Switch to: Citations

Add references

You must login to add references.
  1. Real patterns.Daniel C. Dennett - 1991 - Journal of Philosophy 88 (1):27-51.
    Are there really beliefs? Or are we learning (from neuroscience and psychology, presumably) that, strictly speaking, beliefs are figments of our imagination, items in a superceded ontology? Philosophers generally regard such ontological questions as admitting just two possible answers: either beliefs exist or they don't. There is no such state as quasi-existence; there are no stable doctrines of semi-realism. Beliefs must either be vindicated along with the viruses or banished along with the banshees. A bracing conviction prevails, then, to the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   649 citations  
  • Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized.James Ladyman & Don Ross - 2007 - In James Ladyman & Don Ross (eds.), Every thing must go: metaphysics naturalized. New York: Oxford University Press.
    This book argues that the only kind of metaphysics that can contribute to objective knowledge is one based specifically on contemporary science as it really is, and not on philosophers' a priori intuitions, common sense, or simplifications of science. In addition to showing how recent metaphysics has drifted away from connection with all other serious scholarly inquiry as a result of not heeding this restriction, this book demonstrates how to build a metaphysics compatible with current fundamental physics, which, when combined (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   781 citations  
  • (2 other versions)Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature.Richard Rorty - 1979 - Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 86 (4):562-563.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   375 citations  
  • (1 other version)Species.Philip Kitcher - 1984 - Philosophy of Science 51 (2):308-333.
    I defend a view of the species category, pluralistic realism, which is designed to do justice to the insights of many different groups of systematists. After arguing that species are sets and not individuals, I proceed to outline briefly some defects of the biological species concept. I draw the general moral that similar shortcomings arise for other popular views of the nature of species. These shortcomings arise because the legitimate interests of biology are diverse, and these diverse interests are reflected (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   250 citations  
  • Scientific kinds.Marc Ereshefsky & Thomas A. C. Reydon - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (4):969-986.
    Richard Boyd’s Homeostatic Property Cluster Theory is becoming the received view of natural kinds in the philosophy of science. However, a problem with HPC Theory is that it neglects many kinds highlighted by scientific classifications while at the same time endorsing kinds rejected by science. In other words, there is a mismatch between HPC kinds and the kinds of science. An adequate account of natural kinds should accurately track the classifications of successful science. We offer an alternative account of natural (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   80 citations  
  • Natural Kinds: Rosy Dawn, Scholastic Twilight.Ian Hacking - 2007 - Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 61:203-239.
    The rosy dawn of my title refers to that optimistic time when the logical concept of a natural kind originated in Victorian England. The scholastic twilight refers to the present state of affairs. I devote more space to dawn than twilight, because one basic problem was there from the start, and by now those origins have been forgotten. Philosophers have learned many things about classification from the tradition of natural kinds. But now it is in disarray and is unlikely to (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   110 citations  
  • 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.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   41 citations  
  • Natural kinds as categorical bottlenecks.Laura Franklin-Hall - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (4):925-948.
    Both realist and anti-realist accounts of natural kinds possess prima facie virtues: realists can straightforwardly make sense of the apparent objectivity of the natural kinds, and anti-realists, their knowability. This paper formulates a properly anti-realist account designed to capture both merits. In particular, it recommends understanding natural kinds as ‘categorical bottlenecks,’ those categories that not only best serve us, with our idiosyncratic aims and cognitive capacities, but also those of a wide range of alternative agents. By endorsing an ultimately subjective (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   47 citations  
  • Species pluralism and anti-realism.Marc Ereshefsky - 1998 - Philosophy of Science 65 (1):103-120.
    Species pluralism gives us reason to doubt the existence of the species category. The problem is not that species concepts are chosen according to our interests or that pluralism and the desire for hierarchical classifications are incompatible. The problem is that the various taxa we call 'species' lack a common unifying feature.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   86 citations  
  • Natural Kinds and Crosscutting Categories.Muhammad Ali Khalidi - 1998 - Journal of Philosophy 95 (1):33.
    There are many ways of construing the claim that some categories are more “natural" than others. One can ask whether a system of categories is innate or acquired by learning, whether it pertains to a natural phenomenon or to a social institution, whether it is lexicalized in natural language or requires a compound linguistic expression. This renders suspect any univocal answer to this question in any particular case. Yet another question one can ask, which some authors take to have a (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   50 citations  
  • Indigenous and Scientific Kinds.David Ludwig - 2017 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 68 (1).
    The aim of this article is to discuss the relation between indigenous and scientific kinds on the basis of contemporary ethnobiological research. I argue that ethnobiological accounts of taxonomic convergence-divergence patters challenge common philosophical models of the relation between folk concepts and natural kinds. Furthermore, I outline a positive model of taxonomic convergence-divergence patterns that is based on Slater's [2014] notion of “stable property clusters” and Franklin-Hall's [2014] discussion of natural kinds as “categorical bottlenecks.” Finally, I argue that this model (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   16 citations  
  • Etiological Kinds.Muhammad Ali Khalidi - 2021 - Philosophy of Science 88 (1):1-21.
    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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  • Natural Kinds, Mind Independence, and Defeasibility.Marc Ereshefsky - 2018 - Philosophy of Science 85 (5):845-856.
    A standard requirement on natural kinds is that they be mind independent. However, many kinds in the human and social sciences, even the natural sciences, depend on human thought. This article suggests that the mind independence requirement on natural kinds be replaced with the requirement that natural kind classifications be defeasible. The defeasibility requirement does not require that natural kinds be mind independent, so it does not exclude mind dependent scientific kinds from being natural kinds. Furthermore, the defeasibility requirement captures (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   19 citations  
  • Inductive Inference and its Natural Ground-An Essay in Naturalistic Epistemology.Hilary Kornblith & N. Vassallo - 1996 - Epistemologia 19 (1):175-176.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   50 citations  
  • (2 other versions)The Disorder of Things: Metaphysical Foundations of the Disunuty of Science.[author unknown] - 1995 - Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 68 (3):84-86.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   411 citations  
  • Miracles and Models: Why reports of the death of Structural Realism may be exaggerated.John Worrall - 2007 - Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 61:125-154.
    What is it reasonable to believe about our most successful scientific theories such as the general theory of relativity or quantum mechanics? That they are true, or at any rate approximately true? Or only that they successfully ‘save the phenomena’, by being ‘empirically adequate’? In earlier work I explored the attractions of a view called Structural Scientific Realism (hereafter: SSR). This holds that it is reasonable to believe that our successful theories are (approximately) structurally correct (and also that this is (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   25 citations  
  • Radical pluralism, classificatory norms and the legitimacy of species classifications.Stijn Conix - 2019 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 73:27-34.
    Moderate pluralism is a popular position in contemporary philosophy of biology. Despite its popularity, various authors have argued that it tends to slide off off into a radical form of pluralism that is both normatively and descriptively ueptable. This paper looks at at the case of biological species classification, and evaluates a popular way of avoiding radical pluralism by relying on the shared aims and norms of a discipline. The main contention is that while these aims and norms may play (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  • No purely epistemic theory can account for the naturalness of kinds.Olivier Lemeire - 2018 - Synthese 198 (Suppl 12):2907-2925.
    Several philosophers have recently tried to define natural kinds in epistemic terms only. Given the persistent problems with finding a successful metaphysical theory, these philosophers argue that we would do better to describe natural kinds solely in terms of their epistemic usefulness, such as their role in supporting inductive inferences. In this paper, I argue against these epistemology-only theories of natural kinds and in favor of, at least partly, metaphysical theories. I do so in three steps. In the first section (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  • Are Stellar Kinds Natural Kinds? A Challenging Newcomer in the Monism/Pluralism and Realism/Antirealism Debates.Stéphanie Ruphy - 2010 - Philosophy of Science 77 (5):1109-1120.
    Stars are conspicuously absent from reflections on natural kinds and scientific classifications, with gold, tiger, jade, and water getting all the philosophical attention. This is too bad for, as this paper will demonstrate, interesting philosophical lessons can be drawn from stellar taxonomy as regards two central, on-going debates about natural kinds, to wit, the monism/pluralism debate and the realism/antirealism debate. I’ll show in particular that stellar kinds will not please the essentialist monist, nor for that matter will it please the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   18 citations  
  • Possibility and necessity.Hilary Putnam - 1983 - In Realism and reason. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 46-68.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   16 citations