Essentialist thinking is understood as a figment of the human mind and does not imply that there is something like an essence in reality. Essentialist cognition appears in the natural domain of living kinds such as animals, which can serve as a classical prototype of essentialist thinking. This domain enables humans to understand continuity of kind exemplars throughout life spans and across generations, along with other classical characteristics of essentialist thinking. Social essentialism extrapolates the idea of natural kinds to social aggregates and groups.
Social essentialism primarily manifests in groups where membership is determined by birth, such as ethnic and language groups. Such groups usually develop a strong sense of identity and ethnic marking, effectively making them a ‘kind’, which is psychologically similar to a living kind.
So far so good, but what happens when essences mix? During the years of introducing genetic engineering one could observe a pronounced yuk-factor and resistance against the genetically modified products of this technology. This yuk-factor is an extension of the ages old rejection of miscegenation in some racist accounts. We theorise that this resistance is a psychological consequence of essentialist thinking. Overall, essentialism should be comprehended as a prevalent meta-cognitive feature of the human mind that is neither inherently good nor inherently bad.
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- Organização: FPCEUC e CONCILIARE
