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  1. The metaphysics of natural kinds.Alexander Bird - 2018 - Synthese 195 (4):1397-1426.
    This paper maps the landscape for a range of views concerning the metaphysics of natural kinds. I consider a range of increasingly ontologically committed views concerning natural kinds and the possible arguments for them. I then ask how these relate to natural kind essentialism, arguing that essentialism requires commitment to kinds as entities. I conclude by examining the homeostatic property cluster view of kinds in the light of the general understanding of kinds developed.
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  • Heidegger's Logico-Semantic Strikeback.Alberto Voltolini - 2015 - Organon F: Medzinárodný Časopis Pre Analytickú Filozofiu 22:19-38.
    In (1959), Carnap famously attacked Heidegger for having constructed an insane metaphysics based on a misconception of both the logical form and the semantics of ordinary language. In what follows, it will be argued that, once one appropriately (i.e., in a Russellian fashion) reads Heidegger’s famous sentence that should paradigmatically exemplify such a misconception, i.e., “the nothing nothings”, there is nothing either logically or semantically wrong with it. The real controversy as to how that sentence has to be evaluated—not as (...)
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  • Empty natural kind terms and dry earth.Corine Besson - 2012 - Erkenntnis 76 (3):403-425.
    This paper considers the problem of assigning meanings to empty natural kind terms. It does so in the context of the Twin-Earth externalist-internalist debate about whether the meanings of natural kind terms are individuated by the external physical environment of the speakers using these terms. The paper clarifies and outlines the different ways in which meanings could be assigned to empty natural kind terms. And it argues that externalists do not have the semantic resources to assign them meanings. The paper (...)
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  • Rigidity and actuality-dependence.Jussi Haukioja - 2012 - Philosophical Studies 157 (3):399-410.
    It is generally assumed that rigidity plays a key role in explaining the necessary a posteriori status of identity statements, both between proper names and between natural kind terms. However, while the notion of rigid designation is well defined for singular terms, there is no generally accepted definition of what it is for a general term to be rigid. In this paper I argue that the most common view, according to which rigid general terms are the ones which designate the (...)
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  • (1 other version)Are natural kind terms special?Åsa Wikforss - 2010 - In Helen Beebee & Nigel Sabbarton-Leary (eds.), The Semantics and Metaphysics of Natural Kinds. New York: Routledge.
    It is commonly assumed that natural kind terms constitute a distinct semantic category. This idea emerged during the 1970's following Kripke's and Putnam's well-known remarks on natural kind terms. The idea has stayed with us, although it is now recognized that the issues are considerably more complex than initially thought. Thus, it has become clear that much of Kripke's and Putnam's discussions were based on rather simplified views of natural kinds. It also turns out that the semantic issues are less (...)
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  • From constitutional necessities to causal necessities.Jessica Wilson - 2010 - In Helen Beebee & Nigel Sabbarton-Leary (eds.), The Semantics and Metaphysics of Natural Kinds. New York: Routledge.
    Humeans and non-Humeans reasonably agree that there may be necessary connections between entities that are identical or merely partly distinct—between, e.g., sets and their individual members, fusions and their individual parts, instances of determinates and determinables, members of certain natural kinds and certain of their intrinsic properties, and (especially among physicalists) certain physical and mental states. Humeans maintain, however, that as per “Hume’s Dictum”, there are no necessary connections between entities that are wholly distinct;1 and in particular, no necessary causal (...)
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  • Semantic Externalism and Psychological Externalism.Åsa Wikforss - 2008 - Philosophy Compass 3 (1):158-181.
    Externalism is widely endorsed within contemporary philosophy of mind and language. Despite this, it is far from clear how the externalist thesis should be construed and, indeed, why we should accept it. In this entry I distinguish and examine three central types of externalism: what I call foundational externalism, externalist semantics, and psychological externalism. I suggest that the most plausible version of externalism is not in fact a very radical thesis and does not have any terribly interesting implications for philosophy (...)
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  • (1 other version)Rigidity and Necessary Application.Mario Gomez-Torrente - manuscript
    The question whether the notion of rigidity can be extended in a fruitful way beyond singular terms has received a standard answer in the literature, according to which non-singular terms designate kinds, properties or other abstract singular objects and generalized rigidity is the same thing as singular term rigidity, but for terms designating such objects. I offer some new criticisms of this view and go on to defend an alternative view, on which non-singular terms designate extensions in general, and generalized (...)
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  • A simple theory of rigidity.Tristan Grøtvedt Haze - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 178 (12):4187-4199.
    The notion of rigidity looms large in philosophy of language, but is beset by difficulties. This paper proposes a simple theory of rigidity, according to which an expression has a world-relative semantic property rigidly when it has that property at, or with respect to, all worlds. Just as names, and certain descriptions like The square root of 4, rigidly designate their referents, so too are necessary truths rigidly true, and so too does cat rigidly have only animals in its extension. (...)
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  • Second Order Decriptions and General Term Rigidity.Ezequiel Zerbudis - 2013 - Critica 45 (135):3-27.
    examine Nathan Salmon’s solution to the problem of trivialization, as it arises for conceptions of general term rigidity that construe it as identity of designation across possible worlds. I argue that he does not succeed in showing that some alleged general terms, such as “the colour of the sky” are non-rigid, but also that a small class of different examples that he presents, which can be construed as second order descriptions, are indeed non-rigid general terms, although for reasons different from (...)
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  • Criteria for Nontrivial General Term Rigidity.Miloš Kosterec - 2018 - Acta Analytica 33 (2):255-270.
    In this paper, I present, generalize and develop the extensionalist theory of rigidity for general terms in light of criteria commonly applied to theories of general term rigidity. According to the theory, a general term is rigid if its extension is constant across all possible worlds. This position has been widely dismissed because it conflicts with the seemingly straightforward idea that natural kind terms have varying extensions from world to world. This criticism holds only to the extent that natural kind (...)
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  • Semantics through Reference to the Unknown.Arslan Aran - 2016 - Croatian Journal of Philosophy 16 (3):381-392.
    In this paper, I dwell on a particular distinction introduced by Ilhan Inan—the distinction between ostensible and inostensible use of our language. The distinction applies to singular terms, such as proper names and definite descriptions, or to general terms like concepts and to the ways in which we refer to objects in the world by using such terms. Inan introduces the distinction primarily as an epistemic one but in his earlier writings (1997: 49) he leaves some room for it to (...)
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  • Rigidity, natural kind terms and metasemantics.Corine Besson - 2010 - In Helen Beebee & Nigel Sabbarton-Leary (eds.), The Semantics and Metaphysics of Natural Kinds. New York: Routledge. pp. 25--44.
    A paradigmatic case of rigidity for singular terms is that of proper names. And it would seem that a paradigmatic case of rigidity for general terms is that of natural kind terms. However, many philosophers think that rigidity cannot be extended from singular terms to general terms. The reason for this is that rigidity appears to become trivial when such terms are considered: natural kind terms come out as rigid, but so do all other general terms, and in particular all (...)
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  • Rigidity for predicates and the trivialization problem.Dan López de Sa - 2008 - Philosophers' Imprint 8:1-13.
    According to the simple proposal about rigidity for predicates, a predicate is rigid (roughly) if it signifies the same property across the relevant worlds. Recent critics claim that this suffers from a trivialization problem: any predicate whatsoever would turn out to be trivially rigid, according to the proposal. In this paper a corresponding "problem" for ordinary singular terms is considered. A natural solution is provided by intuitions concerning the actual truth-value of identity statements involving them. The simple proposal for predicates (...)
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  • On the Rigidity of General Terms.Alper Yavuz - 2012 - Dissertation, Bogazici University
    The aim of this thesis is to discuss whether general terms are rigid and if they are, how their rigidity should be interpreted. To this end, I first present the problems related to the rigidity of general terms. The most important ones among them are the following: What do general terms refer to? Is there any difference between the terms called “natural kind terms” and other general terms? After that, I discuss the arguments of three competent interpretations which try to (...)
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  • Chomsky y la nueva teoría de la referencia.Juan José Acero - 2020 - Endoxa 46:81.
    El presente ensayo expone las principales ideas de Chomsky acerca de la Nueva Teoría de la Referencia. Contra dicha teoría, y específicamente contra propuestas bien conocidas de Kripke y Putnam, aduce Chomsky distintos argumentos. Las conclusiones de esos argumentos son las siguientes: que en los lenguajes naturales no hay nombres lógicamente puros; que no existe ninguna relación de referencia que conecte las palabras con las cosas; que los conceptos que maneja la así llamada teoría de la referencia no responden a (...)
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  • (2 other versions)Natural kinds.Emma Tobin & Alexander Bird - 2009 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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  • Essence, Application, and Explanation.Fredrik Haraldsen - 2016 - Acta Analytica 31 (2):179-189.
    It is often thought that a notion of general term rigidity could help explain the particular behavior of natural kind terms in modal contexts. An influential strategy for developing a non-trivial account of general term rigidity appeals to essential properties of the things to which such terms apply. I show that essentialism cannot underpin a notion of rigidity that can play the expected explanatory roles. Essentialists are committed to presuppositions that themselves play those roles without implying essentialism.
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  • On deriving essentialism from the theory of reference.Jussi Haukioja - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (8):2141-2151.
    Causal theories of reference for natural kind terms are widely agreed to play a central role in arguments for the claim that theoretical identity statements such as “Water is H2O” are necessary, if true. However, there is also fairly wide-spread agreement, due to the arguments of Nathan Salmon, that causal theories of reference do not alone establish such essentialism about natural kinds: an independent, non-trivial essentialist premise is also needed. In this paper I will question this latter agreement. I will (...)
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  • General term rigidity as identity of designation: Some comments on Devitt's criticisms.Eleonora Orlando - 2009 - Análisis Filosófico 29 (2):201-218.
    In his paper "Rigid Application", Michael Devitt defends a particular version of the socalled 'essentialist conception' of rigidity for general terms, according to which rigid general terms are rigid appliers, namely, terms that if they apply to an object in any possible world then they apply to that object in every possible in which the object exists. Devitt thinks that the thereby defined notion of rigidity makes for an adequate extension to general terms of Kripke's notion, originally defined for singular (...)
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  • Referring to Natural Kind Thingamajigs, and What They Are: A Reply to Needham.Alexander Bird - 2012 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 26 (1):103-109.
    Natural kind terms appear to behave like singular terms. If they were genuine singular terms, appearing in true sentences, that would be some reason to believe that there are entities to which the terms refer, the natural kinds. Paul Needham has attacked my arguments that natural kind terms are singular, referring expressions. While conceding the correctness of some of his criticisms, I defend and expand on the underlying view in this paper. I also briefly sketch an account of what natural (...)
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  • General Terms and Relational Modality.Kathrin Glüer & Peter Pagin - 2012 - Noûs 46 (1):159-199.
    Natural kind terms have exercised philosophical fancy ever since Kripke, in Naming and Necessity, claimed them to be rigid designators. He there drew attention to the peculiar, name-like behavior of a family of prima facie loosely related general terms of ordinary English: terms such as ‘water’, ‘tiger’, ‘heat’, and ‘red’. Just as for ordinary proper names, Kripke argued that such terms cannot be synonymous with any of the definite descriptions ordinary speakers associate with them. Rather, the name-like behavior of these (...)
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  • General terms and rigidity: another solution to the trivialization problem.Eleonora Orlando - 2014 - Manuscrito 37 (1):49-80.
    In this paper I am concerned with the problem of applying the notion of rigidity to general terms. In Naming and Necessity, Kripke has clearly suggested that we should include some general terms among the rigid ones, namely, those common nouns semantically correlated with natural substances, species and phenomena, in general, natural kinds -'water', 'tiger', 'heat'- and some adjectives -'red', 'hot', 'loud'. However, the notion of rigidity has been defined for singular terms; after all, the notion that Kripke has provided (...)
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  • Rigid designation and semantic structure.Arthur Sullivan - 2007 - Philosophers' Imprint 7:1-22.
    There is a considerable sub-literature, stretching back over 35 years, addressed to the question: Precisely which general terms ought to be classified as rigid designators? More fundamentally: What should we take the criterion for rigidity to be, for general terms? The aim of this paper is to give new grounds for the old view that if a general term designates the same kind in all possible worlds, then it should be classified as a rigid designator. The new grounds in question (...)
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  • (1 other version)Rigidity, General Terms, and Trivialization.Dan López de Sa - 2007 - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 107 (1pt1):117 - 123.
    The simple proposal for a characterization of general term rigidity is in terms of sameness of designation in very possible world. Critics like Schwartz (2002) and Soames (2002) have argued that such a proposal would trivialize rigidity for general terms. Martí (2004) claims that the objection rests on the failure to distinguish what is expressed by a general term and the property designated. I argue here against such a response by showing that the trivialization problem reappears even if one pays (...)
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  • (1 other version)Rigidity, General Terms, and Trivialization.Dan López De Sa - 2007 - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 107 (1pt1):117-123.
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  • Term limits revisited.Stephen Neale - 2008 - Philosophical Perspectives 22 (1):375-442.
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  • Bachelors, Energy, Cats and Water: Putnam on Kinds and Kind Terms.Åsa Wikforss - 2013 - Theoria 79 (3):242-261.
    Since Hilary Putnam and Saul Kripke's first attacks on traditional, descriptivist theories of natural kind terms, it has become customary to speak of the ‘Putnam-Kripke’ view of meaning and reference. This article argues that this is a mistake, and that Putnam's account of natural kind terms is importantly different from that of Kripke. In particular, Putnam has from the very start been sceptical of Kripke's modal claims, and in later papers he explicitly rejects the proposal that theoretical identity statements are (...)
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  • Rigidita predikátů.Jiří Raclavský - 2011 - Pro-Fil 11 (2):13-26.
    Zatímco v případě otázek rigidity singulárních termínů panuje obecná shoda, v případě rigidity predikátů tomu tak překvapivě není. Záměrem této statě je opřít distinkci rigidní / nerigidní o jasné pojmy, jmenovitě o pojem reference v určité sémantické teorii. V důsledku toho lze podat rigorózní definici pojmu rigidního designátoru individua. Tato definice je pak přímočaře adaptovatelná pro případ pojmu rigidního designátoru třídy individuí (apod.). Tímto je dosaženo nejen obecnosti, ale i vnitřní jednoty teorie rigidity.
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