scholarly journals Are we teleologically essentialist?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sehrang Joo ◽  
Sami Ryan Yousif
Keyword(s):  
Internal Force ◽  
Category Membership ◽  
Critical Feature ◽  
Psychological Essentialism ◽  
Living Things ◽  
Internal Change ◽  
Open Question

People may conceptualize certain categories as held together by a category-specific ‘essence’—some un- observable, critical feature that causes the external features of a category to emerge. Yet there remains an open question about what comprises this essence. Recently, Rose and Nichols have argued that this essence is comprised of tele, or purposes, (and, in turn, that teleology is the internal force that gives rise to external features). However, Neufeld has challenged this work on theoretical grounds, arguing that these effects arise only because people infer an underlying internal change when reasoning about a change in telos. On Neufeld’s view, it is the underlying internal cause, and not the telos itself, that serves as an essence (consistent with classic views of scientific essentialism). Here, we ask: Is teleology the primary force behind psychological essentialism? We begin by successfully replicating Rose and Nichols’ key findings in support of teleological essentialism. In two further experiments, however, we demonstrate that teleology may not the central way that people understand the essences of living things: Internal changes matter at least as much as changes to teleology. These findings suggest that while teleology may be one important cue to category membership and the essences of living things, it may be premature to say that we are ‘teleologically essentialist.’

Conceptual Development: The Case of Essentialism

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan A. Gelman ◽  
Elizabeth A. Ware
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Conceptual Development ◽  
Natural Kinds ◽  
Explicit Instruction ◽  
Category Membership ◽  
Formal Schooling ◽  
Biological Basis ◽  
Psychological Essentialism ◽  
Parental Input ◽  
Abstract Domains

The article focuses on conceptual development in children. There are two primary components to psychological essentialism, which include the belief that certain categories are natural kinds and the belief that there is some unobservable property. Psychologists examine the psychological representations of concepts whereas philosophers have examined essentialism with the goal of addressing a range of issues such as psychological, semantic, and metaphysical. The study of essentialism in children provides insights into children's cognition and information regarding the roots of human concepts. Essentialism includes several component beliefs, including that categories have sharp, immutable boundaries, that category members share deep, nonobvious commonalities, and that category membership has an innate, genetic, or biological basis. Kamp and Partee suggest that categories are seen with absolutely sharp boundaries only in abstract domains. Essentialism does not require that categories be treated as absolute but essentialism is the claim that category boundaries are intensified. Essentialism emerges early and consistently, does not require formal schooling, and if anything may be even stronger in early childhood than later. The detailed studies of parental input to children about categories also suggest that parents do not provide explicit instruction about essentialist beliefs.

scholarly journals Physiosemiosis in the semiotic spiral: A play of musement

2001 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-48
Author(s):  
John Deely
Keyword(s):  
Main Question ◽  
Theoretical Justification ◽  
Entire Domain ◽  
The Past ◽  
Physical Universe ◽  
Living Things ◽  
Open Question ◽  
Question Today

A main question for semiotics today is how far does the paradigm for the action of signs, semiosis. extend. There is general agreement by now that semiosis extends at least as far as awareness or cognition occurs, which includes the entire domain of animal sign usage, or zoosemiosis. The open question today is whether semiotics is broader still, and on this question two positions have emerged. The comparatively conservative position would extend semiotics to the whole of living things. This extension was first formally proposed and argued under the label phytosemiotics, the study of an action of signs in the realm of vegetable life. The conservative faction has rallied around the label of biosemiotics. The more radical faction argues that even this extension leaves something out, namely, the physical universe at large which surrounds and upon which depends all life. The radical argument is that what is distinctive of the action of signs is the shaping of the past on the basis of furore events, a shaping that can be discerned even in the rocks and among the stars - a veritable physiosemiosis, theoretical justification and practical exploration ofwhich marks the final frontier of semiotic inquiry.

Evaluation and control of the in-plane stiffness of timber floors for the performance-based retrofit of URM buildings

2009 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 204-221 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Brignola ◽  
Stefano Pampanin ◽  
Stefano Podestà
Keyword(s):  
Seismic Response ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Internal Force ◽  
Design Guidelines ◽  
Reinforced Masonry ◽  
Performance Based Assessment ◽  
Flexible Diaphragm ◽  
Open Question ◽  
And Control

The seismic response of existing un-reinforced masonry (URM) buildings is strongly dependent on the characteristics of wooden floors and, in particular, on their in-plane stiffness and on the quality of connection between the floors and the URM elements. It is generally well-recognized that an adequate in-plane-stiffness and proper connections can significantly improve the three-dimensional response of these buildings, obtaining a better distribution and transfer of forces to the lateral load resisting walls. However, the extensive damage observed during past earthquakes on URM buildings of different types have highlighted serious shortcomings in typical retrofit interventions adopted in the past and based on stiffening the diaphragm. Recent numerical investigations have also confirmed that increasing the stiffness of the diaphragm is not necessarily going to lead to an improved response, but could actually result to detrimental effects. The evaluation of the in-plane stiffness of timber floors in their as-built and retrofitted configuration is still an open question and a delicate issue, with design guidelines and previous research results providing incomplete and sometimes controversial suggestions to practicing engineers involved in the assessment and/or retrofit of these type of structures. In this contribution, the role of the in-plane stiffness of timber floors in the seismic response of URM buildings is critically discussed, based on the relatively limited available experimental and numerical evidences. A framework for a performance-based assessment and retrofit strategy of URM buildings, capable of accounting for the effects of a flexible diaphragm on the response prior to and after the retrofit intervention, is then proposed. By controlling the in-plane stiffness of the diaphragm, adopting a specific strengthening (or weakening) intervention, the displacements, accelerations and internal force demands can be maintained within targeted levels. This will protect undesired local mechanisms and aim for a more appropriate hierarchy of strength within the whole system.

Mars: was There an Ancient Eden?

1997 ◽  
Vol 161 ◽  
pp. 203-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tobias C. Owen
Keyword(s):  
Positive Answer ◽  
Biogenic Elements ◽  
Habitable Zones ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Origin Of Life ◽  
Early Mars ◽  
Favorable Conditions ◽  
Open Question ◽  
Rocky Planets ◽  
Impact Erosion

AbstractThe clear evidence of water erosion on the surface of Mars suggests an early climate much more clement than the present one. Using a model for the origin of inner planet atmospheres by icy planetesimal impact, it is possible to reconstruct the original volatile inventory on Mars, starting from the thin atmosphere we observe today. Evidence for cometary impact can be found in the present abundances and isotope ratios of gases in the atmosphere and in SNC meteorites. If we invoke impact erosion to account for the present excess of129Xe, we predict an early inventory equivalent to at least 7.5 bars of CO2. This reservoir of volatiles is adequate to produce a substantial greenhouse effect, provided there is some small addition of SO2(volcanoes) or reduced gases (cometary impact). Thus it seems likely that conditions on early Mars were suitable for the origin of life – biogenic elements and liquid water were present at favorable conditions of pressure and temperature. Whether life began on Mars remains an open question, receiving hints of a positive answer from recent work on one of the Martian meteorites. The implications for habitable zones around other stars include the need to have rocky planets with sufficient mass to preserve atmospheres in the face of intensive early bombardment.

Constructing and Deconstructing Concepts

2016 ◽  
Vol 63 (5) ◽  
pp. 249-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles A. Doan ◽  
Ronaldo Vigo
Keyword(s):  
Information Theory ◽  
Model Performance ◽  
Unsupervised Classification ◽  
Family Resemblance ◽  
Category Membership ◽  
Formal Models ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
One Dimensional ◽  
Relational Patterns ◽  
Optimal Classification

Abstract. Several empirical investigations have explored whether observers prefer to sort sets of multidimensional stimuli into groups by employing one-dimensional or family-resemblance strategies. Although one-dimensional sorting strategies have been the prevalent finding for these unsupervised classification paradigms, several researchers have provided evidence that the choice of strategy may depend on the particular demands of the task. To account for this disparity, we propose that observers extract relational patterns from stimulus sets that facilitate the development of optimal classification strategies for relegating category membership. We conducted a novel constrained categorization experiment to empirically test this hypothesis by instructing participants to either add or remove objects from presented categorical stimuli. We employed generalized representational information theory (GRIT; Vigo, 2011b , 2013a , 2014 ) and its associated formal models to predict and explain how human beings chose to modify these categorical stimuli. Additionally, we compared model performance to predictions made by a leading prototypicality measure in the literature.

On the Semantic Content of Grammatical Gender and Its Impact on the Representation of Human Referents

2010 ◽  
Vol 57 (5) ◽  
pp. 367-375 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Irmen ◽  
Julia Kurovskaja
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Content ◽  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
Differential Effects ◽  
Gender Information ◽  
Masculine Role ◽  
Feminine Role ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Gender Categories ◽  
Open Question

Grammatical gender has been shown to provide natural gender information about human referents. However, due to formal and conceptual differences between masculine and feminine forms, it remains an open question whether these gender categories influence the processing of person information to the same degree. Experiment 1 compared the semantic content of masculine and feminine grammatical gender by combining masculine and feminine role names with either gender congruent or incongruent referents (e.g., Dieser Lehrer [masc.]/Diese Lehrerin [fem.] ist mein Mann/meine Frau; This teacher is my husband/my wife). Participants rated sentences in terms of correctness and customariness. In Experiment 2, in addition to ratings reading times were recorded to assess processing more directly. Both experiments were run in German. Sentences with grammatically feminine role names and gender incongruent referents were rated as less correct and less customary than those with masculine forms and incongruent referents. Combining a masculine role name with an incongruent referent slowed down reading to a greater extent than combining a feminine role name with an incongruent referent. Results thus specify the differential effects of masculine and feminine grammatical gender in denoting human referents.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document