The Essentialist Aspect of Naive Theories - Michael Strevens

Pure essentialism may be represented in pictorial form as a diagram imputing
a certain structure to a naive theory. A fragment of naive biology,
according to the essentialist hypothesis, has the structure shown in figure 1.
Ferocity
Being a tiger
Essence of
tigerhood
Stripes
Figure 1: A pure essentialist theory
In this figure, the octagonal box represents a kind-defining essence, the rectangular
box the kind it defines, and the rounded boxes characteristic observable
properties of that kind. The arrows represent causation. The dashed
line represents a semantic, or defining, link: an animal is considered to be
a tiger—that is, to be a member of the natural kind “tiger”—if and only
if it has the essence of tigerhood. I should emphasize that on the pure hypothesis,
the naive essentialist may have no opinion as to what essences actually
are. Their essentialism consists in their thinking that essences exist—
whatever they may be—and that they play the category-defining and causal
roles illustrated in figure 1.
1.2 Statistical Essentialism
Another version of the essentialist hypothesis appears in Medin and Ortony
(1989). Medin and Ortony agree with the pure essentialist hypothesis that,
although humans may not know anything about a category’s essence, they
believe that there is such an essence. 4 The authors say that in such a situation,
the thinker’s theory has an essence placeholder. 5 This placeholder is
eventually replaced by a representation of the nature of the essence, if such
knowledge is acquired.
4. “ . . . we are claiming . . . that people find it natural to assume, or act as though, concepts
have essences” (Medin & Ortony, 1989, 184).
5. “ . . . we propose that the knowledge representations people have for concepts may
contain what might be called an essence placeholder” (p. 184).
4