Natural Kinds

This paper reports (in section 1 “Introduction”) some quotes from Nelson Goodman which clarify that, contrary to a common misunderstanding, Goodman always denied that “grue” requires temporal information and “green” does not require temporal information; and, more in general, that Goodman always denied that grue-like predicates require additional information compared to what green-like predicates require. One of the quotations is the following, taken from the first page of the Foreword to chapter 8 “Induction” of the Goodman’s book “Problems and Projects”: (...) “Nevertheless, we may by now confidently conclude that no general distinction between projectible and non- projectible predicates can be drawn on syntactic or even on semantic grounds. Attempts to distinguish projectible predicates as purely qualitative, or non-projectible ones as time-dependent, for example, have plainly failed”. Barker and Achinstein in their famous paper of 1960 tried to demonstrate that the grue-speaker (named Mr. Grue in their paper) needs temporal information to be able to determine whether an object is grue, but Goodman replied (in “Positionality and Pictures”, contained in his book “Problems and Projects”, chapter 8, section 6b) that they failed to prove that Mr. Grue needs temporal information to determine whether an object is grue. According to Goodman, since the predicates “blue” and “green” are interdefinable with the predicates “grue” and “bleen”, “if we can tell which objects are blue and which objects are green, we can tell which ones are grue and which ones are bleen” [pages 12-13 of “Reconceptions in Philosophy and Other Arts and Sciences”]. But this paper points out that an example of interdefinability is also that one about the predicate “gruet”, which is a predicate that applies to an object if the object either is green and examined before time t, or is non-green and not examined before time t. The three predicates “green”, “gruet”, “examined before time t” are interdefinable: and even though the predicates “green” and “examined before time t” are interdefinable, being able to tell if an object is green does not imply being able to tell if an object is examined before time t (the interdefinability among three elements is a type of interdefinability present, for example, also among the logical connectives). Thus, it is wrong the Goodman’s thesis according to which if it is possible to determine without having temporal information whether the predicate “green” has to be applied to an object, then it is also possible to determine without having temporal information whether a predicate interdefinable with “green” has to be applied to an object. Another example of interdefinability is that one about a decidable predicate PD, which is interdefinable with an undecidable predicate PU: therefore even though we can tell whether an object is PD and whether an object is non-PD, we cannot tell whether an object is PU (since PU is an undecidable predicate) and whether an object is non-PU. Although the predicates PD and PU are interdefinable, the possibility to determine whether an object is PD does not imply the possibility to determine whether an object is PU (since PU is an undecidable predicate). Similarly, although the predicates “green” and “grue” are interdefinable, the possibility to determine whether an object is “green” even in absence of temporal information does not imply the possibility to determine whether an object is “grue” even in absence of temporal information. These and other examples about “grue” and “bleen” point out that even in case two predicates are interdefinable, the possibility to apply a predicate P does not imply the possibility to apply a predicate interdefinable with P. And that the possibility to apply the predicate “green” without having temporal information does not imply the possibility to apply the predicate “grue” without having temporal information. Furthermore, knowing that an object is both green and grue implies temporal information: in fact, we know by definition that a grue object can only be: 1) either green (in case the object is examined before time t); 2) or blue (in case the object is not examined before time t). Thus, knowing that an object is both grue and green, we know that we are faced with case 1, the case of a grue object that is green and examined before time t. Then the paper points out why the Goodman-Kripke paradox is a paradox about meaning that cannot have repercussions on induction. Finally the paper points out why Hume’s problem is a problem different from Goodman’s paradox and requires a specific treatment. -/- . (shrink)

Being able to apply grue-like predicates would allow one to instantly solve an infinite number of mysteries (historical, scientific, etc.). In this paper I’ll give three examples. It is still a mystery whether George Mallory and Andrew Irvine managed to reach the summit of Mount Everest in 1924. The predicate “greverest” applies to an object if either the object is green and Mount Everest was scaled in 1924, or the object is not green and Mount Everest was not scaled in (...) 1924. The predicate “greverest” is interdefinable with the predicate “green”: the predicate "green" applies to an object if either the object is greverest and Mount Everest was scaled in 1924, or the object is not greverest and Mount Everest was not scaled in 1924. The predicate "non-greverest" applies to an object if either the object is non-green and Mount Everest was scaled in 1924, or the object is green and Mount Everest was not scaled in 1924. The predicate "non-green" applies to an object if either the object is non-greverest and Mount Everest was scaled in 1924, or the object is greverest and Mount Everest was not scaled in 1924. We know that the famous diamond called Golden Jubilee is not green. If someone (a greverest-speaker) informed us that the Golden Jubilee diamond is greverest, we would automatically come to know Mount Everest was not scaled in 1924. According to the definitions, a greverest object can only be either 1) green (in case Mount Everest was scaled in 1924), or 2) non-green (in case Mount Everest was not scaled in 1924). Since we know that the Golden Jubilee diamond is not green, if we come to know that the Golden Jubilee diamond is also greverest, we would automatically know from the definition of “greverest” that we are faced with case 2, the case in which the object is both non-green and greverest, and Mount Everest was not scaled in 1924. Vice versa, if someone informed us that the Golden Jubilee diamond is not greverest, we would automatically come to know that Mount Everest was scaled in 1924. According to the definitions, a non-greverest object can only be either 1) non-green (in case Mount Everest was scaled in 1924), or 2) green (in the case Mount Everest was not scaled in 1924). Since we know that the Golden Jubilee diamond is not green, if we come to know that the Golden Jubilee diamond is also non-greverest, we would automatically know from the definition of “non-greverest” that we are faced with case 1, the case in which the object is both non-green and non-greverest, and Mount Everest was scaled in 1924. At the moment no one has yet been able to convince the scientific community that he can correctly determine whether the Golden Jubilee diamond is greverest. I am skeptical that anyone will demonstrate to the scientific community that he can correctly determine whether a specific object is greverest; but I would be happy if someone could demonstrate to the scientific community that he can correctly determine whether an object is greverest: that would be a good news for historical studies. The paper continues with two examples, including an example about the predicate "grue". (shrink)

If there is a plurality of absolutely separate individual conscious existences, corresponding to individual living organisms, then the directly experienced fact that only a particular one of these consciousnesses, one's own, stands out as immediately present, can not be true absolutely, but only relative to some specific context of conditions and qualifications singling out that particular consciousness. But further consideration demonstrates that it is not possible for any such context to be specified. This implies that all conscious existences must ultimately (...) be united as, or in, some single conscious entity underlying the apparent plurality of individuals. (shrink)

It is widely assumed that platonism with respect to a discourse of metaphysical interest, such as fictional or mathematical discourse, affords a better account of the semantic appearances than nominalism, other things being equal. Of course, other things may not be equal. For example, platonism is supposed to come at the cost of a plausible epistemology and ontology. But the hedged claim is often treated as a background assumption. It is motivated by the intuitively stronger one that the platonist can (...) take the semantic appearances at ‘face-value’ while the nominalist must resort to ad hoc and technically problematic machinery in order to explain those appearances away. In this article, I argue that, on any natural construal of ‘face-value’, the platonist, like the nominalist, is not able to take the semantic appearances at face-value. And insofar as the nominalist is forced to resort to ad hoc and technically awkward devices in order to explain those appearances away, the platonist must resort to such devices as well. One moral of the story is that the thesis that platonism affords a better account of the semantic appearances than nominalism – even other things being equal – is not trivial. Another is that we should rethink a widespread methodology in metaphysics. (shrink)

Essentialists hold that at least a certain range of entities can be meaningfully said to have natures, essences, or essential features independently of how these entities are described, conceptualized or otherwise placed with respect to our specifically human interests, purposes or activities. Modalists about essence, on the one hand, take the position that the essential truths are a subset of the necessary truths and the essential properties of entities are included among their necessary properties. Non-modalists about essence, on the other (...) hand, oppose the reduction of essence to modality and hold, rather, that essence is more basic than, and explanatory of, modality. This chapter begins with a brief summary of Kit Fine’s well-known challenges to the modal account of essence and considers a recent attempt by “sparse modalists” like Sam Cowling and Nathan Wildman to respond to Fine’s counterexamples by adding a sparseness constraint to the “bare” modal account of essence. A further question arises, however, as to whether and how Fine’s definitional approach can avoid his own counterexamples against the modal approach to essence. The chapter concludes with some final thoughts concerning the theoretical roles ascribed to essence by modalists and non-modalists. (shrink)

Scientists represent their world, grouping and organizing phenomena into classes by means of concepts. Philosophers of science have historically been interested in the nature of these concepts, the criteria that inform their application and the nature of the kinds that the concepts individuate. They also have sought to understand whether and how different systems of classification are related and more recently, how investigative practices shape conceptual development and change. Our aim in this paper is to provide a critical overview of (...) some of the key developments in this philosophical literature and identify some interesting issues it raises about the prospects of the so-called “special sciences”, including psychiatry, psychology, and the mind-brain sciences more generally, to discover natural kinds. (shrink)

This article outlines the debate between realists and nominalists concerning linguistic kinds or types. It also discusses the questions of how many linguistic kinds should we be committed to (if any), and whether the distinction between kinds of linguistic objects, and kinds of linguistic properties.

The claim is frequently made that structured collections of individuals who are themselves subjects of mental and cognitive states – such collections as courts, countries, and corporations – can be, and often are, subjects of mental or cognitive states. And, to be clear, advocates for this so-called group-minds hypothesis intend their view to be interpreted literally, not metaphorically. The existing critical literature casts substantial doubt on this view, at least on the assumption that groups are claimed to instantiate the same (...) species of mental and cognitive properties as individual humans. In this essay, I evaluate a defensive move made by some proponents of the group-oriented view: to concede that group states and individual states aren’t of the same specific natural kinds, while holding that groups instantiate different species of mental or cognitive states – perhaps a different species of cognition itself – from those instantiated by humans. In order to evaluate this defense of group cognition, I develop a view of natural kinds – or at least of the sort of evidence that supports inferences to the sameness of natural kind – a view I have previous dubbed the ‘tweak-and-extend’ theory. Guided by the tweak-and-extend approach, I arrive at a tentative conclusion: that what is common to models of individual cognitive processing and models of group processing does not suffice to establish sameness of cognitive (or mental) kinds, properties, or state-types, not even at a generic or overarching level. (shrink)

In this paper I distinguish three kinds of kinds: traditional philosophical kinds such as truth, knowledge, and causation; natural science kinds such as spin, charge and mass; and social kinds such as class, poverty, and marriage. The three-fold taxonomy I work with represents an idealised abstraction from the wide variety of kinds that there are and the messy phenomena that underlie them. However, the kinds I identify are discrete, and the three-fold taxonomy is useful when it comes to understanding claims (...) about the normativity, scope, and implementation of conceptual engineering. In particular it reveals: first, that conceptual engineering in a broad sense is not distinctively normative; but second, that there is a distinctive normativity present in conceptual engineering in the narrow sense of amelioration; third, that conceptual engineering in the narrow sense of amelioration is only possible for terms that refer to kinds whose grounds we can change; and fourth, that the amelioration of such kind terms can be brought about as a result of changing the grounds of those kinds. The overall aim is to draw attention to the differences between kinds of kinds to make sense of the diverse and often conflicting claims in the conceptual engineering literature, both from its proponents and from its detractors. The hope is that paying attention to the differences between kinds of kinds will provide a better understanding of the landscape. (shrink)

What sort of philosophical work are natural kinds suited for? Scientific realists often contend that they provide the ‘aboutness’ of successful of scientific classification and explain their epistemic utility (among other side hustles). Recent history has revealed this to be a tricky job — particularly given the present naturalistic climate of philosophy of science. As a result, we’ve seen an explosion of different sorts of theories. This phenomenon that has suggested to some that philosophical theorizing about natural kinds has reached (...) a sort of ‘scholastic twilight’ and that the concept (or family of concepts) has outlived its utility: perhaps there’s no work natural kinds are suited for. While I think this pessimistic take is unwarranted, I will argue that it is worth rethinking the roles to which a reasonably naturalistic account of natural kinds can be fruitfully put. Natural kinds deserve a shorter work week. (shrink)

Contemporary metaphysics, and especially neo‐Aristotelian metaphysics, tackles many of the same problems as Avicenna did. One of these problems is the possibility of substantial kind change. For instance, is it possible for an animal to change its species? Aristotle and Avicenna both regarded species to be eternal, but their metaphysics might allow for individuals to change their kinds—what is important is that one kind cannot change into another kind. From a contemporary perspective, this may seem odd, given what we know (...) about the evolution of species. Moreover, phenomena like beta decay seem to suggest that a given sample of an element may change into another element, so one might think that contemporary science allows both changing kinds and substantial kind change. Yet, I suggest that the essentialist metaphysics that has developed from Aristotle to neo‐Aristotelian metaphysics, via Avicenna, may already possess the necessary tools to accommodate all this. (shrink)

Biochemical kinds present an interesting case study in the philosophical literature on natural kinds and functions, as they fall between chemical kinds, defined by their intrinsic microstructural properties, and biological kinds, which involve functional and evolutionary considerations. Here we examine how the distinct chemical and functional properties of biochemical kinds are unified, as well as their identity criteria. We contend that unification principles are crucial for explaining the clustering of properties shared by members of natural kinds and for establishing identity (...) criteria for such kinds. We consider whether there are specific properties that characterize biochemical kinds. This entails investigating the relationship between biochemical functions and structure. We focus on proteins, particularly on vitamin B12, as a representative example of a biochemical kind. We conclude that if there are unification principles for biochemical kinds, these principles exist at the level of biochemistry itself. This supports the naturalness of biochemical kinds as genuine categories and provides identity conditions for such kinds. (shrink)

According to psychological essentialism, people divide the world into categories that are seen as possessing deep, underlying properties that account for what is common in members of the category. I examine two ways in which this phenomenon has been used either to debunk or to vindicate essentialism about natural kinds. I argue that neither way affects the essentialist thesis, since they depend on other types of evidence that independently reject/support the thesis. I contend that research on psychological essentialism may play (...) a more direct role in a different argument, which addresses the reality of certain natural kinds. To this end, I will revise the issue of the mind-independence of natural kinds through the concept of unification principle. This concept can offer a criterion of natural kindness that allows certain sorts of mental dependence as constitutive of an objective mind-independent kind. I will apply this idea to the case of race, examining some ways in which findings about psychological essentialism could either debunk or vindicate the existence of such a natural kind, and extend it other putative kinds. (shrink)

This Element offers an opinionated and selective introduction to philosophical issues concerning the metaphysics of color. The opinion defended is that colors are objective features of our world; objects are colored, and they have those colors independent of how they are experienced. It is a minority opinion. Many philosophers thinking about color experience argue that perceptual variation, the fact that color experiences vary from observer to observer and from viewing condition to viewing condition, makes objectivism untenable. Many philosophers thinking about (...) colors and science argue that colors are ontologically unnecessary; nothing to be explained requires an appeal to colors. A careful look at arguments from perceptual variation shows that those arguments are not compelling, and especially once it is clear how to individuate colors. Moreover, a careful look at scientific explanations shows that colors are explanatorily essential. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core. (shrink)

This paper aims to analyse the claims that law is an artefact. There are two different concepts of the artefact in legal–philosophical literature. In some contexts, the concept of an artefact implies that a law is a social kind rather than something similar to a natural kind. Philosophers use the concepts of essentialism, fallibilism, and externalism to juxtapose law with natural kinds. However, in different contexts, the use of ‘artefact’ seems to presuppose some ontologically robust views from the specific field (...) as the philosophy of technical artefacts. This latter use, however, assumes certain ontological presuppositions concerning the examination of law; specifically, the intention of the author and the purposive character of law. I argue that between the thesis that law is an artefact understood as a social kind or social construct and the thesis that law is similar to technical artefacts, there is a conceptual shift. I claim that this shift is unjustified. (shrink)

Comparative cognitive science often involves asking questions like ‘Do nonhumans have C?’ where C is a capacity we take humans to have. These questions frequently generate unproductive disagreements, in which one party affirms and the other denies that nonhumans have the relevant capacity on the basis of the same evidence. I argue that these questions can be productively understood as questions about natural kinds: do nonhuman capacities fall into the same natural kinds as our own? Understanding such questions in this (...) way has several advantages: it preserves the intuition that these are substantive empirical questions worth asking; it helps us to understand why they so frequently give rise to disagreements of the kind described; and it provides clues about how to diagnose and resolve them. (shrink)

Some plausibly necessary a posteriori theoretical claims include ‘water is H 2 O’, ‘gold is the element with atomic number 79’, and ‘cats are animals’. In this paper I challenge the necessity of the third claim. I argue that there are possible worlds in which cats exist, but are not animals. Under any of the species concepts currently accepted in biology, organisms do not belong essentially to their species. This is equally true of their ancestors. In phylogenetic systematics, monophyletic clades (...) such as the animal kingdom are composed of an ancestral stem species and all of its descendants. If the stem species had not existed, neither would the clade. Thus it could have been the case that all the organisms which actually belong to the animal kingdom might have existed yet not have been animals. (shrink)

In this paper we introduce the view that realism about a social kind K entails that the grounding conditions of K are difficult (or impossible) to manipulate. In other words, we define social kind realism in terms of relative frame manipulability (RFM). In articulating our view, we utilize theoretical resources from Epstein’s (Epstein, The ant trap: Rebuilding the foundations of the Social Sciences. Oxford University Press, 2015) grounding/anchoring model and causal interventionism. After comparing our view with causal and principle-based (Tahko, (...) Synthese 200(2):1–23, 2022) proposals, we motivate RFM by showing that it accommodates important desiderata about the social landscape (such as recognizing the context-relativity of social properties and the emancipatory dimension of social practice). Finally, we consider three objections. First, we tackle frame-necessitarianism (FN), the view that social kind frames are metaphysically necessary (and thus unmanipulable). Secondly, we engage with what Epstein (Epstein, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 99(3):768–781 2019a) calls UNIVERSALITY (the view that social kinds can hold in the absence of anchors) and we argue that it should also be resisted. Finally, we tackle a recent objection from Mason’s (Mason, Philosophical Studies, 178(12):3975–3994) essentialism about social kinds. (shrink)

In this chapter, we provide an opinionated introduction to contemporary trope bundle theories of substance. We assess different trope bundle theories on the grounds of their two main aims: to provide an adequate account of substances or objects by means of tropes and a reductive analysis of inherence, that is, object's having tropes as their properties. Our discussion begins by a presentation of Donald C. Williams’ and Keith Campbell's paradigmatic trope theories, which maintain that tropes are independent existents. After highlighting (...) the central problems of paradigmatic trope theories, we discuss two more recent developments of trope bundle theory that also take non-relational tropes as independent existents, Anna-Sofia Maurin's and Douglas Ehring's independence theories. Finally, we present two alternative trope bundle theories, according to which tropes are dependent existents, dependence theories, namely, Arda Denkel's Saturation theory and our Strong Nuclear Theory (SNT). Although the latter two theories introduce existential dependencies among tropes, we argue that dependence theories provide a more satisfactory account of substances dividing into natural kinds than independence theories. (shrink)

Is knowledge a uniform kind? If not, what relation do the different kinds of knowledge bear to one another? Is there a central notion of knowledge which other kinds of knowledge must be understood in terms of? In this paper, I use Aristotle’s theory of homonyms as a framework to make progress on these questions. I argue that knowledge is not a uniform kind but rather a core-dependent homonym. To demonstrate this, I focus on knowledge by acquaintance. I argue that (...) the principles that govern propositional knowledge cannot govern knowledge by acquaintance. I then develop analogue principles for knowledge by acquaintance and show why, despite their different modal profiles, knowledge by acquaintance is nevertheless a form of knowledge. I then show that the analysis of propositional knowledge fundamentally depends on knowledge by acquaintance. (shrink)

Properties have an important role in specifying different views on laws of nature: virtually any position on laws will make some reference to properties, and some of the leading views even reduce laws to properties. This chapter will first outline what laws of nature are typically taken to be and then specify their connection to properties in more detail. We then move on to consider three different accounts of properties: natural, essential, and dispositional properties, and we shall see that different (...) conceptions of properties also result in different views of the modal status of laws, such as the question of whether laws are metaphysically necessary or contingent. Finally, there are also important links specifically between properties, natural kinds, and laws of nature that deserve our attention. (shrink)

Natural kind essentialism is a specification of the intuitive idea that there are some mind-independent or objective categories in nature. These categories are thought to be characterised by a shared essence, which may involve intrinsic or extrinsic properties, mechanisms, or causal history. While the ontological basis of natural kinds has its roots in antiquity and especially Aristotle, the contemporary notion of a “natural kind” in philosophical discussion is often traced to William Whewell’s and John Stuart Mill’s work in the 1800s. (...) In its more modern form, natural kind essentialism was popularised in the 1970s mainly by Saul Kripke and Hilary Putnam. Traditionally, natural kind essentialism has been associated with intrinsic and microstructural properties, but contemporary work has made it clear that more refined versions of natural kind essentialism may have to accept extrinsic or relational essences. (shrink)

Beauvoir’s The Second Sex stands out as a master class in the accommodation of conceptual and inferential practices to real, objective gender kinds. Or so I will argue. To establish this framing, we will first need in hand the kind of scientific epistemology that correctly reconciles epistemic progress and error, particularly as pertains to the unruly social sciences. An important goal of the paper is to develop that epistemological framework and unlock its ontological implications for the domain of gender. As (...) we will see, the real gender kinds that contemporary social scientists successfully identify and track are very much the same kinds to which Beauvoir was coordinating reference in The Second Sex. The correct identification of those kinds endures as a moral and political priority, regardless of one’s other gender-related normative agenda. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to defend a theory of artifacts based on the concept of field of action, as an alternative to functional, intentional and double-nature theories. The proposed theory is realistic about the existence of entities that are artifacts, and praxiological about the nature of such entities. The basis of the theory is the concept of action; from this concept, the concepts of field of action and participants in a field of action, namely, agents and objects, are (...) introduced. An artifact is defined as an object that has a part and role in the achievement of an action. (shrink)

The heterogeneity problem, which stems from the alleged difficulty of finding out what all pleasant experiences have in common, is largely considered as a substantial issue in the philosophy of pleasure, one that is usually taken as the starting point for theorizing about the essence of pleasure. The goal of this paper is to move the focus away from the heterogeneity problem and toward an alternative approach to pleasure. To do this, I first show that, although the approach stemming from (...) the heterogeneity problem has led to an interesting discussion about the essence of pleasure, it has usually endorsed an introspectionist methodology and other problematic assumptions that have led to doubtful results. I thus propose a natural-kind approach to pleasure, which seeks to determine what, if any, the natural kind of pleasure would consist in. This approach broadens the investigation of pleasure by enabling the use of a larger range of methodological tools, thus opening new promising directions for research. (shrink)

This paper addresses two problems concerning the deferred ostension of extinct and fictive kinds. First, the sampled item, the fossil or the depiction, is not a sample of the referent. Nonetheless, the retained characteristic shape, understood via analogy with living creatures, enables the reference to be fixed. Second, though both extinct and fictive kinds are targets of deferred ostension, there is an important difference in the sample. Fossilization is a natural causal process that makes fossils to be reflections of their (...) originals. As reflections, fossils embed their referents in the primary existential world of perceived things. Images of artificial kinds, by contrast, leave their referents in the secondary existential world of mere appearance. In this way, the paper widens the scope of the Kripke-Putnam account of ostension for naming kinds by drawing on Quine’s concept of deferred ostension for absent referents. (shrink)

Scientists cannot devise theories, construct models, propose explanations, make predictions, or even carry out observations, without first classifying their subject matter. The goal of scientific taxonomy is to come up with classification schemes that conform to nature's own. Another way of putting this is that science aims to devise categories that correspond to 'natural kinds.' The interest in ascertaining the real kinds of things in nature is as old as philosophy itself, but it takes on a different guise when one (...) adopts a naturalist stance in philosophy, that is when one looks closely at scientific practice and takes it as a guide for identifying natural kinds and investigating their general features. This Element surveys existing philosophical accounts of natural kinds, defends a naturalist alternative, and applies it to case studies in a diverse set of sciences. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core. (shrink)

Some philosophers understand natural kinds to be the categories which are constraints on enquiry. In order to elaborate the metaphysics appropriate to such an account, I consider the complicated history of scurvy, citrus, and vitamin C. It may be tempting to understand these categories in a shallow way (as mere property clusters) or in a deep way (as fundamental properties). Neither approach is adequate, and the case instead calls for middle-range ontology: starting from categories which we identify in the world (...) and elaborating their structure, but not pretending to jump ahead to a complete story about fundamental being. (shrink)

This paper is inspired by and develops on E. J. Lowe’s work, who writes in his book The Possibility of Metaphysics that ‘metaphysical possibility is an inescapable determinant of actuality’ (1998: 9). Metaphysics deals with possibilities – metaphysical possibilities – but is not able to determine what is actual without the help of empirical research. Accordingly, a delimitation of the space of possibilities is required. The resulting – controversial – picture is that we generally need to know whether something is (...) possible before we can know whether it is actual. In order to appreciate this picture, we need to understand Lowe’s slogan: ‘essence precedes existence’ (Lowe 2008: 40). This slogan has both an ontological and an epistemic reading. The ontological reading is related to the now familiar idea that essence grounds modality, as popularised by Kit Fine. The epistemic reading suggests that we can know the essence of some entity before we know whether or not that entity exists. However, this idea is often met with puzzlement and Lowe himself sadly passed away before he had a chance to clarify this framework. I will present the framework as I understand it, develop it on my own terms, and put forward a qualified defence of it. I will also illustrate how the framework can be put to use with a case study concerning the discovery of transuranic elements. (shrink)

A dominant strand of philosophical thought holds that natural kinds are clusters of objects with shared properties. Cluster theories of natural kinds are often taken to be a late twentieth-century development, prompted by dissatisfaction with essentialism in philosophy of biology. I will argue here, however, that a cluster theory of kinds had actually been formulated by William Whewell (1794-1866) more than a century earlier. Cluster theories of kinds can be characterized in terms of three central commitments, all of which are (...) present in Whewell’s work on classification. Like contemporary cluster theorists, Whewell claims that kinds are united by similarity, that many kinds do not have essences, and that there are “gaps” between kinds. Moreover, Whewell advises taxonomists to look for consilience (roughly, convergence) between different classificatory schemes, a recommendation that reinforces the identification of natural classes with property clusters. Thus Whewell was not only an early cluster theorist, but one with important insights into what a cluster theory of kinds means for the practice of classification. (shrink)

The kinds of real or natural kinds that support explanation and prediction in the social sciences are difficult to identify and track because they change through time, intersect with one another, and they do not always exhibit their properties when one encounters them. As a result, conceptual practices directed at these kinds will often refer in ways that are partial, equivocal, or redundant. To improve this epistemic situation, it is important to employ open-ended classificatory concepts, to understand when different research (...) programs are tracking the same real kind, and to maintain an ongoing commitment to interact causally with real kinds to focus reference on those kinds. A tempting view of these non-idealized epistemic conditions should be avoided: that they signal an ontological structure of the social world so plentiful that it would permit ameliorated classificatory schemes to achieve their normative aims regardless of whether they defer to real-kind classificatory schemes. To ground these discussions, the essay appeals to an overlooked convergence in the systematic naturalistic frameworks of Richard Boyd and Ruth Millikan. (shrink)

The subject of this essay is the classical problem of induction, which is sometimes attributed to David Hume and called “the Humean Problem of Induction.” Here, I examine a certain sort of Neo-Aristotelian solution to the problem, which appeals to the concept of natural kinds in its response to the inductive skeptic. This position is most notably represented by Howard Sankey and Marc Lange. The purpose of this paper is partly destructive and partly constructive. I raise two questions. The first (...) is: Are the natural kind solutions to the problem successful? The first thesis of this paper is that they are not, and I will show how and why they fail. And the second question I raise here is: Is there nonetheless some alternative Neo-Aristotelian solution to the problem which is successful and can overcome the shortcomings endemic to the Sankey-Lange account? The second thesis is that there is, and I’ll attempt to sketch one. My stance here may be summarized by saying that, while I agree with Sankey and Lange that the problem of induction can be adequately resolved, and while I am on the whole sympathetic with the Aristotelian spirit of their account, I am, for all that, dissatisfied with the letter of them. Nothing short of a more thoroughgoing Aristotelianism about the epistemology of induction will do. (shrink)

It is a metaphysical orthodoxy that interesting non-symmetric relations cannot be reduced to symmetric ones. This orthodoxy is wrong. I show this by exploring the expressive power of symmetric theories, i.e. theories which use only symmetric predicates. Such theories are powerful enough to raise the possibility of Pythagrapheanism, i.e. the possibility that the world is just a vast, unlabelled, undirected graph.

A central tension shaping metaethical inquiry is that normativity appears to be subjective yet real, where it’s difficult to reconcile these aspects. On the one hand, normativity pertains to our actions and attitudes. On the other, normativity appears to be real in a way that precludes it from being a mere figment of those actions and attitudes. In this paper, I argue that normativity is indeed both subjective and real. I do so by way of treating it as a special (...) sort of artifact, where artifacts are mind-dependent yet nevertheless can carve at the joints of reality. In particular, I argue that the properties of being a reason and being valuable for are grounded in attitudes yet are still absolutely structural. (shrink)

I examine the views of Thomas Reid with respect to a certain version of the problem of induction: Why are inductions using natural kinds successful, and what justifies them? I argue that while both Reid holds a kind of conventionalist view about natural kinds, this conventionalism has a realistic component which allows him to answer both questions.

Marion Godman makes the argument that Pathological Withdrawal Syndrome (PWS) makes the case for psychiatric disorders as a natural kind. Godman argues that we can classify kinds according to their shared ‘grounding’, but we need not know what the grounding is to know that the natural is a natural kind. However, I argue that Godman erroneously classifies PWS as its own natural kind when it is in fact a variant of depression, which is its own natural kind. Cooper highlights culture-bound (...) syndromes, which can explain the discrepancy between the different diagnosis rates for psychiatric disorders among different cultures. Taking culture-bound syndromes into account, I conclude that PWS is a type of depression that is culture-specific. (shrink)

In this paper, I seek to explain Suhrawardī’s method of writing his allegories – how he draws upon his philosophical principles to construct forms and plots of his stories. To do so, I begin by delineating two key doctrines of his Illuminationist (Ishrāqī) ontology: the world of Forms (‘ālam al-muthul) and the discontinuous imaginal world (‘ālam al-mithāl al-munfaṣil). I provide an account of the history of these two doctrines and the nature of these two worlds, and then consider some of (...) their functions for, and effects on, Suhrawardī’s explanations and analyses. I will then deal with Suhrawardī’s allegories, pinpointing particular effects of the belief in the world of Forms and the imaginal world on his symbolisms and allegories. Distinguishing three main spiritual-mystical notions in Suhrawardī’s allegories, I elaborate upon the role of the above two doctrines in his construction of characters and fictional events, whereby I demystify certain symbols in these stories. I conclude that there is a close tie between Suhrawardī’s allegories and his philosophical doctrines. Thus, his spiritual doctrines are presented in a symbolic form in certain allegorical characters and adventures. The deployment of characteristics of the world of Forms and the imaginal world plays a central role here. (shrink)

Emotions have long been of interest to philosophers and have deep historical roots going back to the Ancients. They have also become one of the most exciting areas of current research in philosophy, the cognitive sciences, and beyond. -/- This book explains the philosophy of the emotions, structuring the investigation around seven fundamental questions: What are emotions? Are emotions natural kinds? Do animals have emotions? Are emotions epistemically valuable? Are emotions the foundation for value and morality? Are emotions the basis (...) for responsibility? Do emotions make us better people? -/- In the course of exploring these questions, the book also discusses cutting-edge empirical research on emotion, feminist approaches to emotions and their value, and methodological questions on how to theorize about the emotions. The book also contains in-depth discussions of specific emotions like compassion, disgust, anxiety, and curiosity. It also highlights emerging trends in emotion research. (shrink)

Hylomorphism is a metaphysical theory that accounts for the unity of the material parts of composite objects by appeal to a structure or ‘form’ characterizing those parts. I argue that hylomorphism is not merely a plausible or appealing solution to problems of material composition, but a position entailed by any coherent metaphysics of ordinary material objects. In fact, not only does hylomorphism have Aristotelian defenders, but it has had independent lives in both East and West. -/- I review three contemporary (...) hylomorphic theories appeal to ‘structure’ to explain the unity of material objects. Each, however, accepts a controversial principle: that substances can have other substances as proper parts. Such a principle is implausible and severely threatens the coherence of the theory. -/- I begin by showing that Thomas Aquinas’ account of form, which does not accept that substances can have other substances as parts, gives us a more coherent version of hylomorphism. Then I argue Zhu Xi, a Song dynasty Confucian thinker, developed a non-Aristotelian hylomorphism. Unlike Aristotelians, Zhu Xi’s metaphysics was formed in opposition to Buddhist versions of skepticism and gives us reasons to think that anyone who holds a view of objects stronger than Buddhists is committed to forms. In conclusion, I show directly, by appeal to some of those same considerations from Zhu Xi, why it is that all those who believe there are unified material objects will appeal to something like a substantial form. The traditional hylomorphic picture of material composition, then, remains a plausible framework for contemporary metaphysicians – and for good reason. (shrink)

In this paper, we focus on the propensity toward identifying natural kinds with successful scientific categories in contemporary discussions of natural kinds within the philosophy of science. Success in this case is understood as the fulfillment of epistemic interests or goals in a given field of scientific research. The prevailing view is that, in order to have a theory of natural kinds that successfully captures current scientific practice, the relevant epistemic interests are the current interests of scientists working in a (...) particular field. In contrast, we concur with the Franklin-Hall (2015) that a wider range of possible interests needs to be taken into account, in order to avoid making natural kinds too dependent on the current stage of research. But unlike Franklin-Hall who suggests looking for an intersection between the interests and goals of current epistemic agents and our neighboring epistemic agents (the categorical bottleneck view), we advocate the view that all these different interests and goals need to be taken into account, and thus our view takes into account a much wider range of categories. (shrink)

Philosophical treatments of natural kinds are embedded in two distinct projects. I call these the philosophy of science approach and the philosophy of language approach. Each is characterized by its own set of philosophical questions, concerns, and assumptions. The kinds studied in the philosophy of science approach are projectible categories that can ground inductive inferences and scientific explanation. The kinds studied in the philosophy of language approach are the referential objects of a special linguistic category—natural kind terms—thought to refer directly. (...) Philosophers may hope for a unified account addresses both sets of concerns. This paper argues that this cannot be done successfully. No single account can satisfy both the semantic objectives of the philosophy of language approach and the explanatory projects of the philosophy of science approach. After analyzing where the tensions arise, I make recommendations about assumptions and projects that are best abandoned, those that should be retained, and those that should go their separate ways. I also recommend adopting the disambiguating terminology of “scientific kinds” and “natural kinds” for the different notions of kinds developed in these different approaches. (shrink)

Do we have free will? Understanding free will as the ability to act freely, and free actions as exercises of this ability, I maintain that the default answer to this question is “yes.” I maintain that free actions are a natural kind, by relying on the influential idea that kinds are homeostatic property clusters. The resulting position builds on the view that agents are a natural kind and yields an attractive alternative to recent revisionist accounts of free action. My view (...) also overcomes difficulties confronted by previous views according to which free actions might be a natural kind. On my view, free actions exist and we often act freely, as long as we possess various features that are related in the right sorts of ways to each other and to the world. In turn, we acquire and retain the concept as long as most of us possess enough of those features. (shrink)

The account of natural kinds as stable property clusters is premised on the possibility of separating the epistemic value of natural kinds from their underlying metaphysics. On that account, the co-instantiation of any sub-cluster of the properties associated with a given natural kind raises the probability of the co-instantiation of the rest, and this clustering of property instantiation is invariant under all relevant counterfactual perturbations. We argue that it is not possible to evaluate the stability of a cluster of properties (...) without taking stock of the metaphysical picture used to account for that stability. Thus, even on the stable property cluster account, the epistemic value of natural kinds remains partly grounded in their metaphysical status. (shrink)

Kinds that share historical properties are dubbed “historical kinds” or “etiological kinds,” and they have some distinctive features. I will try to characterize etiological kinds in general terms and briefly survey some previous philosophical discussions of these kinds. Then I will take a closer look at a few case studies involving different types of etiological kinds. Finally, I will try to understand the rationale for classifying on the basis of etiology, putting forward reasons for classifying phenomena on the basis of (...) diachronic features, thereby making a provisional case for considering at least some etiological kinds to be natural kinds. (shrink)

One primary goal for metaphysical theories of natural kinds is to account for their epistemic fruitfulness. According to cluster theories of natural kinds, this epistemic fruitfulness is grounded in the regular and stable co- occurrence of a broad set of properties. In this paper, I defend the view that such a cluster theory is insufficient to adequately account for the epistemic fruitfulness of kinds. I argue that cluster theories can indeed account for the projectibility of natural kinds, but not for (...) several other epistemic operations that natural kinds support. Natural kinds also play a role in scientific explanations and categorizations. A theory of natural kinds can only account for these additional kind-based epistemic practices if it also analyzes their causal structure. (shrink)

Recent years have seen renewed interest in the semantics of generics. And a relatively mainstream view in this work is that the semantics of generics must appeal to kinds. But what are kinds? Can we learn anything about their nature by looking at how semantic theories of generics appeal to them? In this article, we overview recent work on the semantics of generics and consider their consequences for our understanding of the metaphysics of kinds.

It has been widely argued that words are analogous to species such that words, like species, are natural kinds. In this paper, I consider the metaphysics of word-kinds. After arguing against an essentialist approach, I argue that word-kinds are homeostatic property clusters, in line with the dominant approach to other biological and psychological kinds.

The homeostatic property cluster theory is widely influential for its ability to account for many natural-kind terms in the life sciences. However, the notion of homeostatic mechanism has never been fully explicated. In 2009, Carl Craver interpreted the notion in the sense articulated in discussions on mechanistic explanation and pointed out that the HPC account equipped with such notion invites interest-relativity. In this paper, we analyze two recent refinements on HPC: one that avoids any reference to the causes of the (...) clustering of properties and one that replaces homeostatic mechanisms with causal networks represented by causal graphs. We argue that the former is too slender to account for some inductive inference in science and the latter, thicker account invites interest-relativity, as the original HPC does. This suggests that human interest will be an un-eliminative part of a satisfactory account of natural kindness. We conclude by discussing the implication of interest-relativity to the naturalness, reality, or objectivity of kinds and indicating an overlooked aspect of natural kinds that requires further studies. (shrink)

The new externalist picture of natural kind terms due to Kripke, Putnam, and others has become quite popular in philosophy. Many philosophers of science have remained sceptical. Häggqvist and Wikforss have recently criticised this view severely. They contend it depends essentially on a micro-essentialist view of natural kinds that is widely rejected among philosophers of science, and that a scientifically reasonable metaphysics entails the resurrection of some version of descriptivism. It is argued in this paper that the situation is not (...) quite as dark for the new theory of reference as many critics suggest. There are several distinct questions here which should not be conflated and ought to be dealt with one by one. Descriptivism remains arguably problematic. (shrink)