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Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 7.3 (2000) 191-194



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Folk Taxonomies Should Not Have Essences, Either: A Response to the Commentary

Peter Zachar


In my article, I presented an epistemological argument for thinking about psychiatric disorders as practical kinds rather than natural kinds by claiming that scientific thinkers are encouraged by the scientific enterprise to adopt epistemological fallibilism. In other words, scientists should be open to the possibility that their current models could be replaced (and even eliminated) by better models. The problem with the natural-kind model is that it biases thinkers to believe that they have discovered a final God's-eye view of their subject matter, encourages them to adopt beliefs about the fixed inherent structure of a category, and allows them to maintain that those beliefs are supposed to be true in all possible worlds.

Although I am most comfortable with the epistemological argument, it is possible to make an even stronger ontological argument against natural kinds. This argument would suggest that not only does adopting the scientific attitude encourage us to avoid thinking about the world in terms of natural kinds, scientific research indicates that there are no such things as natural kinds. In this view, the last 150 years of scientific research has taught us that the world is simply not organized in terms of natural kinds; that is, things do not have real essences (Dupré 1993). According to this argument, essentialism derives from the idiosyncracies of human psychology.

In their very interesting and important response (2000), which has implications that go far beyond my article, Elizabeth Flanagan and Roger Blashfield cite research in developmental psychology that pertains to the issue of essentialism and scientific conceptualization. According to developmental research, essentialism and the classical category model are common sense models. Gelman, Coley, and Gottfried (1994) show that children adopt "the essentialist bias" with respect to the biological world by the time they are four years old. Four-year-olds are intuitive Aristoteleans who assume that organisms have an internal essence. This essence makes organisms be what they are and behave as they do. This bias appears to be somewhat independent of parental instruction. Atran (1994) shows that the essentialist bias is maintained into adulthood and exists across cultures. This bias is also intractable, meaning that it is adopted so early and generalizes so easily that evidence against it has limited impact on how people think. [End Page 191]

What Flanagan and Blashfield do not mention is that modern science has helped us see that essentialism is not as accurate as we are naturally inclined to believe. Ernst Mayr (1988) even claims that the essentialist bias is harmful because it can impede scientific progress. In Mayr's view, essentialistic assumptions about species made it difficult for people to accept Darwin's explanation of the origin of species. From a philosophy of science standpoint, it is likely that scientists in all areas of study, like anyone else, are initially inclined to think about their subject matter essentialistically, but as they gain expertise in their chosen field, they begin to see that the world is more complex than the common-sense essentialistic model suggests. Ask a physicist what an element is, ask a geneticist what a gene is, ask a zoologist what a species is, and they may provide an essentialistic answer because that answer is easier to understand, but they will also add that, in truth, what they just said is a simplification and reality is much more complex.

In my view, philosophical analysis can make an important contribution to our understanding of the relationship between scientific taxonomies and folk taxonomies, and I analyze the relationship between folk or common-sense concepts and scientific concepts in Psychological Concepts and Biological Psychiatry (chap. 4, 2000). In the conventional story, science is opposed to common sense. For example, according to physicists, a common sense "solid" object such as an oak table is mostly empty space. The object is not really solid. It just appears solid. Some thinkers in philosophy have used examples such as this to...

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