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  1. (2 other versions)Natural kinds.Emma Tobin & Alexander Bird - 2009 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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  • Less Work for Theories of Natural Kinds.Matthew H. Slater - forthcoming - Philosophical Quarterly.
    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 (...)
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  • The top-down nature of ontological inquiry: Against pluralism about top-down and bottom-up approaches.Ragnar van der Merwe - 2025 - Metaphilosophy 56 (1):35-51.
    Some philosophical pluralists argue that both a top-down and a bottom-up approach serve as equally justified methods for engaging in ontological inquiry. In the top-down approach, we start with an analysis of theory and extrapolate from there to the world. In the bottom-up approach, we begin with an empirical investigation of the world and let our theory respond accordingly. The idea is that ontological conclusions arrived at via these two equally justified methods are then also equally justified. In this paper, (...)
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  • Scientific Pluralism.Ludwig David & Ruphy Stéphanie - 2021 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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  • Sex eliminativism.Aja Watkins & Marina DiMarco - 2024 - Biology and Philosophy 40 (1):1-30.
    The concept of biological sex guides research, clinical practice, science funding policy, and contemporary political discourse. Despite some substantive differences, all existing candidate philosophical accounts of sex assume its legitimacy as a biological concept. Here, we challenge this view. We argue against realism about biological sex, and that eliminating biological sex from large swaths of biological theory and practice may be preferable compared to conventionalist or fictionalist anti-realisms. There are serious social and epistemic costs to using “biological sex” in place (...)
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  • On Semirealism, Realism More Generally, and Underlying Epistemic Stances.Anjan Chakravartty - 2024 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 55 (2):269-288.
    The commentators in this Special Issue on ‘Epistemology, ontology, and scientific realism’ raise substantial questions about, and objections to, central aspects of my own thinking about semirealism (a proposal for how best to formulate scientific realism), as well as the larger philosophical context in which debates about scientific realism unfold. This larger context concerns the nature of realism more generally and the epistemic stances that underlie our considered opinions of what the sciences are telling us about the ontology of the (...)
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  • Philosophy without natural kinds: a reply to Reydon & Ereshefsky.David Ludwig - 2024 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 14 (3):1-10.
    The tradition of natural kinds has shaped philosophical debates about scientific classification but has come under growing criticism. Responding to this criticism, Reydon and Ereshefsky present their grounded functionality account as a strategy for updating and defending the tradition of natural kinds. This article argues that grounded functionality does indeed provide a fruitful philosophical approach to scientific classification but does not convince as a general theory of natural kinds. Instead, the strengths and limitations of Reydon and Ereshefsky’s account illustrate why (...)
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  • The Many Faces of Realism about Natural Kinds.Zdenka Brzović - 2024 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 55 (3):289-307.
    The label realist in the debate about natural kinds can imply different things. Many authors in this debate subscribe to views that are in some way realist, but without making clear whether the realism in question specifically attaches to kind categories or something else. The traditional understanding of realism about natural kinds is stated in terms of the mind-independence criterion. However, a recent tendency in the debate is to reject this understanding on the ground of its incompatibility with naturalistic approaches (...)
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