Cancer

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anya Plutynski
Keyword(s):  
Cancer Research ◽  
Natural Kind ◽  
Natural Kinds ◽  
Molecular Subtyping ◽  
Stable Property ◽  
Scientific Kinds ◽  
False Assumption ◽  
Homeostatic Property Cluster ◽  
Cluster View

Is cancer one or many? If many, how many diseases is cancer, exactly? I argue that this question makes a false assumption; there is no single “natural” classificatory scheme for cancer. Rather, there are many ways to classify cancers, which serve different predictive and explanatory goals. I consider two philosophers’ views concerning whether cancer is a natural kind, that of Khalidi, who argues that cancer is the closest any scientific kind comes to a homeostatic property cluster kind, and that of Lange, whose conclusion is the opposite of Khalidi’s; he argues that cancer is at best a “kludge” and that advances in molecular subtyping of cancer hail the “end of diseases” as natural kinds. I consider several alternative accounts of natural or “scientific” kinds, the “simple causal view,” the “stable property cluster” view, and “scientific kinds,” and argue that the diverse aims of cancer research require us to embrace a much more pluralistic view.

Nouns for Natural Kinds and the Problem of Arbitrariness

2019 ◽  
pp. 140-183
Author(s):  
Mario Gómez-Torrente
Keyword(s):  
Natural Kind ◽  
Natural Kinds ◽  
Sufficient Conditions ◽  
Scientific Kinds

This chapter explains the “Kripke-Putnam orthodoxy” about the reference fixing of ordinary natural kind nouns, and some objections to it, especially “arbitrariness problems”: for example, a Kripke-Putnam baptism for “water” doesn’t discriminate between, say, H2O and P2O (H2O where the isotope of hydrogen involved is protium oxide, as in regular paradigms of water). The chapter presents a picture of reference fixing for natural kind nouns that refines the Kripke-Putnam picture and that appeals to sets of roughly sufficient conditions for reference and reference failure. It is argued that on this picture the referents of ordinary natural kind nouns turn out to be “ordinary kinds,” kinds which are vague along dimensions along which scientific kinds are precise: the reference of “water” is “the ordinary kind water” rather than H2O or other scientifically identified kinds. It is argued that this suffices to dispose of the arbitrariness worry on a broadly Kripkean view.

The Distinction between Psychological Kinds and Natural Kinds Revisited: Can Updated Natural-Kind Theory Help Clinical Psychological Science and beyond Meet Psychology's Philosophical Challenges?

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara S. Held
Keyword(s):  
Mental Disorder ◽  
Natural Kind ◽  
Natural Kinds ◽  
Research Domain Criteria ◽  
Inductive Generalization ◽  
Psychological Science ◽  
Essential Properties ◽  
Alternative Approaches ◽  
Homeostatic Property Cluster ◽  
Research Domain

Philosophers and psychologists have long held that mind-dependent/human (or social) kinds are not natural kinds. Yet in the last three decades philosopher of science Richard Boyd has challenged this belief to widespread acclaim in the philosophy of biology, where the natural-kind status of species taxa has been debated. Boyd proposed that natural-kind status hinges not on a kind's mind independence or on demonstration of its essential properties but rather on whether it supports inductive generalization, in which case it is a “homeostatic property cluster” (HPC) kind. Boyd indicates that any human/mental kind can in principle be a natural kind, without physical reduction of its properties, as long as it constitutes an HPC kind and so can be studied by way of the causal mechanisms that, he theorizes, underlie all natural kinds. In the last decade Boyd's HPC theory of natural kinds has influenced theory of mental disorder kinds and shares commonality with Denny Borsboom's burgeoning “symptom network” approach to psychiatric diagnosis. It therefore warrants more thoroughgoing theoretical and empirical analysis. This article revisits the heterogeneity that inheres in DSM categories and motivated alternative approaches, such as the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) of the NIMH. Also assessed are two worries about the future of “HPC kinds” of mental disorder kinds: (a) ontological relativism and reification, and (b) epistemic perspectivalism and relativistic knowledge. Though focused on clinical kinds, this analysis has implications for psychological science beyond its clinical subdiscipline.

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.

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.


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.

The World Essence

Dialogue ◽  
1990 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Bigelow
Keyword(s):  
Natural Kind ◽  
Actual World ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Natural Kinds ◽  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
Joint Paper ◽  
Essential Properties ◽  
The World ◽  
Natural Necessity

Recently, Brian Ellis came up with a neat and novel idea about laws of nature, which at first I misunderstood. Then I participated, with Brian Ellis and Caroline Lierse, in writing a joint paper, “The World as One of a Kind: Natural Necessity and Laws of Nature” (Ellis, Bigelow and Lierse, forthcoming). In this paper, the Ellis idea was formulated in a different way from that in which I had originally interpreted it. Little weight was placed on possible worlds or individual essences. Much weight rested on natural kinds. I thought Ellis to be suggesting that laws of nature attribute essential properties to one grand individual, The World. In fact, Ellis is hostile towards individual essences for any individuals at all, including The World. He is comfortable only with essential properties of kinds, rather than individuals. The Ellis conjecture was that laws of nature attribute essential properties to the natural kind of which the actual world is one (and presumably the only) member.

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

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Daly
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Special Interest ◽  
Natural Kind ◽  
Natural Kinds

Objects belonging to a natural kind form a group of objects which have some theoretically important property in common. For example, rabbits form a natural kind, all samples of gold form another, and so on. Natural kinds are contrasted with arbitrary groups of objects such as the contents of dustbins, or collections of jewels. The latter have no theoretically important property in common: they have no unifying feature. Natural kinds provide a system for classifying objects. Scientists can then use this system to predict and explain the behaviour of those objects. For these reasons, the topic of natural kinds is of special interest to metaphysics and to the philosophy of science.

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