Western scientific norms (e.g., Bacon, 1623/2005) dictate that mechanistic explanations like “rain falls because clouds form water vapor” are preferable to teleological ones like “rain falls so that plants should grow. Do people have preferences that naturally align with this? The predominant interpretation of past research is that they do not: starting in early childhood but persisting into adulthood, people are biased towards teleological explanations of the natural world (Kelemen, 1999a; Casler & Kelemen, 2008; Kelemen & Rosset, 2009). This “promiscuous teleology” theory makes the strong claim that the source of this bias is an ineradicable mistaken belief that the natural world is agentive. This dissertation contrasts this theoretical account with alternatives, particularly a ‘consequence etiology’ account (Wright, 1972; Lombrozo & Carey), which states that people endorse purpose-based explanations when the purpose cited in the explanation played a causal role in bringing about the thing being explained. In a series experiments, I test a “strong” version of PT theory – which asserts that adults’ reasoning about purposes in nature is exclusively driven by misconceptions of agency in nature – and a “compatibilist” version of PT theory – which asserts that adults recruit consequence etiology in their teleological reasoning, but that agency-in-nature beliefs lead to biases in this reasoning. Overall, I find that neither version of PT theory is well-supported by the evidence.

Creator

• Dink, Jacob

DOI

• https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-xqc5-1x95

Subject

• Cognitive psychology

Language

• en

Alternate Identifier

• etdadmin_upload_771757
• http://dissertations.umi.com/northwestern:15334

Keyword

• explanation
• counterfactuals
• teleology
• causal reasoning

Date created

• 2020-01-01

Resource type

• Dissertation

Rights statement

• In Copyright