Social categories in the making: construction or recruitment?

Real kinds, both natural and social categories, are characterized by rich inductive potential. They have relatively stable sets of conceptually independent projectable properties. Somewhat surprisingly, even some purely social categories (e.g., ethnicity, gender, political orientation) show such multiple projectability. The article explores the origin of the inductive richness of social categories and concepts. I argue that existing philosophical accounts provide only a partial explanation, and mechanisms of boundary formation and stabilization must be brought into view for a more comprehensive account of inductively rich social categories.

Direct Reference for Extensional Terms

Names become attached to individuals, real kinds, properties, and so forth through conventions, that is, through the setting and following of precedents, patterns that continue to be reproduced because they serve communicative functions. Each precedent follower repeats what was done before, but “what was done before” can be interpreted in different ways. Stabilizing these precedents are the real kinds and property peaks in the natural world that make cognition possible. Names are not tethered to any necessary properties or descriptions but to property peaks and to the clusters that are real kinds as wholes. They are directly referential, providing no foundation for an analytic/synthetic distinction. The understanding that language imparts to an interpreter is idiosyncratic, depending on the interpreter’s prior knowledge of the world itself. Words do not create boundaries where there were none before but exploit the clumpy though often unclear structure that the world presents.

A Clumpy World

Anything with a structure that tends actively to maintain or reconstitute itself over time, by simple persistence, by cycling, by reproducing, or by causing itself to be replicated, maintains or increases its own kind while depleting materials and resources for constituting other kinds. This creates natural (real kinds) and real categories, which produce limited variety in nature, which supports induction, making possible both cognition and languages that are learnable. The time stages of an individual bear a resemblance to the members of a real kind in being like one another for a reason, so that knowledge of an individual over time is much like inductive knowledge of a real kind over its members.

Mind-Dependent Kinds

Many philosophers take mind-independence to be criterial for realism about kinds. This is problematic when it comes to psychological and social kinds, which are unavoidably mind-dependent. But reflection on the case of artificial or synthetic kinds (e.g. synthetic chemicals, genetically modified organisms) shows that the criterion of mind-independence needs to be qualified in certain ways. However, I argue that none of the usual variants on the criterion of mind-dependence is capable of distinguishing real or natural kinds from non-real kinds. Although there is a way of modifying the criterion of mind-independence in such a way as to rule in artificial kinds but rule out psychological and social kinds, this does not make the latter non-real. I conclude by proposing a different way of distinguishing real from non-real kinds, which does not involve mind-independence and does not necessarily exclude psychological and social kinds.

Antirealism and Artefact Kinds

Many realists on kinds deem it highly controversial to consider artefact kinds real kinds on a par with natural ones. There is a built-in tendency in realism to conceive of artefact kinds as merely a conventional classification used for practical purposes. One can individuate three main different approaches characterizing real kinds and accordingly three different types of arguments against viewing artefact kinds as real kinds: the metaphysical, the epistemological and the semantic arguments. The aim of this contribution is to undermine the thesis that it is possible to trace a clear distinction between artefacts and natural kinds in each of these approaches. As a consequence there are no metaphysical, epistemological and semantic bases for claiming that artefact kinds as opposed to natural ones are not real kinds.

Empiricist word learning

At first, Bloom's theory appears inimical to empiricism, since he credits very young children with highly sophisticated cognitive resources (e.g., a theory of mind and a belief that real kinds have essences), and he also attacks the empiricist's favoured learning theory, namely, associationism. We suggest that, on the contrary, the empiricist can embrace much of what Bloom says.

Words are invitations to learn about categories

Evidence from language acquisition suggests that words are powerful mechanisms in the acquisition of substance concepts. Infants initially approach language with the general expectation that words refer to real kinds, regardless of grammatical cues to the contrary.

Different structures for concepts of individuals, stuffs, and real kinds: One Mama, more milk, and many mice

Although our concepts of “Mama,” “milk,” and “mice” have much in common, the suggestion that they are identical in structure in the mind of the prelinguistic child is mistaken. Even infants think about objects as different from substances and appreciate the distinction between kinds (e.g., mice) and individuals (e.g., Mama). Such cognitive capacities exist in other animals as well, and have important adaptive consequences.