Cimpian & Salomon (C&S) present some intriguing preliminary evidence for the existence of an inherence heuristic, a basic cognitive tendency that leads people to explain patterns with reference to inherent features rather than extrinsic (i.e., relational or historical) features. While we find it plausible that people rely more heavily on inherent rather than relational properties in reasoning about many domains, we have doubts about the possibility of drawing the distinction between inherent and extrinsic properties unambiguously enough to enable us to conclude with confidence that participants are clearly tracking such a distinction in all the examples cited. But even if we set aside these doubts, the tendency that C&S are describing may not represent a cognitive bias of its own, but may instead emerge from the way the world is and our perceptual access to it.
C&S's account “classifies features as inherent if they can be said to characterize how an entity is constituted” (sect. 2.2.1, para. 1), and they add that these features tend to be stable and enduring. We take the distinction that they are tracking to be roughly that between intrinsic and extrinsic features – features that an individual object or entity has on its own and would continue to have in the absence of everything else, as opposed to those that an individual has in virtue of its relations to others. Paradigmatic cases of the former are perceptual features of an object, such as its size, mass, shape, or color. Clear examples of the latter are features that pertain to an object's location, position, relationships, or history, such as the fact that it is lying on top of the bookshelf, is located in Toronto, is my favorite toy, was manufactured in 2010, or belongs to the public library. But though there seem to be many clear-cut cases, there are other features that may be trickier to classify in one or the other category.Footnote
1
This creates a few problems in the evidence that the authors rely upon, since a number of cases that they cite as instances of inherent features would seem in fact to be relational, extrinsic, or historical by C&S's own definition. For example, that orange juice has a tangy taste and that it is healthy, are both facts that pertain to the relation of orange juice to humans (or to some humans, since it may be unhealthy or taste differently to others). Thus, these features are arguably not inherent. Similarly, if Amy laughs at Beth's joke because Beth is funny, that fact is extrinsic to the joke (though it is an inherent feature of Beth). Meanwhile, in discussing extrinsic features of objects (such as historical features), C&S give the example of a router that stops working when accidentally stepped on. However, this episode in the history of the router presumably alters the inherent properties of the router, which is what prevents it from functioning. So it would be correct for a participant to say that the router stopped functioning due to an inherent defect, though that defect was caused by an event in its causal history.
The fact that some examples the authors cite of inherent features can be considered relational according to their own criterion, and vice versa, implies that it is hard to be sure what kinds of features participants are using in some of the experiments that are meant to support the authors' hypothesis. But if we set this worry aside and focus on those cases about which there may be little uncertainty, another concern emerges: If inherent features are roughly those that pertain to the individual or object taken in isolation, as opposed to ones pertaining to its relations, origin, history, and so on, then the former are the ones that tend to be perceptually salient to human beings and easily ascertainable. So it may not be a basic cognitive feature of humans, but rather a function of our relation to the world, that makes “inherent” features salient. Also, more often than not and in many domains, these features tend to be more explanatory than relational features. When it comes to the domain of physical objects, their motion, constancy, solidity, and so on (a domain that develops early in ontogeny), an object's length, width, shape, mass, density, material composition, texture, and other inherent features tend to be more explanatory of its patterns of behavior than its geographic location, ownership, and date of manufacture. This also holds to a large extent of the domain of living creatures. To be sure, when it comes to the domain of artifacts, extrinsic function tends to be more important than inherent features, and a chair can be made of a wide range of materials, can have various dimensions, material compositions, colors, and so on, yet remain a chair. But here, too, inherent features and function cannot drift too far apart. (How many chairs are made out of paper or are the size of a house?) Thus, given what is perceptually salient to human observers and given some broad features of the material world, it stands to reason that inherent features will be accessed more readily by cognizers and will have more explanatory power. If so, then there may be no need to posit a separate inherence heuristic to understand why cognitive agents reach first for inherent rather than extrinsic features to explain patterns in the world around them.
Finally, we cannot help entertaining the possibility that C&S fall prey to the inherence heuristic in positing an innate heuristic to explain certain human cognitive tendencies, rather than explaining them in terms of relations of human beings to the world. But then, wouldn't that be a dramatic confirmation of the very heuristic that the authors claim to observe? Not necessarily: We are arguing that, instead of a basic component of our innate cognitive endowment, our tendency to explain patterns on the basis of inherent features is instead a function of our relationship to the world and of features of the world itself.
Cimpian & Salomon (C&S) present some intriguing preliminary evidence for the existence of an inherence heuristic, a basic cognitive tendency that leads people to explain patterns with reference to inherent features rather than extrinsic (i.e., relational or historical) features. While we find it plausible that people rely more heavily on inherent rather than relational properties in reasoning about many domains, we have doubts about the possibility of drawing the distinction between inherent and extrinsic properties unambiguously enough to enable us to conclude with confidence that participants are clearly tracking such a distinction in all the examples cited. But even if we set aside these doubts, the tendency that C&S are describing may not represent a cognitive bias of its own, but may instead emerge from the way the world is and our perceptual access to it.
C&S's account “classifies features as inherent if they can be said to characterize how an entity is constituted” (sect. 2.2.1, para. 1), and they add that these features tend to be stable and enduring. We take the distinction that they are tracking to be roughly that between intrinsic and extrinsic features – features that an individual object or entity has on its own and would continue to have in the absence of everything else, as opposed to those that an individual has in virtue of its relations to others. Paradigmatic cases of the former are perceptual features of an object, such as its size, mass, shape, or color. Clear examples of the latter are features that pertain to an object's location, position, relationships, or history, such as the fact that it is lying on top of the bookshelf, is located in Toronto, is my favorite toy, was manufactured in 2010, or belongs to the public library. But though there seem to be many clear-cut cases, there are other features that may be trickier to classify in one or the other category.Footnote 1 This creates a few problems in the evidence that the authors rely upon, since a number of cases that they cite as instances of inherent features would seem in fact to be relational, extrinsic, or historical by C&S's own definition. For example, that orange juice has a tangy taste and that it is healthy, are both facts that pertain to the relation of orange juice to humans (or to some humans, since it may be unhealthy or taste differently to others). Thus, these features are arguably not inherent. Similarly, if Amy laughs at Beth's joke because Beth is funny, that fact is extrinsic to the joke (though it is an inherent feature of Beth). Meanwhile, in discussing extrinsic features of objects (such as historical features), C&S give the example of a router that stops working when accidentally stepped on. However, this episode in the history of the router presumably alters the inherent properties of the router, which is what prevents it from functioning. So it would be correct for a participant to say that the router stopped functioning due to an inherent defect, though that defect was caused by an event in its causal history.
The fact that some examples the authors cite of inherent features can be considered relational according to their own criterion, and vice versa, implies that it is hard to be sure what kinds of features participants are using in some of the experiments that are meant to support the authors' hypothesis. But if we set this worry aside and focus on those cases about which there may be little uncertainty, another concern emerges: If inherent features are roughly those that pertain to the individual or object taken in isolation, as opposed to ones pertaining to its relations, origin, history, and so on, then the former are the ones that tend to be perceptually salient to human beings and easily ascertainable. So it may not be a basic cognitive feature of humans, but rather a function of our relation to the world, that makes “inherent” features salient. Also, more often than not and in many domains, these features tend to be more explanatory than relational features. When it comes to the domain of physical objects, their motion, constancy, solidity, and so on (a domain that develops early in ontogeny), an object's length, width, shape, mass, density, material composition, texture, and other inherent features tend to be more explanatory of its patterns of behavior than its geographic location, ownership, and date of manufacture. This also holds to a large extent of the domain of living creatures. To be sure, when it comes to the domain of artifacts, extrinsic function tends to be more important than inherent features, and a chair can be made of a wide range of materials, can have various dimensions, material compositions, colors, and so on, yet remain a chair. But here, too, inherent features and function cannot drift too far apart. (How many chairs are made out of paper or are the size of a house?) Thus, given what is perceptually salient to human observers and given some broad features of the material world, it stands to reason that inherent features will be accessed more readily by cognizers and will have more explanatory power. If so, then there may be no need to posit a separate inherence heuristic to understand why cognitive agents reach first for inherent rather than extrinsic features to explain patterns in the world around them.
Finally, we cannot help entertaining the possibility that C&S fall prey to the inherence heuristic in positing an innate heuristic to explain certain human cognitive tendencies, rather than explaining them in terms of relations of human beings to the world. But then, wouldn't that be a dramatic confirmation of the very heuristic that the authors claim to observe? Not necessarily: We are arguing that, instead of a basic component of our innate cognitive endowment, our tendency to explain patterns on the basis of inherent features is instead a function of our relationship to the world and of features of the world itself.