Abstract According to the Categories , predicates can be ‘said of’ their subjects or they ‘present in’ subjects. The said-of relation has received relatively little scholarly attention, and scholars disagree on answers four foundational questions about relation. (i) What is it? (ii) Is it an essential relation? (iii) How related predication? (iv) primitive? I argue that A B just in case a forma...

Abstract Direct‐to‐consumer genetic ancestry tests measure biogeographic (BGA), which refers to an individual's ancestral origin in relation major population groups. There is growing concern that information exaggerates both false beliefs about racial differences and, ultimately, bias. Across three studies ( N = 1317), we find impacts categorization and essentialism (i.e., the extent people bel...

Three studies tested the effects of essentialist beliefs regarding the national ingroup in situations where a perpetrator group has inflicted harm on a victim group. For members of the perpetrator group, it was hypothesised that ‘essentialism’ has a direct positive association with ‘collective guilt’ felt as a result of misdeeds conducted by other ingroup members in the past. Simultaneously, it...

According to power theorists, all (fundamental, perfectly natural) properties (or at least all fundamental, perfectly natural properties that confer dispositions) are powers—i.e. they necessarily confer on their bearers certain dispositions. Although dispositional essentialism is increasingly gaining popularity, a vast majority of analytic metaphysicians still favors what I call ‘the nomic theo...

Some natural properties have causal roles; call these ‘causal properties’. Dispositional essentialists think that some causal properties have their causal roles essentially. For the purposes of this paper, I treat dispositional essentialism (hereafter ‘DE’) as a claim about the properties of (ideal, completed, fundamental) science. If the basic ontology of completed science (hereafter ‘Physics’...

Psychological essentialism is the idea that certain categories, such as ‘lion’ or ‘female’, have an underlying reality that cannot be observed directly. Where does this idea come from? This article reviews recent evidence suggesting that psychological essentialism is an early cognitive bias. Young children look beyond the obvious in many converging ways: when learning words, generalizing knowle...

The paper shows – contra what has been argued by Trenton Merricks – that counterpart theory, when conjoined with composition as identity, does not entail mereological essentialism. What Merrick’s argument overlooks is that contingent identity is but one of the effects of grounding identity across possible worlds on similarity. Consider the four following theses: Composition as Identity: A compo...

Abstract Ever since the publication of Hunger Memory in 1982, Richard Rodriguez has been read by scholars almost exclusively through lens identity politics. Twenty years later, Brown , sought to reconcile some contradictions identity, at least his own. Ultimately, concludes that cannot be reconciled. Our identities are always more complex and nuanced than boxes we try fit people in. In expressi...