Natural Kinds

✍ Scribed by Muhammad Ali Khalidi

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2023
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 82
• Series: Elements in the Philosophy of Science
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Scientists cannot devise theories, construct models, propose explanations, make predictions, or even carry out observations, without first classifying their subject matter. The goal of scientific taxonomy is to come up with classification schemes that conform to nature's own. Another way of putting this is that science aims to devise categories that correspond to 'natural kinds.' The interest in ascertaining the real kinds of things in nature is as old as philosophy itself, but it takes on a different guise when one adopts a naturalist stance in philosophy, that is when one looks closely at scientific practice and takes it as a guide for identifying natural kinds and investigating their general features. This Element surveys existing philosophical accounts of natural kinds, defends a naturalist alternative, and applies it to case studies in a diverse set of sciences. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Title page
Copyright page
Natural Kinds
Contents
1 The Metaphysics of Kinds
1.1 What Is Natural about Natural Kinds?
1.2 Realism and Anti-Realism (aka Conventionalism)
1.3 Pluralism
1.4 Properties and Kinds
2 Theories of Natural Kinds
2.1 Science as a Guide to Kinds
2.2 Essentialist Theories
2.3 Homeostatic Property Cluster Theory
2.4 Simple Causal Theory
3 Kinds of Kinds
3.1 Crosscutting Kinds
3.2 Functional Kinds
3.3 Etiological Kinds
3.4 Mind-Dependent Kinds
4 Applications: Kinds across the Sciences
4.1 Planets
4.2 Pandemics
4.3 People with Autism
4.4 Conclusion
References
Acknowledgments