The Metaphysics of Natural Kinds
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Natural Kinds and Concepts: a Pragmatist and Methodologically Naturalistic Account
Natural Kinds and Concepts: A Pragmatist and Methodologically Naturalistic Account Ingo Brigandt Abstract: In this chapter I lay out a notion of philosophical naturalism that aligns with prag- matism. It is developed and illustrated by a presentation of my views on natural kinds and my theory of concepts. Both accounts reflect a methodological naturalism and are defended not by way of metaphysical considerations, but in terms of their philosophical fruitfulness. A core theme is that the epistemic interests of scientists have to be taken into account by any natural- istic philosophy of science in general, and any account of natural kinds and scientific concepts in particular. I conclude with general methodological remarks on how to develop and defend philosophical notions without using intuitions. The central aim of this essay is to put forward a notion of naturalism that broadly aligns with pragmatism. I do so by outlining my views on natural kinds and my account of concepts, which I have defended in recent publications (Brigandt, 2009, 2010b). Philosophical accounts of both natural kinds and con- cepts are usually taken to be metaphysical endeavours, which attempt to develop a theory of the nature of natural kinds (as objectively existing entities of the world) or of the nature of concepts (as objectively existing mental entities). However, I shall argue that any account of natural kinds or concepts must an- swer to epistemological questions as well and will offer a simultaneously prag- matist and naturalistic defence of my views on natural kinds and concepts. Many philosophers conceive of naturalism as a primarily metaphysical doc- trine, such as a commitment to a physicalist ontology or the idea that humans and their intellectual and moral capacities are a part of nature. -
The Anti-Essentialism Paper
The New Pragmatism, Anti-essentialism, and What is Universal: It’s The Situation All The Way Down C. F. Abel Stephen F. Austin State University [email protected] The New Pragmatism, Anti-essentialism, and What is Universal: It’s The Situation All The Way Down C. F. Abel Stephen F. Austin State University [email protected] A well-known scientist once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the Earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise." The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?" "You're very clever, young man," said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down!" Introduction “New Pragmatism” attacks the very foundation of pragmatic thought by denying that we may ever have any definitive experience. As what we are experiencing is up for grabs, we can never know any situation that we may encounter, and we are left to ground both our knowledge and our values in our language games alone. This paper argues that this set of claims is founded on two errors, one regarding the nature of language games and the other regarding the nature of deconstruction. The “Old Pragmatism,” by way of contrast, is non-essentialist but not anti- essentialist, and it resolves the problem of how we might know “the situation,” given the subjectivity of our observations and the contingencies of our language games, by suggesting that our experiences can be understood as existing in, and constituted by, the totality of their particular instances or modes at the time of inquiry. -
Putnam's Theory of Natural Kinds and Their Names Is Not The
PUTNAM’S THEORY OF NATURAL KINDS AND THEIR NAMES IS NOT THE SAME AS KRIPKE’S IAN HACKING Collège de France Abstract Philosophers have been referring to the “Kripke–Putnam” theory of natural- kind terms for over 30 years. Although there is one common starting point, the two philosophers began with different motivations and presuppositions, and developed in different ways. Putnam’s publications on the topic evolved over the decades, certainly clarifying and probably modifying his analysis, while Kripke published nothing after 1980. The result is two very different theories about natural kinds and their names. Both accept that the meaning of a natural- kind term is not given by a description or defining properties, but is specified by its referents. From then on, Putnam rejected even the label, causal theory of reference, preferring to say historical, or collective. He called his own approach indexical. His account of substance identity stops short a number of objections that were later raised, such as what is called the qua problem. He came to reject the thought that water is necessarily H2O, and to denounce the idea of metaphysical necessity that goes beyond physical necessity. Essences never had a role in his analysis; there is no sense in which he was an essentialist. He thought of hidden structures as the usual determinant of natural kinds, but always insisted that what counts as a natural kind is relative to interests. “Natural kind” itself is itself an importantly theoretical concept, he argued. The paper also notes that Putnam says a great deal about what natural kinds are, while Kripke did not. -
The Philosophy of Biology a Companion for Educators Kostas Kampourakis Editor
History, Philosophy & Theory of the Life Sciences Kostas Kampourakis Editor The Philosophy of Biology A Companion for Educators Kostas Kampourakis Editor The Philosophy of Biology A Companion for Educators Editor Kostas Kampourakis Secretariat of Educational Research and Development Geitonas School Vari Attikis, Greece ISSN 2211-1948 ISSN 2211-1956 (electronic) ISBN 978-94-007-6536-8 ISBN 978-94-007-6537-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-6537-5 Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg New York London Library of Congress Control Number: 2013938263 © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifi cally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfi lms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. Exempted from this legal reservation are brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis or material supplied specifi cally for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Duplication of this publication or parts thereof is permitted only under the provisions of the Copyright Law of the Publisher’s location, in its current version, and permission for use must always be obtained from Springer. Permissions for use may be obtained through RightsLink at the Copyright Clearance Center. Violations are liable to prosecution under the respective Copyright Law. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. -
Two Dogmas of Empiricism I
Philosophy 405: Knowledge, Truth and Mathematics Hamilton College Fall 2014 Russell Marcus Class #16: Two Dogmas of Empiricism I. “Two Dogmas,” Mathematics, and Indispensability Our interest in studying Quine has mainly to do with the indispensability argument which will occupy us for the remainder of the course. In a sense, we have reached a turning point in our class. Our studies of the history of the philosophy of mathematics are done. We proceed to engage a live contemporary debate. The indispensability argument in the philosophy of mathematics, in its most general form, consists of two premises. The major premise states that we should believe that mathematical objects exist if we need them in our best scientific theory. The minor premise claims that we do in fact require mathematical objects in our scientific theory. The argument concludes that we should believe in the abstract objects of mathematics. Quine does not present a canonical version of the argument, so it has to be reconstructed from comments throughout his work. In “Two Dogmas,” allusion to the argument appears at the end. As an empiricist I continue to think of the conceptual scheme of science as a tool, ultimately, for predicting future experience in the light of past experience. Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries - not by definition in terms of experience, but simply as posits... Physical objects, small and large, are not the only posits. Forces are another example... Moreover, the abstract entities of mathematics - ultimately classes and classes of classes and so on up - are another posit in the same spirit. -
“Reference and Natural Kind Terms: the Real Essence of Locke's View
REFERENCE AND NATURAL KIND TERMS: THE REAL ESSENCE OF LOCKE’S VIEW BY P. KYLE STANFORD Abstract: J. L. Mackie’s famous claim that Locke ‘anticipates’ Kripke’s Causal Theory of Reference (CTR) rests, I suggest, upon a pair of important misunderstandings. Contra Mackie, as well as the more recent accounts of Paul Guyer and Michael Ayers, Lockean Real Essences consist of those features of an entity from which all of its experienceable properties can be logically deduced; thus a substantival Real Essence consists of features of a Real Constitution plus logically necessary objective connections between them and features of some particular Nominal Essence. Furthermore, what Locke actually anticipates is the most significant contemporary challenge to the CTR: the qua-problem. 1. Locke’s ‘Anticipation’ of Kripke Near the outset of the Third Book of An Essay Concerning Human Under- standing, Locke draws a crucial distinction between what he calls a Real Essence, the “unknown Constitution of Things, whereon their discoverable Qualities depend”, and a Nominal Essence, “that abstract Idea, which the General, or Sortal Name stands for”, that is, the set of necessary and sufficient conditions for the application of a term (III iii 15). On this account, the Real Essence of gold is whatever features of its constitution are in fact responsible for its properties, while its Nominal Essence is the set of ideas of observable qualities, such as ‘heavy’, ‘yellow’, ‘malleable’, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 79 (1998) 78–97 0031–5621/98/0100–0000 © 1998 University of Southern California and Blackwell Publishers Ltd. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. -
A Trip to the Metaphysical Jungle –How Kripke's Intuitions Revived
https://doi.org/10.20378/irbo-51675 A Trip to the Metaphysical Jungle – How Kripke’s Intuitions Revived Aristotelian Essentialism Sebastian Krebs (University of Bamberg) Besides his substantial influences on other fields of philosophy, Saul Kripke is famous for smoothing the way for a new type of Aristotelian essentialism. However, Kripke’s comments on essentialism are utterly vague and are built entirely on fundamental intuitions about the use of language and necessity de re in modal logic. He famously disproved Willard Van Orman Quine who, a few decades earlier, had banned necessity de re into the metaphysical jungle of Aristotelian essentialism – a jungle that a true empiricist must not enter. But not only Kripke’s refutation of Quine, but also his own essentialism is based on intuition. Kripke thereby overcomes an anti-essentialist dogma that was established by Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason. But because of its vagueness, one might well call Kripke’s intuitive essentialism a ‘metaphysical jungle’. Nevertheless, a trip to Kripke’s jungle is a promising milestone on the way to a refreshed Aristotelian metaphysics. 1. Travel arrangements: The rejection of Quine’s anti-essentialism In Two dogmas of empiricism, Willard Van Orman Quine rejects the traditional distinction between synthetic and analytic truths. Among others Immanuel Kant suggested this distinction in his Critique of Pure Reason. Quine criticizes it as a relic from metaphysical dogmas which a pure empiricism (as Quine wants to pursue it) has to overcome: [O]ne is tempted to suppose in general that the truth of a statement is somehow analyzable into a linguistic component and a factual component. -
Scientific Enquiry and Natural Kinds: from Planets to Mallards
Scientific enquiry and natural kinds: From planets to mallards a philosophical monograph by P.D. Magnus pmagnus<at>fecundity.com This is the authors' final draft. Any citations should refer to the final typeset book, published by Palgrave Macmillan. In addition to canonical pagination and nice binding, the book has a cool picture of mallards on the cover. DOI: 10.1057/9781137271259 c 2012 P.D. Magnus, except where indicated; some figures are used by per- mission or under open licenses Acknowledgements5 Introduction7 1 How to think about natural kinds 10 A Why history is no help...................... 11 B Some criteria considered..................... 13 B.1 The induction assumption................ 14 B.2 The essence assumption................. 24 B.3 The science assumption................. 25 B.4 The law assumption................... 26 B.5 Artifacts and artificial kinds............... 28 B.6 The sharpness assumption................ 31 B.7 Starting with language.................. 34 B.8 The intrinsic feature assumption............. 37 B.9 The hierarchy assumption................ 41 1 B.10 The scarcity assumption................. 43 B.11 The implicit simpliciter assumption........... 44 C Keeping score........................... 50 2 A modest definition 52 A First formulation......................... 52 B More or less natural kinds.................... 54 B.1 Lessons from underdetermination............ 55 B.2 The lessons applied.................... 57 C Induction redux.......................... 59 D Natural kinds for settled science................. 61 D.1 Example: the domain of chemistry........... 62 D.2 Fungible kinds....................... 66 3 Natural kinds put to work 72 A Eight planets, great planets................... 72 A.1 Numerology and asteroids................ 74 A.2 Enter Pluto........................ 75 A.3 The constraints of astronomy.............. 78 A.4 Natural kinds and the fate of Pluto.......... -
Ontological, Epistemological, and Methodological Positions
ONTOLOGICAL, EPISTEMOLOGICAL, AND METHODOLOGICAL POSITIONS James Ladyman INTRODUCTION This chapter summarises various important ontological, epistemological and methodological issues in the philosophy of science. Ontology is the theory of what exists and is the foremost concern of metaphysics, which is the study of the most fundamental questions about being and the nature of reality. Ontological issues in the philosophy of science may be specific to a particular special science, such as questions about the ontological status of biological species, or they may be more general, such as whether or not there are objective natural kinds. In the history of science ontological issues have often been of supreme importance; for example, whether or not atoms exist was a question that occupied many scientists in the nineteenth century. In what follows, some fundamental questions of ontology are discussed, some of which, such as those concerning laws of nature, are also ad- dressed in analytic metaphysics. A number of these issues also relate to debates in the foundations of physics about the ontological implications of our best physical theories. Readers who wish to know more about the philosophy of space and time and the nature of matter and motion should consult the companion volume to this on the philosophy of physics. Epistemology is the theory of knowledge and as such is concerned with such matters as the analysis of knowledge and its relationship to belief and truth, the theory of justification, and how to respond to the challenge of local scepticism, say about the past, or global scepticism, which suggests that there is no knowledge. -
The Powerlessness of Necessity’ in Noûs 44:4 (2010) 725–739
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Philsci-Archive Schrenk, Markus (2010) ‘The Powerlessness of Necessity’ in Noûs 44:4 (2010) 725–739 THE POWERLESSNESS OF NECESSITY MARKUS SCHRENK ABSTRACT This paper concerns anti-Humean intuitions about connections in nature. It argues for the existence of a de re link that is not necessity. — Some anti-Humeans tacitly assume that metaphysical necessity can be used for all sorts of anti-Humean desires. Metaphysical necessity is thought to stick together whatever would be loose and separate in a Hume world, as if it were a kind of universal superglue. I argue that this is not feasible. Metaphysical necessity might connect synchronically co-existent properties—kinds and their essential features, for example—but it is difficult to see how it could also serve as the binding force for successions of events. That is, metaphysical necessity seems not to be fit for diachronic, causal affairs in which causal laws, causation, or dispositions are involved. A different anti-Humean connection in nature has to do that job. My arguments focus mainly on a debate which has been the battleground for Humean vs. anti-Humean intuitions for many decades— namely, the analysis of dispositional predicates—but I believe (but do not argue here) that the arguments generalise to causation and causal laws straightforwardly. (ca. 7,200 words) ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank the participants of various workshops who have listened and commented on earlier versions of this paper and especially Helen Beebee, Alexander Bird, Andreas Hüttemann, Francis Longworth, Albert Newen, Samir Okasha, Johannes Persson, and Robin Stenwall. -
Chapter 4 Reading Nature Realist, Instrumentalist, and Quietist
Chapter 4 raji ! 3/24/14 8:45 PM Reading Nature Deleted: : Realist, Instrumentalist, and Quietist Interpretations of Scientific jfk ! 4/21/14 7:29 PM Theories Comment: au: Notes are not allowed in titles or heads. The callout has been moved to the first sentence in the text. OK? The TOC gives the subtitle as “The Interpretation of Scientific Theories.” Please P. Kyle Stanford indicate the correct subtitle. Title as here is correct. PKS: moving callout to first sentence is fine (though moving it to the end of the last sentence 1. Preliminary Reconnaissance: Realism, Instrumentalism, and might be even better); subtitle as it is here (“Realist, Instrumentalist, and Quietist Interpretations of Scientific Theories”) is correct Interpretation jfk ! 3/16/14 6:29 AM Formatted: Font:Bold jfk ! 3/16/14 6:37 AM Questions concerning how we are to interpret our best scientific theories, make sense of Formatted: Font:Not Italic what they are telling us, or even just connect them systematically to the world around us jfk ! 3/16/14 6:43 AM Deleted: , have a remarkably long intellectual pedigree.1 And they have most often been motivated not by the sorts of rarified puzzles we encounter in the course of trying to decide how we could even possibly understand claims about, say, superpositions or complementarity in quantum mechanics, but instead by concerns about whether we are really entitled to Preston Stanford ! 4/17/14 3:07 PM Deleted: , believe what our theories say if we interpret them in what otherwise strikes us as the most 1 My thanks to Aldo Antonelli; Jeff Barrett; Ludwig Fahrbach; Arthur Fine; Yoichi Ishida; Pen Maddy; David Malament; Mark Newman; Michael Poulin; Jim Weatherall;[au: OK to alphabetize the names? OK] students in graduate seminars at the University of Pittsburgh Department of History and Philosophy of Science and the University of California, Irvine, Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science;[au: correct?PKS: yes] and many others I have inexcusably forgotten for useful discussion and suggestions regarding the material in this chapter. -
Natural Kinds and Natural Kind Terms Kathrin Koslicki* University of Colorado at Boulder
Philosophy Compass 3/4 (2008): 789–802, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2008.00157.x Natural Kinds and Natural Kind Terms Kathrin Koslicki* University of Colorado at Boulder Abstract The aim of this article is to illustrate how a belief in the existence of kinds may be justified for the particular case of natural kinds: particularly noteworthy in this respect is the weight borne by scientific natural kinds (e.g., physical, chemical, and biological kinds) in (i) inductive arguments; (ii) the laws of nature; and (iii) causal explanations. It is argued that biological taxa are properly viewed as kinds as well, despite the fact that they have been by some alleged to be individuals. Since it turns out that the arguments associated with the standard Kripke/Putnam semantics for natural kind terms only establish the non-descriptiveness of natural kind terms and not their rigidity, the door is open to analyze these terms as denoting traditional predicate-extensions. Finally, special issues raised by physical and chemical kinds are considered briefly, in particular impurities, isotopes and the threat of incommensurability. I. What are Natural Kinds?1 Kinds are categories or taxonomic classifications into which particular objects may be grouped on the basis of shared characteristics of some sort. Natural kinds are best construed, not so much as kinds found within nature, but rather as classifications that are in some sense not arbitrary, heterogeneous, or gerry-mandered.2 As commonly cited examples of natural kinds, the literature includes both classifications that are part of our ordinary vocabulary (e.g., tiger, lemon, and salt) as well as ones that are dealt with by various scientific disciplines, especially biology, physics, and chemistry (e.g., Ty ra n n o s a u r u s rex, Liliaceae, jadeite, planet, electron, and hydrogen); but the taxonomic divisions presupposed for example in such disciplines as medicine, psychology, economics, or meteorology (e.g., multiple sclerosis, schizophrenia, inflation, and hurricane) may also turn out to be good candidates for natural kinds.