Abstract

We evaluate three theories of categorization in the domain of artifacts. Two theories are versions of psychological essentialism; they posit that artifact categorization is a matter of judging membership in a kind by appealing to a belief about the true, underlying nature of the object. The first version holds that the essence can be identified with the intended function of objects. The second holds that the essence can be identified with the creator's intended kind membership. The third theory is called "minimalism" (Strevens, 2001a). It states that judgments of kind membership are based on beliefs about causal laws, not beliefs about essences. We conclude that each theory makes unnecessary assumptions in explaining how people make everyday classifications and inductions with artifacts. Essentialist theories go wrong in assuming that the belief that artifacts have essences is critical to categorization. All theories go wrong in assuming that artifacts are treated as if they belong to stable, fixed kinds. Theories of artifact categorization must contend with the fact that artifact categories are not stable, but rather depend on the categorization task at hand. 3 Psychological essentialism is the hypothesis that object categorization is a matter of assigning kind membership on the basis of a belief about the true, underlying nature of the object. Most of the discussion of psychological essentialism has concerned judgments about naturally occurring entities and their classification into natural kinds. Strevens (2001a) and Rips (2001) both make convincing cases against an essentialist view of everyday categorization for naturally occurring entities. Strevens argues instead for a minimalist view. The minimalist view assumes that categorization is a matter of judging kind me...

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