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Essentialism, Externalism, and Human Nature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 April 2012

M.J. Cain
M.J. Cain
Affiliation:
Oxford Brookes [email protected]
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Extract

Psychological essentialism is a prominent view within contemporary developmental psychology and cognitive science according to which children have an innate commitment to essentialism. If this view is correct then a commitment to essentialism is an important aspect of human nature rather than a culturally specific commitment peculiar to those who have received a specific philosophical or scientific education. In this article my concern is to explore the philosophical significance of psychological essentialism with respect to the relationship between the content of our concepts and thoughts and the nature of the extra-cranial world. I will argue that, despite first appearances, psychological essentialism undermines a form of externalism that has become commonplace in the philosophy of mind and language.

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Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 70 , July 2012 , pp. 29 - 51
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2012

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References

1 This latter view of essentialism is endorsed by Fodor, Jerry in Concepts: Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Historical advocates of essentialism include Aristotle and Locke. Perhaps the most prominent recent champions of essentialism are Kripke, S., Naming and Necessity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980)Google Scholar and Putnam, H., ‘The meaning of “meaning”’, in his Mind, Language and Reality: Philosophical Papers Volume 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975)Google Scholar.

3 See Ellis, , The Philosophy of Nature: A Guide to the New Essentialism, (Cheshum: Acumen, 2002)Google Scholar and Mackie, J.L., How Things Might Have Been, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006)Google Scholar for a more detailed account of this distinction.

4 S. Gelman, , The Essential Child. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003) is clear on this pointCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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6 Keil, F., Concepts, Kinds, and Cognitive Development. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

7 S. Gelman, The Essential Child, op. cit.

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10 See Gelman, S., ‘Psychological Essentialism in Children’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8 (2004) 404–409Google Scholar, and Carey, S., The Origin of Concepts. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009) ch 13Google Scholar, for helpful overviews.

11 F. Keil, Concepts, Kinds, and Cognitive Development, op. cit.

12 A number of philosophers and cognitive scientists have utilized a commitment of psychological essentialism in addressing philosophical issues. For example, Laurence, S. and Margolis, E., (‘Radical Concept Nativism’ Cognition 86 (2002), 25–55)Google Scholar and S. Carey, (The Origin of Concepts, op. cit.) employ psychological essentialism in seeking to undermine Jerry Fodor's argument for radical concept nativism. (Fodor, J., The Language of Thought. (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1975Google Scholar); Fodor, J., ‘The Present State of the Innateness Debate’ in his Representations (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981)Google Scholar; and J. Fodor, Concepts, op. cit.). And Prinz, J., (Furnishing the Mind (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002))Google Scholar appeals to psychological essentialism in motivating his proxytype theory of concepts.

13 This way of characterizing the debate between externalists and internalists might seem to be problematic as it assumes a materialist or physicalist view of the mind when Descartes, that paradigmatic advocate of internalism, was a dualist. My reply is that this characterization will work for present purposes as most contemporary externalists reject dualism. See Farkas, K., The Subject's Point of View, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008)Google Scholar and Williamson, T., Knowledge and its Limits (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)Google Scholar for an attempt to characterise the debate in a manner that doesn't presuppose materialism or physicalism.

14 However there are critics. For example: Crane, T., ‘All The Difference in the World’, Philosophical Quarterly 41 (1991), 1–25Google Scholar; Chomsky, N., New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)Google Scholar; Segal, G., A Slim Book About Narrow Content, (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000)Google Scholar; Wikforss, A.S. ‘Social Externalism and Coneptual Errors’, Philosophical Quarterly 51 (2001) 217–3Google Scholar; and K. Farkas, The Subject's Point of View, op. cit.

15 For a helpful overview see Braun, D., ‘Names and Natural Kind Terms’. In LePore, E. and Smith, B.C. (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Language, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006)Google Scholar.

16 For example, Rowlands, M., Externalism (Cheshum: Acumen, 2003)Google Scholar and Wilson, R., Boundaries of the Mind: The Individual in the Fragile Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

17 ‘The Meaning of “Meaning”’, op. cit, 225.

18 Ibid., 235.

19 Ibid., 243.

20 Ibid, 232.

21 S. Kripke, Naming and Necessity, op. cit. T Burge, ‘Individualism and the Mental’, In French, P.A., Ueling, T.E. Jr. And Wettstein, H.K. (eds), Midwest Studies in Philosophy IV, (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1979, 73–121)Google Scholar.

22 Rosch, E., ‘Principles of Categorization.’ In Rosch, E. and Lloyd, B. B. (eds.) Cognition and Categorization (Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1978)Google Scholar. Rips, L. J., Shoben, E.J. and Smith, E.E., ‘Semantic Distance and the Verification of Semantic Relations’, Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 12 (1973), 1–20Google Scholar. Hampton, J.A., ‘Polymorphous Concepts in Semantic Memory’, Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 18 (1979), 441–461Google Scholar.

23 This point is emphasized by both J. Prinz, Furnishing the Mind, op. cit. and S. Gelman, The Essential Child, op. cit.

24 Medin, D.L. and Shaffer, M.M., ‘Context Theory of Classification Learning’, Psychological Review 85 (1978), 207–238CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Something like this line of thought is presented by Susan Carey, The Origin of Concepts, op. cit. who, following Ned Block (‘Advertisement for a Semantics for Psychology’. In French, P.A. (ed.) Midwest Studies in Philosophy (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1986)Google Scholar) endorses a two-factor theory of concepts.

26 S. Gelman, The Essential Child, op. cit.

27 S. Carey, The Origin of Concepts, op. cit.

28 None of this is to say that the psychological essentialist is compelled to deny the existence of prototypes. For, she can accept that such structures exist and are routinely employed in making categorization decisions on the hoof so long as she resists identifying them with the concepts that they so help deploy.

29 Devitt, M. and Sterelny, K., Language and Reality, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987)Google Scholar.

30 M. Devitt and K. Sterelny, Language and Reality, op. cit.

31 For example, Paul Bloom, Descartes' Baby, op. cit.