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Epistemology Working Group: Carolina Flores (Rutgers)

“That’s All You Really Are”: Social Trouble with Essentialist Thinking
Tuesday, February 25, 2020
2:30-4:00 PM
1164 Angell Hall Map
Social theorists have long criticized essentialism in the social domain. But what does social essentialist thinking consist in, and what cognitive mechanisms are involved in implementing it? We argue that beliefs with essentialist content are neither necessary nor sufficient for essentialist thinking. Instead, essentialist thinking encompasses a range of types of cognitive implementation, ranging from mere interpretive dispositions to full-fledged theories.

In paradigmatic cases, social essentialist thinking consists in having an ossified frame about a social group – a rigid, all-encompassing, single interpretive device through which one intuitively reads the behavior of members of that social kind – and employing it in thinking and interacting with members of that social group. Frames need not be believed, and they need not even be propositional: devices like metaphors, thick terms, slurs, mantras, pictures, cartoons, and memes can all function as frames.

With this non-doxastic understanding of essentialist thinking in hand, argue that essentialist thinking does not merely justify, but also helps enact, social hierarchies. Further, given what paradigmatic cases of essentialist thinking look like, we should focus more on shifting away from pernicious frames and less on arguing against false essentialist theories of social kinds. Effective strategies are likely to include developing new, aesthetically and affectively compelling frames through which to read the social world.
Building: Angell Hall
Event Type: Lecture / Discussion
Tags: Free, Philosophy
Source: Happening @ Michigan from Department of Philosophy