Teleology and explanation
Relevant projects:
Joo, S., and Yousif, S. R. (2022). Are we teleologically essentialist? Cognitive Science.
Joo, S., Yousif, S. R., and Keil, F. C. (2022). Understanding ‘Why’: How implicit questions shape information preferences. Cognitive Science.
Joo, S., Yousif, S. R., and Knobe, J. (2021). Teleology beyond explanation. Mind and Language.
Joo, S., Yousif, S. R., and Keil, F. C. (Under revision). Understanding ‘How’: Two kinds of mechanistic explanations underlie known explanation preferences.
All of this work is in collaboration with Sarah Joo.
Understanding ‘Why’: How implicit questions shape explanation preferences (Cognitive Science)
‘Why’ questions are semantically ambiguous. A question like “Why is the sky blue?” can be rephrased as either a ‘how’ (“How did the sky get its blue color?”) or a ‘purpose’ question (“What is the purpose of the sky being blue?”). This semantic ambiguity allows us to seek many kinds of information with the same ‘why’ question. As a result, ‘why’ questions have often been used to investigate people’s explanation preferences. From such work, we know that people will often prefer teleological over mechanistic explanations—a tendency that has been linked to many broader theories of human cognition. But are ‘why’ questions pragmatically ambiguous? You may, for instance, have a specific expectation about what “Why is the sky blue?” was really meaning to ask. Here, we show that (a) people have clear, domain-specific expectations about what specific questions are implied by ambiguous ‘why’ questions; (b) people have clear preferences for certain kinds of questions over others; and (c) there is a direct link between implicit questions and explanation preferences. Thus not only is “why” pragmatically unambiguous, but these specific expectations may shape known explanation preferences. To test this view, we finally show that people endorse teleological answers even when they are explicitly non-explanatory. In other words, people may sometimes prefer teleological answers because they interpret ‘why’ questions as ‘purpose’ questions (rather than as ‘how’ questions) and teleological explanations may simply better address these questions. We discuss how understanding ‘why’ may reshape our understanding of people’s explanation preferences and their consequences.
Are we teleologically essentialist? (Cognitive Science)
People may conceptualize certain categories as held together by a category-specific “essence”— some unobservable, critical feature that causes the external features of a category to emerge. But what is the nature of this essence? Recently, Rose and Nichols have argued that something’s essence is fundamentally its telos or purpose. However, Neufeld has challenged this work on theoretical grounds, arguing that these effects arise only because people infer an underlying internal change when reasoning about a change in telos. In Neufeld’s view, it is the underlying internal cause, and not the telos itself, that serves as an essence (consistent with classic views of scientific essentialism). Here, we ask: Is teleology the primary force behind psychological essentialism? We begin by successfully replicating Rose and Nichols’ key findings in support of teleological essentialism. In two further experiments, however, we demonstrate that teleology may not be the central way that people understand the essences of living things. We show that internal changes matter at least as much as changes in teleology. These findings suggest that while teleology may be one important cue to category membership and the essences of living things, it may be premature to say that we are “teleologically essentialist.”
Teleology beyond explanation (Mind & Language)
People often think of and define objects teleologically. For instance, we might understand a hammer in terms of its purpose of driving in nails. Such teleological thinking also influences many further judgments, including of category membership, essence, and mereology. But how should we understand teleological thinking in the first place? This paper addresses this question by separating two senses of teleological thinking: mere teleology (simply ascribing a telos to an object) and teleological explanation (thinking an object is actually explained by its telos). Experiment 1 examined cases where an object was designed for one purpose but is now widely used for a different purpose, and found that teleology judgments and teleological explanation judgments are dissociable: Only an artifact’s original purpose could serve as an explanation, but its new purpose could also be its telos. Experiments 2-3 sought to break down these factors that were sufficient for mere teleology; three factors other than creator’s intentions influenced teleology judgments: present use, collective recognition, and success at a function. Finally, Experiment 4 identified one factor that did not affect mere teleology: structure-function fit. Implications for work on object teleology and interpretations of teleological reasoning more generally are discussed.
Understanding ‘How’: Two kinds of mechanistic explanations underlie known explanation preferences (Under review)
Parallel research programs across decades have developed contrasting accounts of people’s explanation preferences. One perspective emphasizes adults’ and children’s preferences for teleological explanations (i.e., explanations referring to something’s purpose), even in direct contrast with mechanistic (or causal) explanations. The other perspective highlights contexts where people instead seek out mechanistic knowledge and judge it to be particularly valuable. These characterizations of people’s explanation preferences support fundamentally different theories of people’s intrinsic worldviews: People may either be irrational and prone to unscientific explanation, or relatively sophisticated investigators of the world around them. How can these teleo-centric and mech-centric views of explanation preferences be reconciled? Here, we demonstrate that mechanistic explanations are comprised of two significant subtypes of explanation. Etiological mechanisms address how things came to be, whereas constitutive mechanisms address how they currently work. In Experiments 1 and 2, we find that people prefer constitutive mechanisms to etiological mechanisms. In Experiments 3, 4a, and 4b, we also find that constitutive and etiological mechanisms are judged differently against teleological explanations. In general, constitutive mechanisms perform better against teleological explanations than etiological mechanisms. Thus, people’s preferences depend on the type of mechanism involved; they may prefer teleology to one kind of mechanism but not to the other. We discuss implications for the larger debate on explanation preferences.