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Does the inherence heuristic take us to psychological essentialism?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2014

Anna Marmodoro
Affiliation:
Faculty of Philosophy, Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 4JF, United Kingdom. anna.marmodoro@philosophy.ox.ac.ukhttp://www.power-structuralism.ox.ac.uk/home
Robin A. Murphy
Affiliation:
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3UD, United Kingdom. robin.murphy@psy.ox.ac.ukhttp://psy.medsci.ox.ac.uk/research/associative-learning-laboratory
A. G. Baker
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, McGill University, Montreal, QC H3A 1B1, Canada. andy.baker@mcgill.ca

Abstract

We argue that the claim that essence-based causal explanations emerge, hydra-like, from an inherence heuristic is incomplete. No plausible mechanism for the transition from concrete properties, or cues, to essences is provided. Moreover, the fundamental shotgun and storytelling mechanisms of the inherence heuristic are not clearly enough specified to distinguish them, developmentally, from associative or causal networks.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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