davidcayley.com Modes of Thought Part Four
Jan 19, 2019
Ian Hacking, philosopher of science known for work on statistics and normality, and Scott Atran, cognitive anthropologist studying folk taxonomy, discuss how human minds form innate taxonomies and how scientific classification diverges from common sense. They explore the feedback between social labels and behavior, the rise of statistical normality, and how classifications reshape identities and reasoning.
AI Snips
Chapters
Transcript
Innate Modules Shape Folk Biology
- Human cognition includes domain-specific innate modules that classify living kinds by an assumed underlying essence.
- Scott Atron shows infants expect teleological causes for living things, driving hierarchical taxonomies like species and genera used in folk biology.
Darwin Dissolved Folk Species
- Scientific biology transcended visible patterning by seeking invisible causes like lineage and genetics.
- Atron argues Darwin deconstructed stable folk species, showing species are transient grades rather than fixed essences.
Science Pulls The Ladder Away From Common Sense
- Science starts from common-sense categories but then pulls the ladder up, operating in cognitive registers alien to everyday thought.
- Atron found science marginal to daily reasoning: students know facts (bats are mammals) but don't use them to reclassify intuitively.