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David_Gerard comments on Were atoms real? - Less Wrong
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Very small children understand "real" to be "what's inside" -- what's hidden, essential. Sometimes literally inside: ask toddlers "If you took a dog, and gave it the bones and insides of a cat, would it still be a dog?" they say "no," but "If you took a dog and made it look like a cat on the outside, would it still be a dog?" they say "yes." (I'm getting this from Paul Bloom's "How Pleasure Works.") Young children are essentialist about gender as well -- they assume more differences between the sexes than actually exist, not fewer.
What psychological evidence I've seen suggests that we're in some way wired to see categories as real. "Natural kinds." To think that there's a real difference "out there" between dog and not-dog, not just a useful bookkeeping convention. I'm inclined to believe that Anna's reasoning about "atoms are real" and Eliezer's reasoning about categories actually make more sense than essentialism -- but I suspect that this kind of question-dissolving is not the standard, evolution-provided brain pathway.
Real-world example: The creationist science of baraminology takes assumption of kinds to its logical limits. Todd Charles Wood comes so close to admitting his baraminology work is excellent evidence for evolution. It's amazing how far people will take an obviously broken axiom without letting go of it.
Interesting. It's funny how the Bible really reinforces the idea of natural kinds -- a lot of the prohibitions can be interpreted, one way or another, as prohibitions against mixing things that are essentially different (wool and flax, men and women, fish and mammals.) It would make sense if essentialism was the way we "naturally" think, and it takes some scientific development to tease out where it doesn't make sense.
Though I'm just amazed at their trouble with grammar, first of all. Grrrr.
-- your local ex-rabbinical student :)
-men and women: men aren't supposed to dress like women and vice versa.
-fish and mammals: takes some unpacking and was probably the wrong way to phrase it. The fish you can eat should have scales and fins -- that sort of points to "good" fish being especially "fishy" fish. Fish that are kind of not like fish are not okay.
agreed, support your theory
yes, probably wrong way to phrase it, but I agree about the essentialism of "fish with scales" being "fishy fish" - that's a very sharp observation, actually.
I herded the RW article from silver to gold (in the front cover rotation) and it was quite difficult. It's one of those subjects where every single thing about it is blitheringly stupid, and putting the stupidities in an order that reads usefully as an essay is actually the hard part. The inferential distance problem here is getting across to people that other people really do believe things this stupid. Staying understated requires remarkable self-control. Project Blue Beam was another - saving the punchline for the end, where it doesn't belong logically but does belong narratively.