Abstract

Philosophical treatments of natural kinds are embedded in two distinct projects. I call these the philosophy of science approach and the philosophy of language approach. Each is characterized by its own set of philosophical questions, concerns, and assumptions. The kinds studied in the philosophy of science approach are projectible categories that can ground inductive inferences and scientific explanation. The kinds studied in the philosophy of language approach are the referential objects of a special linguistic category—natural kind terms—thought to refer directly. Philosophers may hope for a unified account addresses both sets of concerns. This paper argues that this cannot be done successfully. No single account can satisfy both the semantic objectives of the philosophy of language approach and the explanatory projects of the philosophy of science approach. After analyzing where the tensions arise, I make recommendations about assumptions and projects that are best abandoned, those that should be retained, and those that should go their separate ways. I also recommend adopting the disambiguating terminology of “scientific kinds” and “natural kinds” for the different notions of kinds developed in these different approaches.

Highlights

  • A philosophical approach to natural kinds is motivated by a family of questions, concerns, and assumptions that influence the nature of the accounts generated

  • This is not to say that they are ontologically inferior to the natural kinds of the philosophy of language approach, but that they cannot play the role of being the referential objects of “natural kind terms”, as understood in the philosophy of language approach

  • While philosophers may hope for a unified account of natural kinds, this paper argues that the kinds of these two approaches are distinct and that no single account can satisfy both the semantic objectives of the philosophy of language approach and the explanatory projects of the philosophy of science approach

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Summary

Introduction

A philosophical approach to natural kinds is motivated by a family of questions, concerns, and assumptions that influence the nature of the accounts generated. I argue, they do not have the sort of metaphysical structures that could ground a direct reference theory This is not to say that they are ontologically inferior to the natural kinds of the philosophy of language approach, but that they cannot play the role of being the referential objects of “natural kind terms”, as understood in the philosophy of language approach. Hacking (2007) claims that contemporary philosophers use the term “natural kind” in so many ways that it no longer refers to any well-defined class He believes the literature has devolved into a “scholastic twilight” from the “heady days of the 1970s when Saul Kripke and Hilary Putnam did so much to give sense and use to the idea of a natural kind” My exposition starts with these assumptions and works through the different versions of essentialism that are adopted to explain rigid designation

The philosophy of science approach
The philosophy of language approach
Essentialism
Realism
Semantics
Conclusion
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