FriSem

David Rose, PhD Student, Department of Psychology, Stanford University

2021 Cognition Fall First-Year Project Student

Title: Teleological essentialism

Abstract: A range of work suggests that we represent categories, such as bees, in terms of essences, where an essence is the property that an individual possesses that makes it a member of the kind. If we do essentialize categories, then this raises the question of what we associate with the essence of a category. I will set out some of the space of theoretical options concerning essences and locate what I take to be the standard view of essences in the psychological literature.  Though this standard view has been—for at least the past 30 years—the dominant view of essences in the psychological literature, I will present evidence for a new and alternative view, what I call teleological essentialism.