Psychological essentialism

Psychological essentialism.

Keil argues for a theory of psychological essentialism. He’s not the only one who makes this argument – Susan Gelman is a particularly strong proponent of this view as well. At its heart, psychological essentialism is the idea that we act on the world as if certain objects have “essences”—special, unseen entities, intrinsic to the objects that give those objects its defining characteristics. That is, there is something that makes a lemon a lemon, and something that makes a tiger a tiger. Critically, we do not reason about all objects as if they have these essences, only a certain kind of object: Natural Kinds—or objects that exist in nature. Keil in particular contrasts natural kinds with man-made objects (called artifacts).

Important to note: what makes this psychological is not a belief about whether these objects actually have essences. Whether a tiger has a specific tiger essence that makes it a tiger is a metaphysical question, which is for the philosophers to decide. Rather, for our purposes, we are interested in whether children act as if certain kinds of concepts have an essence. This view does not commit us to stating that children (or adults) believe that tigers have essences, just that they act as if they do have essences. The former is a philosophical question—the latter is a psychological one.

Question: What is your reaction to Keli’s book (1989) Chapters 8 and 9. Evaluating Keil’s experiments in light of these ideas about psychological essentialism.