Filippo Iorillo
KU Leuven
What is the content of a stereotype? The classical universal view of stereotypes describes the content of a stereotype with universal statements of the type: “All Italians are lazy”. This view has been challenged by a “statistical” account. Stereotypes have a more complex logical structure than universal generalizations. For instance, the universal statement “All Italians are lazy” fails to explain why people ignore counterexamples and do not update their beliefs. The statistical view foregrounds generic statements, allowing exceptions and variations within the targeted group. For instance, “Italians are generally lazy”. This makes stereotypes more epistemically robust and resistant to counterevidence than the classical view suggests. However, the statistical view fails to account for the explanatory role of stereotypes (e.g., “She is bad at football because she is a woman”). In this study, I offer a new account to understand the content of stereotypes: the dispositional view. I argue that the dispositional view is (1) non-universal, hence admits for exceptions and it moves away from universal generalization; (2) committed to a disposition that connects the kind with its property in a stereotype. For instance, “All Italians are lazy” is understood, in this account, as Italians (kind) having a disposition that under certain circumstances triggers the property (being lazy). This accounts for a more explanatory role of stereotypes. Moreover, this disposition admits exceptions, namely a situation where the disposition is not triggered, and it is interrupted. This account is also anti-essentialist, namely the disposition does not need to be the essence of the kind, but only entangled with it. This account also captures the opaqueness of stereotypes, namely people who hold a stereotype to be true do not exactly understand how the property is triggered in the kind and how it works. Finally, I discuss the extent to which the dispositional view can incorporate the statistical view.
Chair: Freya von Kirchbach
Time: September 13th, 12:00 – 12:30
Location: SR 1.003 (online)
SOPhiA 2026 