How to Tell a Dualist?
Dualism
Essentialism
Experimental philosophy
Intuitive psychology
Journal
Cognitive science
ISSN: 1551-6709
Titre abrégé: Cogn Sci
Pays: United States
ID NLM: 7708195
Informations de publication
Date de publication:
Nov 2023
Nov 2023
Historique:
revised:
24
10
2023
received:
22
06
2022
accepted:
06
11
2023
medline:
27
11
2023
pubmed:
22
11
2023
entrez:
22
11
2023
Statut:
ppublish
Résumé
People exhibit conflicting intuitions concerning the mind/body links. Here, I explore a novel explanation for these inconsistencies: Dualism is a violable constraint that interacts with Essentialism. Two experiments probe these interactions. In Experiment 1, participants evaluated the emergence of psychological traits in either a replica of one's body, or in the afterlife-after the body's demise. In line with Dualism, epistemic (i.e., disembodied) traits (e.g., knowing the contrast between good/bad) were considered more likely to emerge (relative to sensorimotor/affective traits) only in the afterlife. However, so were innate traits (in line with Essentialism). To further gauge Essentialism, Experiment 2 presented the same traits to innateness judgments. Here, sensorimotor/affective (i.e., embodied) traits were considered more likely to be innate, suggesting that innateness intuitions are informed by embodiment. Moreover, innateness judgments (in Experiment 2) and embodiment intuitions (in Experiment 1) correlated. These results suggest that Dualism tacitly constrains reasoning about one's innate origins and its persistence after death. But since Dualism is "soft" and interacts with Essentialism, supernatural intuitions are chimeric, not purely ethereal.
Types de publication
Journal Article
Langues
eng
Sous-ensembles de citation
IM
Pagination
e13380Informations de copyright
© 2023 The Authors. Cognitive Science published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Cognitive Science Society (CSS).
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