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Not so fast, and not so easy: Essentialism doesn't emerge from a simple heuristic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2014

Nick Braisby*
Affiliation:
School of Psychology, Social Work and Human Sciences, University of West London, London W5 5RF, United Kingdom. nick.braisby@uwl.ac.ukhttp://www.uwl.ac.uk/about-us/how-university-works/biographies/professor-nick-braisby

Abstract

Cimpian & Salomon's (C&S's) proposal comes unstuck on precisely the claim that inherence is an heuristic, able to deliver simple, shallow outputs that are right most of the time. Instead, the inherence heuristic delivers outputs that imply it is not an heuristic after all, and is simply too fast and too easy a mechanism to do the job of explaining categorisations.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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