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  1. Normality: a Two-Faced Concept.Tomasz Wysocki - 2020 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 11 (4):689-716.
    Consider how we evaluate how normal an object is. On the dual-nature hypothesis, a normality evaluation depends on the object’s goodness and frequency. On the single-nature hypothesis, the evaluation depends solely on either frequency or goodness. To assess these hypotheses, I ran four experiments. Study 1 shows that normality evaluations vary with both the goodness and the frequency assessment of the object. Study 2 shows that manipulating the goodness and the frequency dimension changes the normality evaluation. Yet, neither experiment rules (...)
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  • Teleological Essentialism: Generalized.David Rose & Shaun Nichols - 2020 - Cognitive Science 44 (3):e12818.
    Natural/social kind essentialism is the view that natural kind categories, both living and non-living natural kinds, as well as social kinds (e.g., race, gender), are essentialized. On this view, artifactual kinds are not essentialized. Our view—teleological essentialism—is that a broad range of categories are essentialized in terms of teleology, including artifacts. Utilizing the same kinds of experiments typically used to provide evidence of essentialist thinking—involving superficial change (study 1), transformation of insides (study 2) and inferences about offspring (study 3)—we find (...)
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  • What comes to mind?Adam Bear, Samantha Bensinger, Julian Jara-Ettinger, Joshua Knobe & Fiery Cushman - 2020 - Cognition 194 (C):104057.
    When solving problems, like making predictions or choices, people often “sample” possibilities into mind. Here, we consider whether there is structure to the kinds of thoughts people sample by default—that is, without an explicit goal. Across three experiments we found that what comes to mind by default are samples from a probability distribution that combines what people think is likely and what they think is good. Experiment 1 found that the first quantities that come to mind for everyday behaviors and (...)
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  • Teleological Essentialism.David Rose & Shaun Nichols - 2019 - Cognitive Science 43 (4):e12725.
    Placeholder essentialism is the view that there is a causal essence that holds category members together, though we may not know what the essence is. Sometimes the placeholder can be filled in by scientific essences, such as when we acquire scientific knowledge that the atomic weight of gold is 79. We challenge the view that placeholders are elaborated by scientific essences. On our view, if placeholders are elaborated, they are elaborated Aristotelian essences, a telos. Utilizing the same kinds of experiments (...)
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  • Folk teleology drives persistence judgments.David Rose, Jonathan Schaffer & Kevin Tobia - 2020 - Synthese 197 (12):5491-5509.
    Two separate research programs have revealed two different factors that feature in our judgments of whether some entity persists. One program—inspired by Knobe—has found that normative considerations affect persistence judgments. For instance, people are more inclined to view a thing as persisting when the changes it undergoes lead to improvements. The other program—inspired by Kelemen—has found that teleological considerations affect persistence judgments. For instance, people are more inclined to view a thing as persisting when it preserves its purpose. Our goal (...)
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  • Normality: Part Descriptive, part prescriptive.Adam Bear & Joshua Knobe - 2017 - Cognition 167 (C):25-37.
    People’s beliefs about normality play an important role in many aspects of cognition and life (e.g., causal cognition, linguistic semantics, cooperative behavior). But how do people determine what sorts of things are normal in the first place? Past research has studied both people’s representations of statistical norms (e.g., the average) and their representations of prescriptive norms (e.g., the ideal). Four studies suggest that people’s notion of normality incorporates both of these types of norms. In particular, people’s representations of what is (...)
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  • Why did this happen to me? Religious believers’ and non-believers’ teleological reasoning about life events.Konika Banerjee & Paul Bloom - 2014 - Cognition 133 (1):277-303.
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  • Persistence through function preservation.David Rose - 2015 - Synthese 192 (1):97-146.
    When do the folk think that material objects persist? Many metaphysicians have wanted a view which fits with folk intuitions, yet there is little agreement about what the folk intuit. I provide a range of empirical evidence which suggests that the folk operate with a teleological view of persistence: the folk tend to intuit that a material object survives alterations when its function is preserved. Given that the folk operate with a teleological view of persistence, I argue for a debunking (...)
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  • Functional explanation and the function of explanation.Tania Lombrozo & Susan Carey - 2006 - Cognition 99 (2):167-204.
    Teleological explanations (TEs) account for the existence or properties of an entity in terms of a function: we have hearts because they pump blood, and telephones for communication. While many teleological explanations seem appropriate, others are clearly not warranted-for example, that rain exists for plants to grow. Five experiments explore the theoretical commitments that underlie teleological explanations. With the analysis of [Wright, L. (1976). Teleological Explanations. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press] from philosophy as a point of departure, we examine (...)
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  • Teleological reasoning about nature: intentional design or relational perspectives?Sandra R. Waxman & Douglas L. Medin - 2013 - Trends in Cognitive Sciences 17 (4):166-171.
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  • Graded Causation and Defaults.Joseph Y. Halpern & Christopher Hitchcock - 2015 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 66 (2):413-457.
    Recent work in psychology and experimental philosophy has shown that judgments of actual causation are often influenced by consideration of defaults, typicality, and normality. A number of philosophers and computer scientists have also suggested that an appeal to such factors can help deal with problems facing existing accounts of actual causation. This article develops a flexible formal framework for incorporating defaults, typicality, and normality into an account of actual causation. The resulting account takes actual causation to be both graded and (...)
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  • Darwin was a teleologist.James G. Lennox - 1993 - Biology and Philosophy 8 (4):409-421.
    It is often claimed that one of Darwin''s chief accomplishments was to provide biology with a non-teleological explanation of adaptation. A number of Darwin''s closest associates, however, and Darwin himself, did not see it that way. In order to assess whether Darwin''s version of evolutionary theory does or does not employ teleological explanation, two of his botanical studies are examined. The result of this examination is that Darwin sees selection explanations of adaptations as teleological explanations. The confusion in the nineteenth (...)
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  • Function and use of technical artefacts: social conditions of function ascription.Marcel Scheele - 2006 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 37 (1):23-36.
    It is argued that we cannot understand the notion of proper functions of artefacts independently of social notions. Functions of artefacts are related to social facts via the use of artefacts. The arguments in this article can be used to improve existing function theories that look to the causal history of artefacts to determine the function. A view that takes the intentions of designers into account to determine the proper function is both natural and often correct, but it is shown (...)
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  • Folk Mereology is Teleological.David Rose & Jonathan Schaffer - 2017 - Noûs 51 (2):238-270.
    When do the folk think that mereological composition occurs? Many metaphysicians have wanted a view of composition that fits with folk intuitions, and yet there has been little agreement about what the folk intuit. We aim to put the tools of experimental philosophy to constructive use. Our studies suggest that folk mereology is teleological: people tend to intuit that composition occurs when the result serves a purpose. We thus conclude that metaphysicians should dismiss folk intuitions, as tied into a benighted (...)
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  • The emerging causal understanding of institutional objects.Alexander Noyes, Frank C. Keil & Yarrow Dunham - 2018 - Cognition 170 (C):83-87.
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  • Developmental changes within the core of artifact concepts.Adee Matan & Susan Carey - 2001 - Cognition 78 (1):1-26.
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  • Category essence or essentially pragmatic? Creator’s intention in naming and what’s really what.Barbara C. Malt & Steven A. Sloman - 2007 - Cognition 105 (3):615-648.
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  • Teleological generics.Joanna Korman & Sangeet Khemlani - 2020 - Cognition 200 (C):104157.
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  • The Human Function Compunction: Teleological explanation in adults.Deborah Kelemen & Evelyn Rosset - 2009 - Cognition 111 (1):138-143.
    Research has found that children possess a broad bias in favor of teleological - or purpose-based - explanations of natural phenomena. The current two experiments explored whether adults implicitly possess a similar bias. In Study 1, undergraduates judged a series of statements as "good" or "bad" explanations for why different phenomena occur. Judgments occurred in one of three conditions: fast speeded, moderately speeded, or unspeeded. Participants in speeded conditions judged significantly more scientifically unwarranted teleological explanations as correct, but were not (...)
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  • The Proper Function of Artifacts: Intentions, Conventions and Causal Inferences.Sergio E. Chaigneau & Guillermo Puebla - 2013 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 4 (3):391-406.
    Designers’ intentions are important for determining an artifact’s proper function (i.e., its perceived real function). However, there are disagreements regarding why. In one view, people reason causally about artifacts’ functional outcomes, and designers’ intended functions become important to the extent that they allow inferring outcomes. In another view, people use knowledge of designers’ intentions to determine proper functions, but this is unrelated to causal reasoning, having perhaps to do with intentional or social forms of reasoning (e.g., authority). Regarding these latter (...)
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  • Morality constrains the default representation of what is possible.Jonathan Phillips & Fiery Cushman - 2017 - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 114 (18):4649-4654.
    The capacity for representing and reasoning over sets of possibilities, or modal cognition, supports diverse kinds of high-level judgments: causal reasoning, moral judgment, language comprehension, and more. Prior research on modal cognition asks how humans explicitly and deliberatively reason about what is possible but has not investigated whether or how people have a default, implicit representation of which events are possible. We present three studies that characterize the role of implicit representations of possibility in cognition. Collectively, these studies differentiate explicit (...)
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  • The essence of artifacts: Developing the design stance.Deborah Kelemen & Susan Carey - 2007 - In Eric Margolis & Stephen Laurence (eds.), Creations of the Mind: Theories of Artifacts and Their Representaion. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 212--230.
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