Psychological essentialism is a cognitive bias through which human beings conceive the entities around them as having inner essences and basic natures. Social scientists routinely generate flawed inferences because their methods require the truth of psychological essentialism. This article develops set-theoretic analysis as a scientific-constructivist approach that overcomes the bias of psychological essentialism. With this approach, the “sets” of set-theoretic analysis are mental phenomena that establish boundaries and identify similarities and differences among entities whose natural kind composition is not known. (...) The approach is illustrated through a consideration of research on intelligence, race, and poverty in the United States. (shrink)

This study explores the pivotal concept of “objective possibility” within Lukács’s History and Class Consciousness, a concept that has received less attention compared to more prominent ideas such as reification or totality. Lukács frequently refers to “objective possibility” and related terms in essays like “What Is Orthodox Marxism?” and “Class Consciousness,” emphasizing its importance in understanding class consciousness theoretically. The term’s roots for Lukács derive from Max Weber’s methodological writings, which drew from John Stuart Mill and Johannes von Kries and (...) applied to historical and social causation. However, Lukács diverges from Weber’s use, focusing not on counterfactual historical events but on latent historical tensions in the present that can be actualized through collective action. The study argues that Lukács integrates Weberian objective possibility with Marxist and Hegelian language, utilizing it within a modal social ontology. This approach allows Lukács to theorize key questions of class consciousness, historical action, and revolution. By drawing on Hegel’s dialectics of possibility, actuality, and necessity, as well as Marxian contradictions in material conditions, Lukács reconfigures objective possibility from a heuristic tool for the writing of history to an ontologically significant element in the field of historical action. (shrink)