Essentialism Regarding Natural and Social Kinds Syllabus
Syllabus
Name of the course: Essentialism Regarding Natural and Social Kinds Course level: MA, elective course Instructors: Maria Kronfeldner and Ferenc Huoranszki Number of credits: 2; ECTS: 4 Prerequisites: None Teaching format: Seminar with asynchronous course duplication
Semester: 2020, Fall, Wednesday 13.30–15.10 Consultation: after classes, by appointment, or during office hours (details will be announced at the beginning of the course)
Course description: What is an essence? When do we and when should we attribute essences to natural and social kinds? For instance, what does it mean to say that there is an essence of being a human being, or of being a woman, or of being a sports fan? When are we justified in making claims about essences, i.e. how can we know about essences? If the category at issue is of social and political importance, essentialist claims are naturally contested not only within academic discourses, but also in the arena of political and social discourse and activism. It matters academically and socially how we think about essences since essentialism can support social stereotypes, and, on the basis of that, othering, discrimination, exclusion, hatred, etc. At the same time, essentialism has certain cognitive functions and can have positive psychological effects too (e.g. for identity maintenance) as well as social effects (e.g. in preventing discrimination and stigmatization).
In this course, we will not directly engage with the growing literature on positive and negative social consequences of essentialism about human kinds, even though we will discuss the suggestion of ‘strategic essentialism’ for defending human rights. The aim of the course is rather to train students in the philosophical foundations of the various debates about essentialism that one finds in the natural sciences, the social sciences and the humanities, in order to enable them to use these foundations in a systematic manner in debates about social consequences of essentialism.
Learning outcomes: Students will learn how to ask and answer philosophical questions about a frequently used concept and how to integrate knowledge from other fields in doing so. The ultimate aim is to train students in analysing, criticizing and using a contested philosophical concept such as “essence”.
Learning activities and assessment:
Onsite: After an introductory lecture in the first week (recorded and distributed as an audio-file), meetings will normally start with a structured discussion of a predetermined set of questions related to the background reading for that week and the study material sent in addition to that. Mandatory readings will be specified for each session. Access to the elearning platform of the course is required. Class attendance is mandatory. Students will have to study course readings, participate in class discussions, and practice their research skills. Participation in discussions counts towards active participation and will not be graded. Students will regularly get faculty-feedback and/or peer-feedback on their weekly written contributions. For each class, one or more students will take over special responsibility and do a written discussion report. Certain extra tasks (counting toward active participation) will be assigned on an irregular basis, depending on case, but in particular in the last Part of the course.
Online: After an introductory lecture in the first week (recorded and distributed as an audio-file), students will normally have to provide each week written answers to a predetermined set of questions related to the background reading for that week and the study material sent in addition to that. Mandatory readings will be specified for each session. Access to the elearning platform of the course is required. Weekly online-participation is mandatory. Students will have to study course readings, reply to distributed questions, and practice their research skills. The replies (the weekly study assignment regarding the questions sent to students) count towards active participation and will not be graded. Students will regularly get faculty-feedback and/or peer-feedback on their weekly written contributions. Once in the term an online student has to join for a synchronous session and report on the discussion. Certain extra tasks (counting toward active participation) will be assigned on an irregular basis, depending on case, but in particular in the last Part of the course.
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Grading: Students’ final grade shall be based on participation in class and/or replies to the study question and a 2000 word long final term paper. Excellent class participation can contribute up to plus one grade to the final grade (e.g. from B to B+ etc).
Onsite/online: Replies to the study questions/learning goals normally involves reformulating the main thesis in the reading, reconstructing core concepts used, making implicit assumptions and argumentative structures explicit, finding a critical stance, and (towards later parts of the course) some research engagement. More specific guidelines for class activities and for the term papers will be announced weekly, as we move on.
The assessment criteria for the term paper will be an integral part of the last two weeks of the course, to facilitate reflective engagement with these criteria and to prepare students for their main course output, the final term paper. The topic of the final essay can be either a careful critical reconstruction of a particular and important argument for some position discussed in the course; or a comparison between competing arguments about alternative solutions to a problem; or a defence of some particular position/argument against some relevant criticism.
Deadline for submitting term-papers: 2021 ** January
Class schedule: Intro 1. Introduction and knowledge-café Part I: Foundations of essentialist thinking 2. Philosophy of language and classificatory essentialism 3. Scientific essentialism 4. Neo-Aristotelian essentialism Part II: Essentialism in context 5. Essentialism in chemistry 6. Essentialism in life sciences 7. Social kinds in comparison to natural kinds Part III: Essentialism in our minds 8. Cognitive science and psychological essentialism 9. Social psychology, entitativity and ethical and political issues Part IV: Special topics 10. Explorative research workshop (no background reading) 11. Presentation of term paper research ideas (no background reading) 12. Triadic feedback groups (no background reading)
Course material: Readings comprise introductory readings, contributions from philosophy and other fields of the humanities (e.g. history and gender studies), as well as empirical studies on psychological essentialism from cognitive and social sciences. Some of the readings in Part II and Part III will be determined only after Part I, together with students, depending on their topical interest. All mandatory readings will be made available on the e-learning platform of the course, which is shared between the onsite and online course to facilitate interaction.
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List of references
Philosophy of language and classificatory essentialism
Mandatory: Putnam, H. 1973. Meaning and Reference. Journal of Philosophy 70: 699-711.
Recommended: Donnallen, K. 1983. Kripke and Putnam on Natural Kind Terms. In C. Ginet & S. Shoemaker (eds.), Knowledge and Mind. pp. 84-104. Oxford UP. Kripke, S. 1980. Naming and Necessity. Chapter III. Blackwell. Leslie, S.-J. 2013. Essence and Natural Kinds: When Science Meets Preschooler Intuition. Oxford Studies in Epistemology 4: 109-164. Oxford UP. Putnam, H. 1975. The Meaning of ‘Meaning’. Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science 7: 131-193.
Scientific essentialism
Mandatory: Ellis, B. 2001. Scientific Essentialism, pp. 32-55. Cambridge UP.
Recommended: Bird, A. 2007. Nature’s Metaphysics. Oxford UP. Ellis, B. 2002. Philosophy of Nature: A Guide to the New Essentialism, pp. 9-21. Routledge. Khalidi, M. A. 2009. How Scientific is Scientific Essentialism? Journal for General Philosophy of Science 40: 85-101. Lowe, E. J. 2005. The Four-Category Ontology: A Metaphysical Foundation for Natural Science. Clarendon Press.
Neo-Aristotelian essentialism
Mandatory: Koslicki, K. 2012. Essence, Necessity, and Explanation. In Tahko, T. (ed.) Contemporary Aristotelian Metaphysics, 187–207. CUP.
Recommended: Kung, 1977. Aristotle on Essence and Explanation. Philosophical Studies 31: 361-383. Lennox, J. G. 2009. Form, Essence and Explanation in Aristotle’s Biology. In G. Anagnostopoulos, ed. A Companion to Aristotle, pp. 348–367. Blackwell. Oderberg, D. 2007. Real Essentialism. Routledge.
Essentialism in chemistry
Mandatory: LaPorte, J. 1996. Chemical Kind Term Reference and the Discovery of Essence. Noûs 30: 112- 132.
Recommended: Hendry, R. F. 2006. Elements, Compounds, and Other Chemical Kinds. Philosophy of Science 73: 864-875. Needham, P. 2000. What is Water? Analysis 60: 13-21. Vandewall, H. 2007. Why Water Is Not H2O, and Other Critiques of Essentialist Ontology from the Philosophy of Chemistry. Philosophy of Science 74: 906-919.
Essentialism in life sciences
Mandatory: Hull, D. L. 1986. On Human Nature. Philosophy of Science, Proceedings of the Biennial Meetings of the Philosophy of Science Association 2: 3-13. 4
Recommended: Boulter, S. J. 2012. Can Evolutionary Biology Do without Aristotelian Essentialism? Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements 70: 83-103. Devitt, M. 2010. Species Have (Partly) Intrinsic Essences. Philosophy of Science 77: 648-61. Okasha, S. 2002. Darwinian Metaphysics: Species and the Question of Essentialism. Synthese 131: 191-213. Sober, E. 1980. Evolution, Population Thinking, and Essentialism. Philosophy of Science 47: 350-83. Walsh, D. 2016. Organisms, Agency, and Evolution. Cambridge UP.
Social kinds
Mandatory: Khalidi, M. A. 2015. Three Kinds of Social Kinds. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 90: 96-112.
Recommended: Hacking, I. 1986. Making up People. In Heller et al (ed). Reconstructing Individualism: Autonomy, Individuality and the Self in Western Thought, pp. 222-36. Stanford UP. Hacking, I. 2007. Kinds of People: Moving Targets. Proceedings of the British Academy 151: 285-318. Kincaid, H. and J- Sullivan, eds. 2014. Classifying Psychopathology: Mental Kinds and Natural Kinds. MIT Press. Mason, R. 2016. The Metaphysics of Social Kinds. Philosophy Compass 11: 841-50.
Psychological essentialism
Mandatory: Strevens, M. 2000. The Essentialist Aspect of Naive Theories. Cognition 74: 149-75.
Recommended: Gelman, S. A. 2003. The Essential Child: Origins of Essentialism in Everyday Thought. Oxford UP. Medin, D. L., and A. Ortony. 1989. Psychological Essentialism.”In Vosniadou, S. and Ortony, A. (ed). Similarity and Analogical Reasoning, 179-195. Cambridge UP. Rhodes, M. and T. M. Mandalaywala. 2017. The Development and Developmental Consequences of Social Essentialism. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science 8: e1437. Smith, D. L. 2014. Dehumanization, Essentialism, and Moral Psychology. Philosophy Compass 9: 814-24.
Social psychology research on entitativity, social and ethical issues
Mandatory: Haslam, N. L. et al 2000. Essentialist Beliefs about Social Categories. British Journal of Social Psychology 39: 113–27.
Recommended: Agadullina, E. R., and A. V. Lovakov. 2018. Are People More Prejudiced towards Groups That Are Perceived as Coherent? A Meta-Analysis of the Relationship between out-Group Entitativity and Prejudice. British Journal of Social Psychology 57: 703-31. Campbell, D. T. 1958. Common Fate, Similarity, and Other Indices of the Status of Aggregates of Persons as Social Entities. Behavioral Science 3: 14-25. Rothbart, M. and M. Taylor. 1992. Category Labels and Social Reality: Do We View Social Categories as Natural Kinds?” In: Semin, G.R. and Fiedler, K. (ed.) Language, Interaction and Social Cognition, pp. 11-36. Sage. Ryazanov, Ar. A., and N. J. S. Christenfeld. 2018. The Strategic Value of Essentialism. Social and Personality Psychology Compass 12: e12370.
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General (introductory and further issues) Introductory Bird, A. and Tobin, E. 2018. Natural Kinds. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
Further classic and recent theoretical accounts Boyd, R. 1991. Realism, Anti-Foundationalism and the Enthusiasm for Natural Kinds. Philosophical Studies 61: 127-48. Dupré, J. 2002. Is ‘Natural Kind’ a Natural Kind Term? The Monist 85: 29-49. Mill, J. S. 1858. A System of Logic, Book I, Chapter VII. Harper & Bros. Quine, W. v. O. 1969. Natural Kinds. In Ontological Relativity and Other Essays, pp. 114-38. Columbia UP. Rorty, R. 1999. A world without substances or essences. In: Philosophy and Social Hope, pp. 47-71. Penguin Books.
Critical perspectives (social, feminist, anti-racist, psychiatry, etc.) Beebee, H. and N. Sabbarton-Leary. 2010. Are Psychiatric Kinds Real? European Journal of Analytic Philosophy 6: 11-27. Curran, A. 2000. Form As Norm: Aristotelian Essentialism As Ideology (Critique). Apeiron: A Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science 33: 327-64. Eide, E. 2010. Strategic Essentialism and Ethnification: Hand in Glove? Nordic Review 31: 63-78. Fuss, D. 1989. Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature and Difference. Routledge. Gannett, L. 2010. Questions Asked and Unasked: How by Worrying Less about the ‘really real’ Philosophers of Science Might Better Contribute to Debates about Genetics and Race. Synthese 177: 363- 85. Phillips, A. 2010. What’s Wrong with Essentialism? Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory 11: 47-60. Spivak, G. C. 1988. Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography. In Guha, R. and G.Ch. Spival (eds.) Selected Subaltern Studies, pp.3-34. Oxford UP. Witt, C. 2011. The Metaphysics of Gender. Oxford UP.
Ethics Antony, L. M. 2000. Natures and Norms. Ethics: An International Journal of Social, Political, and Legal Philosophy 111: 8-36. Nussbaum, M. C. 1992. Human Functioning and Social Justice: In Defense of Aristotelian Essentialism. Political Theory 20: 202-46.
History of science perspectives Bowker, G. C, and S. Leigh Star. 1999. Sorting Things out: Classification and Its Consequences. MIT Press. Winsor, M. P. 2006. The Creation of the Essentialism Story: An Exercise in Metahistory. History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 28: 149-74.
Historical kinds Griffiths, P. E. 1999. Squaring the Circle: Natural Kinds with Historical Essences. In Wilson, R.A. (ed). Species: New Interdisciplinary Essays, pp. 209-28. MIT Press. Millikan, R. G. 1999. Historical Kinds and the ‘Special Sciences. Philosophical Studies 95: 45-65.