non-living natural kinds (coal, magnetite) and artifacts (clocks, hot plates), in terms of their function (but see Neufeld, 2021).…”

Section: The Pervasiveness Of Teleological Beliefsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The moral consequences of teleological beliefs about the human species

Lewry¹,

Kelemen²,

Lombrozo³

2021

Preprint

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People often endorse explanations that appeal to purpose, even when these ‘teleological’ explanations are scientifically unwarranted (e.g., “water exists so that life can survive on Earth”). In the present research, we explore teleological endorsement in a novel domain—human purpose—and its relationship to moral judgments. Across four studies, we address three questions: (1) Do people believe the human species exists for a purpose? (2) Do these beliefs drive moral condemnation of individuals who fail to fulfill this purpose? And if so, (3) what explains the link between teleological beliefs and moral condemnation? Study 1 (N=188) found that many adults endorsed anthropic teleology (e.g., that humans exist in order to procreate), and that these beliefs correlated with moral condemnation of purpose violations (e.g., judging those who do not procreate immoral). Study 2 (N=199) found evidence of a bi-directional causal relationship: teleological claims about a species resulted in moral condemnation of purpose violations, and stipulating that an action is immoral increased judgments that the species exists for that purpose. Study 3 (N=94) replicated a causal effect of species-level purpose on moral condemnation with novel actions and more implicit character judgments. Study 4 (N=52) found that when a species is believed to exist to perform some action, participants infer that the action is good for the species, and that this belief in turn supports moral condemnation of individuals who choose not to perform the action. Together, these findings shed light on how our descriptive understanding can shape our prescriptive judgments.

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Against Teleological Essentialism

Cited by 10 publications

References 22 publications

Are we Teleologically Essentialist?

Are we Teleologically Essentialist?

Psychological essentialism and the structure of concepts

The moral consequences of teleological beliefs about the human species

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