The development of principled connections and kind representations

Abstract Kind representations draw an important distinction between properties that are understood as existing in instances of a kind by virtue of their being the kind of thing they are and properties that are not understood in this manner. For example, the property of barking for the kind dog is understood as being had by dogs by virtue of the fact that they are dogs. These properties are said to have a principled connection to the kind. In contrast, the property of wearing a collar is not understood as existing in instances by virtue of their being dogs, despite the fact that a large percentage of dogs wear collars. Such properties are said to have a statistical connection to the kind. Two experiments tested two signatures of principled connections in 4–7 year olds and adults: (i) that principled connections license normative expectations (e.g., we judge there to be something wrong with a dog that does not bark), and (ii) that principled connections license formal explanations which explain the existence of a property by reference to the kind (e.g., that barks because it is a dog ). Experiment 1 showed that both the children and adults have normative expectations for properties that have a principled connection to a kind, but not those that have a mere statistical connection to a kind. Experiment 2 showed that both children and adults are more likely to provide a formal explanation when explaining the existence of properties with a principled connection to a kind than properties with statistical connections to their kinds. Both experiments showed no effect of age (over ages 4, 7, and adulthood) on the extent to which participants differentiated principled and statistical connections. We discuss the implications of the results for theories of conceptual representation and for the structure of explanation.