scholarly journals Can the Epistemic Value of Natural Kinds Be Explained Independently of Their Metaphysics?

2020 ◽  
pp. 000-000
Author(s):  
Catherine Kendig ◽  
John Grey
Keyword(s):  
Natural Kinds ◽  
Epistemic Value

Because Without Cause

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Lange
Keyword(s):  
Natural Kinds ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Scientific Explanations ◽  
Physical Necessity ◽  
Explanatory Priority ◽  
Causal Laws

This chapter investigates non-causal scientific explanations that work by describing how the explanandum involves stronger-than-physical necessity by virtue of certain facts (“constraints”) that possess some variety of necessity stronger than ordinary causal laws possess. In particular, the chapter offers an account of the order of explanatory priority in explanations by constraint. It examines several important examples of explanations by constraint, distinguishing their natural kinds. It gives an account of the sense in which constraints are modally stronger than ordinary causal laws and an account of why certain deductions of constraints exclusively from other constraints possess explanatory power whereas others lack explanatory power.

Mechanisms, Models, and Kinds

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Glennan
Keyword(s):  
Natural Kinds ◽  
Multiple Models

This chapter explores how mechanisms and their constituents can be classified into kinds. It argues for a weakly realist account of natural kinds—one which suggests that classification into kinds is based upon real similarities between instances of those kinds, but which denies that kinds have essences or have some reality apart from their instances. I introduce a models-first account of kinds, which suggests that two things are of the same kind to the extent that they can be represented by the same model. Because target entities can be represented by multiple models, they will belong to multiple kinds. I illustrate the approach by showing how the entities and activities that make up mechanisms can be classified into kinds.

Making Things Right

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Pettigrew
Keyword(s):  
Error Theory ◽  
Epistemic Value ◽  
Healthy Patient ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Epistemic Consequentialism ◽  
Wrong Action

Pettigrew focuses on trade-off objections to epistemic consequentialism. Such objections are similar to familiar objections from ethics where an intuitively wrong action (e.g., killing a healthy patient) leads to a net gain in value (e.g., saving five other patients). The objection to the epistemic consequentialist concerns cases where adopting an intuitively wrong belief leads to a net gain in epistemic value. Pettigrew defends the epistemic consequentialist against such objections by accepting that the unintuitive verdicts of consequentialism are unintuitive, but offering an error theory for why these intuitions do not show the view to be false.

scholarly journals Plato on Natural Kinds: The Promethean Method of the Philebus

Apeiron ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
John D. Proios
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Natural Kind ◽  
Intelligent Design ◽  
Expert Knowledge ◽  
Natural Kinds ◽  
Natural World ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

Abstract Plato’s invention of the metaphor of carving the world by the joints (Phaedrus 265d–66c) gives him a privileged place in the history of natural kind theory in philosophy and science; he is often understood to present a paradigmatic but antiquated view of natural kinds as possessing eternal, immutable, necessary essences. Yet, I highlight that, as a point of distinction from contemporary views about natural kinds, Plato subscribes to an intelligent-design, teleological framework, in which the natural world is the product of craft and, as a result, is structured such that it is good for it to be that way. In Plato’s Philebus, the character Socrates introduces a method of inquiry whose articulation of natural kinds enables it to confer expert knowledge, such as literacy. My paper contributes to an understanding of Plato’s view of natural kinds by interpreting this method in light of Plato’s teleological conception of nature. I argue that a human inquirer who uses the method identifies kinds with relational essences within a system causally related to the production of some unique craft-object, such as writing. As a result, I recast Plato’s place in the history of philosophy, including Plato’s view of the relation between the kinds according to the natural and social sciences. Whereas some are inclined to separate natural from social kinds, Plato holds the unique view that all naturalness is a social feature of kinds reflecting the role of intelligent agency.

Understanding, Integration, and Epistemic Value

2012 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Georgi Gardiner
Keyword(s):  
Epistemic Value

scholarly journals ON THE DOCTRINE OF NATURAL KINDS

Mind ◽  
1887 ◽  
Vol os-12 (47) ◽  
pp. 434-438 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. H. TOWBY
Keyword(s):  
Natural Kinds

Colloquium 5 The Birds and the Bees: Aristotle on the Biologcial Concept of ἀνάλογον

2014 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 145-169
Author(s):  
Devin Henry
Keyword(s):  
Natural Kind ◽  
Natural Kinds ◽  
Causal Explanation ◽  
Explanatory Role ◽  
Common Causes ◽  
Similar Location ◽  
Different Parts ◽  
Second Analogy

In this paper I examine Aristotle’s biological use of the concept of analogy. On the reading I defend, biological analogues are parts that realize the same capacity of soul or occupy a similar location in the animals whose parts they are but are not specific (“more-and-less”) modifications of the same underlying material substratum. The concept of analogy serves two principal functions in Aristotle’s biology. First, Aristotle uses analogy as a tool for classifying animals into separate natural kinds (Part 3). Second, analogy plays an explanatory role in which the same causal explanation is transferred to “φ and its analogue” (Part 4). Here the function of analogy is to group different parts into a single explanatory class unified on the basis of shared causes. One of the upshots of my interpretation is that, while analogical unity may allow us to posit a common explanation for φ and its analogue, it is not grounds for treating the class of animals that ­possess those parts as a natural kind. For Aristotle, natural kinds are groups whose shared similarities must result from common causes operating on a common material substratum.


scholarly journals Natural kinds of mental disorder

Synthese ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sander Werkhoven
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Disorders ◽  
Mental Disorder ◽  
Mental Health Problems ◽  
Natural Kinds ◽  
Health Problems ◽  
Abnormal Behaviour ◽  
Diagnostic Categories ◽  
Socially Constructed

AbstractAre mental disorders (autism, ADHD, schizophrenia) natural kinds or socially constructed categories? What is at stake if either of these views prove to be true? This paper offers a qualified defence for the view that there may be natural kinds of mental disorder, but also that the implications of this claim are generally overestimated. Especially concerns about over-inclusiveness of diagnostic categories and medicalisation of abnormal behaviour are not addressed by the debate. To arrive at these conclusions the paper opens with a discussion of kind formation in science, followed by an analysis of natural kinds. Seven principled and empirically informed objections to the possibility of natural kinds of mental disorder are considered and rejected. The paper ends with a reflection on diagnostics of mental health problems that don’t fall into natural kinds. Despite the defence of the possibility of natural kinds of mental disorder, this is likely to be the majority of cases.

A Moderately Pessimistic Perspective on “Cooperative Naturalism”

Projections ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 9-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Davies
Keyword(s):  
Mirror Neurons ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Epistemic Value ◽  
Philosophical Reflection ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Normative Dimension ◽  
Film Experience ◽  
Philosophical Questions

Murray Smith’s plea for a “cooperative naturalism” that adopts a “triangulational” approach to issues in film studies is both timely and well-defended. I raise three concerns, however: one is external, relating to this strategy’s limitations, and two are internal, relating to Smith’s application of the strategy. While triangulation seems appropriate when we ask about the nature of film experience, other philosophical questions about film have an ineliminable normative dimension that triangulation cannot address. Empirically informed philosophical reflection upon the arts must be “moderately pessimistic” in recognizing this fact. The internal concerns relate to Smith’s claims about the value and neurological basis of cinematic empathy. First, while empathy plays a central role in film experience, I argue that its neurological underpinnings fail to support the epistemic value he ascribes to it. Second, I question Smith’s reliance, in triangulating, upon the work of the Parma school on “mirror neurons.”

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