scholarly journals Homeostatic Property Cluster Theory without Homeostatic Mechanisms: Two Recent Attempts and their Costs

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yukinori Onishi ◽  
Davide Serpico
Keyword(s):  
Inductive Inference ◽  
Natural Kinds ◽  
Mechanistic Explanation ◽  
Cluster Theory ◽  
Natural Kind Terms ◽  
Kind Terms ◽  
Satisfactory Account ◽  
Causal Graphs ◽  
Homeostatic Property Cluster ◽  
Homeostatic Mechanisms

AbstractThe homeostatic property cluster theory (HPC) 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.

Natural Kinds

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhammad Ali Khalidi
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Natural Kinds ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Cluster Theory ◽  
Lively Debate ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Homeostatic Property Cluster ◽  
Natural Groups ◽  
Scientific Classification

Science posits entities that are neither individuals nor properties but kinds of individuals that share a number of distinct properties. Philosophers have designated them “natural kinds” and have held different views about how to distinguish them from arbitrary collections of individuals. The doctrine of “kinds” or “natural groups” was first explicitly introduced by nineteenth-century philosophers interested in taxonomy or scientific classification and continues to be the subject of lively debate in contemporary philosophy. After canvassing some of the philosophical controversies regarding natural kinds, the article presents two influential contemporary theories of natural kinds: essentialism and the homeostatic property cluster theory. The article goes on to defend naturalism, which is more in tune with the findings of modern science.

scholarly journals The Psychology of Natural Kind Terms

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Foster-Hanson ◽  
Marjorie Rhodes
Keyword(s):  
Natural Kind ◽  
Natural Kinds ◽  
Natural Kind Terms ◽  
Kind Terms

Draft of chapter to appear in: The Psychology of Natural Kinds Terms. In S.T. Biggs, & H. Geirsson (Eds.) The Routledge Handbook on Linguistic Reference. London: Routledge.

What Are Natural Kinds?

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Soames
Keyword(s):  
Natural Kind ◽  
Actual World ◽  
Natural Kinds ◽  
General Term ◽  
Conventional Wisdom ◽  
Natural Kind Terms ◽  
World State ◽  
Kind Terms ◽  
Ontological Question

This chapter approaches the ontological question, “What are natural kinds?” through another, partially linguistic, question. “What must natural kinds be like if the conventional wisdom about natural kind terms is correct?” Although answering this question will not tell us everything we want to know, it will, be useful in narrowing the range of feasible ontological alternatives. The chapter summarizes the contemporary linguistic wisdom and then tests different proposals about kinds against it. It takes simple natural kind terms—like “green,” “gold,” “water,” “tiger,” and “light”—to be Millian terms that rigidly designate properties typically determined by a reference-fixing stipulation to the effect that the general term is to designate whatever property provides the explanation of why, at actual world-state, all, or nearly all, the samples of items associated with the term by speakers who introduce it have the observational properties they do.

Natural Kinds

Philosophy ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Bird
Keyword(s):  
Natural Kind ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Natural Kinds ◽  
Sufficient Conditions ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Biological Species ◽  
Weather System ◽  
Natural Kind Terms ◽  
Kind Terms ◽  
Philosophical Questions

It appears to us that things in the natural world divide into different kinds. The most obvious examples come from biology. Cats are clearly distinct from mice; while both kinds show variation, all the cats are more similar to one another than they are to any mouse. We see different kinds of tree and different kinds of lichen. These are kinds that are apparent to any reasonably careful observer. Other kinds seem to be revealed by science. The chemical revolution gave us new ideas about what it is to be a chemical element, and in the subsequent decades many dozens of these different basic chemical kinds were revealed. The following century uncovered a multiplicity of different kinds of fundamental physical particle. While at a different set of scales, geologists distinguish different kinds of rock, meteorologists distinguish different kinds of weather system, and astronomers distinguish different kinds of galaxy. The philosophical questions that natural kinds generate can themselves be categorized into three types as they relate to metaphysics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of science. (It should be noted nonetheless that discussion of these questions quite rightly overlaps these fields. Consequently, works listed in this article may be relevant to further sections in addition to the ones they are listed under.) Here are examples of the philosophical questions surrounding natural kinds. Does the world itself genuinely have a structure of objective natural kinds, so that there are natural divisions of things by kinds? And do our actual natural classifications match those kinds? Or are what we take to be kinds merely the product of a particular non-objective perspective? How does a natural kind (or belonging to a natural kind) differ from other natural properties? In virtue of what do things group themselves into kinds? How is kind membership determined—for example, by necessary and sufficient conditions or by something else? Do, indeed, natural kinds have essences? Are there entities that are the natural kinds? Do our natural kind terms refer to such entities rather as names refer to objects? Is there a non-trivial way of spelling out the idea of rigid designation for natural kinds terms? Do the semantics of natural kind terms vindicate essentialism about kinds? Does what we discover about kinds in the special sciences (e.g., concerning chemical substances and biological species) support or undermine philosophical conceptions of kinds?

scholarly journals Social Kinds, Reference, and Meta-Ontological Revisionism

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-156
Author(s):  
Michel-Antoine Xhignesse
Keyword(s):  
Natural Kinds ◽  
Social World ◽  
Natural Kind Terms ◽  
Kind Terms ◽  
First Order ◽  
Epistemic Humility ◽  
Substantial Error ◽  
Social Kinds ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Default Position

AbstractJulian Dodd has characterized the default position in metaphysics as meta-ontologically realist: the answers to first-order ontological questions are thought to be entirely independent of the things we say and think about the entities at issue. Consequently, folk ontologies are liable to substantial error. But while this epistemic humility is commendable where the ontology of natural kinds is concerned, it seems misplaced with respect to social kinds since their ontology is dependent upon the human social world. Using art and art-kinds as paradigmatic examples of social kinds, I argue that meta-ontological realism sets conditions that are too strict to apply to social kinds. Nevertheless, I argue that we should not be too quick to embrace the conclusion that our folk theories of social kinds cannot err substantially. By modelling the reference of social kind-terms on that of natural kind-terms, it becomes clear that in both cases, our sole epistemic privilege lies in our ability to pinpoint the subject of our inquiries.

Ostension, Names and Natural Kind Terms

Dialogue ◽  
1984 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohan Matthen
Keyword(s):  
Natural Kind ◽  
Natural Kinds ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Saul Kripke ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Recent Issue ◽  
Natural Kind Terms ◽  
Kind Terms ◽  
Essential Properties ◽  
Theory Of Descriptions

It seems to be a part of the oral and written tradition of contemporary philosophy that Saul Kripke and Hilary Putnam have resurrected a kind of Aristotelianism about natural kinds by reference to purely semantic ideas. Thus in a recent issue of the Journal of Philosophy, M. R. Ayers writes that according to Kripke and Putnam: “The names ‘gold’, ‘tiger’ etc. have their meaning … by being the name of, or, more technically, by ‘rigidly designating’, a natural kind.” And in the immediately following pages he suggests that the view Kripke and Putnam arrive at is “not at all unlike Aristotelian doctrine”, but arrived at from “the rather special point of view of a concern with modal logic, and against the background of Russell's theory of descriptions, the modern obsession with proper names, and so forth”. Presumably what Ayers is alleging here is that something like the Aristotelian position on substance, species, essential properties and so forth is or is intended to be the outcome of the Kripke-Putnam investigations.

scholarly journals Natural Kinds and Natural Kind Terms: Myth and Reality

2018 ◽  
Vol 69 (4) ◽  
pp. 911-933 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sören Häggqvist ◽  
Åsa Wikforss
Keyword(s):  
Natural Kind ◽  
Natural Kinds ◽  
Natural Kind Terms ◽  
Kind Terms

scholarly journals Natural kind terms again

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Panu Raatikainen
Keyword(s):  
Natural Kind ◽  
Natural Kinds ◽  
Natural Kind Terms ◽  
Kind Terms

AbstractThe 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.

scholarly journals Semantics of legal concepts and natural kind terms: D. Patterson’s arguments

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 94-98
Author(s):  
A. B. Didikin ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Natural Kind ◽  
Natural Kinds ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Legal Language ◽  
Legal Philosopher ◽  
Natural Kind Terms ◽  
Kind Terms ◽  
Theory Of Law ◽  
Legal Concepts

The paper is devoted to the analysis of the arguments of the american legal philosopher Dennis Patterson regarding the applicability of the natural kinds terms to the semantics of the legal language. Based on the Ronald Dworkin’s theory of law, reasonable criticized by D. Patterson, the features of the formation and interpretation of legal concepts are considered. Arguments are presented that demonstrate the content of R. Dworkin and D. Patterson’s methodological approach to the interpretation of the semantics of legal concepts as well as argumentation regarding the normativity of legal reality, the objects of which are displayed in the content of legal concepts

scholarly journals Mathematical Concepts as Natural Kinds

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 07-13
Author(s):  
Daniel Arvage Nagase
Keyword(s):  
Natural Kind ◽  
Natural Kinds ◽  
Structural Information ◽  
Mathematical Concepts ◽  
Natural Kind Terms ◽  
Kind Terms

This paper presents an approach to mathematical terms similar to the approach developed by Kripke in order to deal with natural kind terms; in fact, I argue that mathematical terms are natural kind terms in the sense of Kripke. Thus, I suggest that, from a semantic perspective, such terms should be seen as primarily referring terms, and, from a metaphysical perspective, that good definitions of such terms should embody structural information about the exemplars from the kind in question.

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