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The causes of characteristic properties: Insides versus categories

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2014

Michael Strevens
Michael Strevens*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, New York University, New York, NY 10003. strevens@nyu.eduhttp://www.strevens.org
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Abstract

Cimpian & Salomon (C&S) propose that the inherence heuristic, a tendency to explain the behavior and other properties of things in terms of their intrinsic characteristics, precedes and explains “essentialist thinking” about natural kinds. This commentary reviews evidence that it is rather essentialism (or something like it) that precedes the assumption of inherence, and suggests that essentialism can do without the inherence heuristic altogether.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 37 , Issue 5 , October 2014 , pp. 502 - 503
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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References

Keil, F. C. (1989) Concepts, kinds, and cognitive development. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Strevens, M. (2000) The essentialist aspect of naive theories. Cognition 74:149–75.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed