Natural Kinds Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

2025, Synthese

This introduction contextualises the topical collection on the legacy of the valuefree ideal of science, categorises and summarises its contributions, and proposes directions for and applications of future research, especially those... more

2025

This article explores the role of sexual selection as a fundamental mechanism in evolutionary biology, supplementing Darwin's theory of natural selection. While natural selection explains traits that enhance survival, sexual selection accounts for traits that may hinder survival but increase reproductive success, such as ornamental features in male animals. The article outlines how sexual differentiation emerged biologically through gametes, how males and females evolved distinct reproductive strategies, and the role of gamete scarcity in shaping mating behavior. It emphasizes the genetic and evolutionary superiority of females in many species and illustrates how both males and females compete for reproductive partners, including in humans. The influence of hormones like testosterone on behavior, lifespan, and societal roles further supports the impact of sexual selection on human evolution. The paper concludes that sexual selection is a critical evolutionary force that shapes behavior, physiology, and social interaction across the animal kingdom and in human society.

2025, openarchive.cbs.dk

Resume: Temaet for denne afhandling er en undersøgelse af tre historiske'formationer'organiseret omkring en'ting'i kroppen i melankoliens brede og farverige historie i et forsøg på at skabe baggrund for en filosofisk... more

2025, Philosophy of Science

We characterize four fruitful and underappreciated epistemic roles played by the concept of an individualized niche in contemporary biology, utilizing results of a qualitative empirical study conducted within an interdisciplinary biological research center. We argue that the individualized niche concept (1) shapes the research agenda of the center, (2) facilitates explaining core phenomena related to inter-individual differences, (3) helps with managing individual-level causal complexity, and (4) promotes integrating local knowledge from ecology, evolutionary biology, behavioral biology and other biological fields. We thereby also challenge arguments that the niche concept is superfluous in ecology.

2025

El nonbr¿rr y la necesicla<l / Saul Kripkc ; traclucción cie N{argarita M. Valdés.-2a ed. ert cspariol lev. -l\{éxico : UNAM, hrstituto dc hrvestigaciones Filosóflcas, 1995 (reirn- presiórt 2005). 176 p. Traclucción dc: Nanring ancl Neccssity rsBN 970-32-2512-B l. Modalidacl (Lógica). 2. Necesidad (Filosofía). 3. Refercn- cia (Filosofía). 4. Iclerrt.idacl (Conce¡rto filos<ifico). I. Valdés, Margarita M., ¡r. lI. t. Ctriclaclo cle la ccliciórr, cornposición y forrnación tipogr'áfica: Mat'tha Díaz Cañas 'fítulo oligirrzi'. Naning an,d Necessill

2025, Replika Társadalomtudományi Folyóirat

Absztrakt: Írásomban röviden bemutatom a Replika 132. számában megjelenő Társadalmi ontológia blokk legfőbb kérdéseit, problémáit, irányait és fogalmait. Ezzel párhuzamosan vázlatosan kitérek a kérdéskör legfőbb filozófiatörténeti állomásaira, amelyek segíthetnek megérteni a társadalmi ontológia előzményeit, történeti alakulását és kontextusát, továbbá röviden ismertetem a blokkban megjelenő tanulmányok kérdéseit és eredményeit.

2025, Frontiers in psychology

In Metaphor Studies, metaphor is considered as a "form of understanding one thing in terms of something else." It is assumed that, despite their differences, metaphors share many properties and that a theory of metaphor should capture these essential properties. In short, it is assumed that metaphor is a natural kind. We call this view the Natural Kind Assumption. In this paper, we will challenge it and show that metaphor is not a natural kind. Finally, we will discuss the main philosophical consequences of this view.

2025

Simulation theory is a radical and yet increasingly popular view about episodic memory. It is the view that episodic memory and episodic simulation are the same natural kind. I argue that while simulation theory offers an important insight, it also makes an overreach. While episodic memory and episodic simulation likely reflect a common natural kind, they also differ in natural kind. They differ in natural kind because episodic memory is partly defined by projectible properties and memory trace mechanisms that episodic simulation lacks.

2025, Philosophy in review

2025, Synthese

The traditional debate over theories of reference of natural kind terms faces a serious dilemma. On the one hand, although direct reference theory, or the causal–historical analysis of reference to natural kinds, is still highly influential in the philosophy of language, there is a notorious “qua” problem: direct reference theory cannot uniquely determine the referents of natural kind terms. On the other hand, the standard descriptivism does not accommodate our externalist intuition. We propose temporal externalist descriptivism, where relevant future theorists determine references by past speakers. This position makes the externalist intuition about reference compatible with descriptivism about natural kind terms by ensuring the possibility of mistakes in the past and present practice. It also provides a defense of the controversial claim of temporal externalism based on a descriptivist analysis of reference. While causal–historical analysis focuses on inheritance through history, a reference has both a past and a future. In this sense, reference to natural kinds is essentially a provisional phenomenon.

2024, ETHIEK & MAATSCHAPPIJ

In 1899 Emil Kraepelin published the sixth and final edition of his handbook Psychiatrie, in which he proposed a classification of mental disorders which would form the basis for the later editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) of the American Psychiatric Association (from the 3 rd edition onwards). This manual is often called "the bible of psychiatry". In this paper we discuss the ongoing struggle of psychiatry to understand the causes of mental disorders and to come up with a scientifically grounded classification. We will show the parallel between Emil Kraepelin's personal struggle with the matter -and his provisional solution -and the current tensions and opposing opinions in the debates surrounding the latest edition of the manual (DSM-5) and its possible future. It brings us to the question whether mental disorders are natural kinds, and whether or not a more theoretical (instead of descriptive) approach of psychiatric classification is possible after all. We will analyze the current philosophical debate on these topics and will come to the conclusion that the matter is still unresolvable, and that the situation has in that sense not much changed since the time in which Emil Kraepelin proposed his classification.

2024, Minds and machines

Cognitive ontology has become a popular topic in philosophy, cognitive psychology, and cognitive neuroscience. At its center is the question of which cognitive capacities should be included in the ontology of cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience. One common strategy for answering this question is to look at brain structures and determine the cognitive capacities for which they are responsible. Some authors interpret this strategy as a search for neural mechanisms, as understood by the so-called new mechanistic approach. In this article, I will show that this new mechanistic answer is confronted with what I call the triviality problem. A discussion of this problem will show that one cannot derive a meaningful cognitive ontology from neural mechanisms alone. Nonetheless, neural mechanisms play a crucial role in the discovery of a cognitive ontology because they are epistemic proxies for best systematizations.

2024, Asian Journal of Philosophy

This paper uses the notion of Natural Kinds to defend the “scientific” character of Marxian economics as a discipline. Drawing from Saul Kripke and other natural kind theorists, a criterion will be supplied that is at once logical, modal, semantic, ontological, and empirical. This would represent an encapsulation of the intuitive standards around which different economic theories compete, representing a theory indistinct
target that all scientific claims of economics aim to hit. We will demonstrate this using the case example of the work of Marx. This procedure could be repeated with any contending economic theory, giving us a theory-neutral condition for evaluating the “scientific” status of economic claims. Three results follow: (a) we get a logical framework for defining the validity-space of claims that would make up “economics;” (b) we get a tool for comparing varying economic claims or theories against one another, a tool that could be used with many others; and (c) we will see how counter to some theorists, economics does in fact represent a Natural Kind.

2024, Foundations of Chemistry

One of several important issues that inform contemporary philosophy of chemistry is the issue of structural explanation, precisely because modern chemistry is primarily concerned with microstructure. This paper argues that concern over microstructure, albeit understood differently than it is today, also informs the chemical philosophy of Robert Boyle (1627-1691). According to Boyle, the specific microstructure of 'chymical atoms', understood in geometric terms, accounts for the unique essential properties of different chemical substances. Because he considers the microstructure of 'chymical atoms' as semi-permanent, Boyle considers these stable entities as operationally irreducible, even if they are not ontologically fundamental. While it is generally believed that our contemporary concern over structural explanation is a function of modern chemistry's emphasis on microstructure, this discussion of structural explanation in Boyle will serve as a case study to illustrate the manner in which many of our contemporary concerns have deeply historical origins and the manner in which the history of chemistry can substantively inform issues in contemporary philosophy of chemistry.

2024, Naturalism and its Challenges, Edited by Gary N. Kemp, Ali Hossein Khani, Hossein Sheykh Rezaee, and Hassan Amiriara, New York: Routledge,

Categorial approaches to metaphysical issues about the mind are explained and defended, and naturalistic approaches are criticized for begging categorial questions. Categorial properties are a certain kind of essential properties and are not understood terms of concepts, although categorial knowledge is necessary for thinking. The debate over materialism and dualism is reconsidered in these terms. Issues about so-called ‘category mistakes’ and Leibniz’s Law are clarified. It is shown how the approach dovetails with Saul Kripke’s approach to natural kinds, but not that of Nathan Salmon. Tyler Burge’s anxieties about the over-sophistication of such approaches are addressed and dismissed. Lastly, Moritz Schlick and Rudolf Carnap’s, categorial non-cognitivism is rejected. The conclusion is not anti-naturalist or pro-dualist, only that categorial issues are fundamental and metaphysical issues about the mind cannot be addressed without considering them.

2024

This thesis argues for the incoherency of the putative distinction between those properties which are possessed essentiallyin a metaphysical senseby an object and those which are possessed only accidentally. This thesis is thus a critique of metaphysical essentialism. In chapter one I distinguish various kinds of essentialism, possibility and necessity. I explore both metaphysical and semantical issues associated with the essential/accidental distinction. I examine Quine's related attack on quantified modal logic. The burden of Quine's objections is carried by his antipathy to metaphysical essentialism, arguments against which he leaves undeveloped. In chapter two I remedy this defect and develop a line of attack on the essential/accidental distinction by adapting and sytematising an argument of Chisholm's in his seminal paper of 1967. I consider various lines of response by the essentialist and find them wanting. I concede that the weakest point in my attack on essentialism is an appeal to a principle about the transworld identity conditions of individuals. Given this concession, my discussion changes tack in chapters three and four. I granl irenically the coherence ofthe essentiaVaccidental distinction. In chapter three I argue that even given this concession there is no cogent case to be made for the claim commonly advanced by essentialists that an object's origin is essential to that object's identity. What I take to be the stongest argument for origin essentialism is in effect self-refuting because it appeals to the very principle of transworld identity which grounds my rejection of essentialism in chapter two. In chapter four I argue that there is no compelling ground to believe that an object essentially satisfies-in a metaphysical as opposed to a conceptual sense of 'essentially'the sortals which are true of it. lv CONTENTS CHAPTER 1 ESSENTIALISM, QUINE AND QML 1.1 INTRODUCTION 1.2 ESSENTIALISM AND ANTI-ESSENTIALISM 1.2.1 LOGICAL, CAUSAL AND METAPHYSICAL POS SIBILITY AND IMPOSSIBILITY 1.2.2 WOULD HAVE AND COULD HAVE 1.2.3 METAPHYSICALESSENTIALISMVERSUS CONCEPTUAL ES SENTIALISM 1.2.4 FORMAL AND ORDINARY LANGUAGE CHARACTERISATIONS OF ES SENTIALISM 1.3 INFORMAL MODAL SEMANTICS 1.3.I NECESSARILY TRUE THAT P I.3.2 NECESSARILY IS F 1.3.2.1 (:xxNECF)xAND (:X)NEC(FX) t.3.2.2 (xXl\rECF)xAND (X)NEC(FX) 1.3.3 EQUIVALENCE OF'(NIECF)A', AND 'NEC(FA)', 1.3.3.1 EMPTYNAMES'A' 1.3.3.2 RUSSELLIAN INTERPRETATION OF DEFINITE DESCRIPTIONS 7.3.3.3 APARTICULARNON-RUSSELLIAN INTERPRETATION OF DEFINITE DESCRIPTIONS 1.3.3.4 INTERPRETING 'NECG(IX)FX)" WHERE '(IX)FX' IS

2024, Disputatio

We describe the main issue debated at the IV Blasco Disputatio: whether our knowledge of metaphysical possibility and necessity rests on knowledge of essence. But before getting to this specific issue, we offer a broader introduction to the more general problems in the epistemology of modality. In this way, we establish a background against which the contributions to this SI can be better appreciated.

2024, Asian Journal of Social Psychology

This article presents a theory of the perception of hybrids, resulting from cross-breeding natural animals that pertain to different species and of children parented by couples with a mixed ethnic or racial background. The theory states that natural living beings, including humans, are perceived as possessing a deeply ingrained characteristic that is called 'essence' or 'blood' or 'genes' in everyday discourse and that uniquely determines their category membership. If, by whatever means, the genes or essences of two animals of different species are combined in a hybrid, the two incompatible essences collapse, leaving the hybrid in a state of non-identity and non-belonging. People despise this state and reject the hybrid (Study 1). This devaluation effect holds with cross-kind hybrids and with hybrids that arise from genetically combining animals from incompatible habitats across three cultures: Austria, India and Japan (Study 2). In the social world, groups and ethnic or racial categories frequently are essentialized in an analogue way. When people with an essentialist mindset judge ethnically or racially mixed offspring, they perceive a collapse of ethnic or racial essence and, consequently, denigrate these children, as compared to children from 'pure' in-group or out-group parents (Study 3). The findings are discussed in terms of the widespread 'yuck factor' against genetically modified animals, in terms of the cultural concepts of monstrosity and of racism and prejudice.

2024, Inconsitencias en la Lógica Modal de Kripke

El presente artículo tiene por objeto exponer cómo la lógica modal de Saul Kripke, abordada principalmente en su libro "Naming and Necessity", trata el concepto de propiedad esencial y las falencias o inconsistencias que esto acarrea.

2024, Philosophical Issues

Jaegwon Kim's well-known ''explanatory exclusion'' argument is usually discussed in the context of the mental causation debate. But I also see in this argument a fundamental challenge to a popular view of the relation between the mental and the physical, namely, the view that mental properties are higher-order properties realized by physical properties. (I'll refer to this view simply as ''Multiple Realizability'' or ''MR.'') MR aims to maneuver between the Scylla of dualism and the Charybdis of type reductionism by asserting two things about mental properties: first, that they are realized by physical properties, 1 and second, that they are multiply realizable by physical properties. The first thing explains how mental properties can be causally efficacious: because a mental property is instantiated via the instantiation of a physical property, the mental property ''inherits'' all the causal powers associated with the realizing physical property. The second thing certifies the autonomy of the mental: because one and the same mental property can be realized in a variety of different physical properties, the mental property cannot be identified with, and therefore cannot be reduced to, any particular physical realizer property. For purposes of preserving the autonomy of the mental, the ''able'' in ''multiply realizable'' is crucial. Even if it were to turn out that mental properties were actually co-extensive with specific physical properties, the fact that they were not necessarily co-extensive would be enough to show that the mental properties and these physical realizer properties were not the same. Many philosophers find MR intuitively plausible. Indeed, the ability to countenance creatures with mental lives who happen not to be constituted like us has long been considered an important desideratum for an adequate theory of mentality. It was an advantage that behaviorism enjoyed over type identity theory, and one that functionalism readily co-opted. What pedagogue among us has not pumped our students' intuitions in favor of one or Philosophical Issues, 13, Philosophy of Mind, 2003 the other of these views by bidding them to consider the android Data of Star Trek? In a properly run classroom, all will agree that you don't need a human brain to possess a mind. 2 Significantly, even John Searle, who maintains that intentionality is a causal power of brains, insists that his view leaves open the possibility of artificial or alien minds-a mind needn't be made out of actual brain stuff, he says, as long as the alternate stuff has the same causal powers as brains. (Searle 1992) But all along, there have been dissonant voices. David Lewis, in his ''Mad Pain and Martian Pain'' (Lewis 1980) pointed out that advocates of multiple realizability might find themselves faced with an uncomfortable choice: between, on the one hand, honoring the idea that similarity of stuff (brains, nerves, muscles, bones-your standard issue terrestrial components) suffices for similarity of mental states, and on the other, retaining the idea that functional profile is the deciding factor, damn the stuff. Ned Block, in ''Troubles with Functionalism,'' dares us to uphold our functionalist principles when faced with ''minds'' made out of the citizens of China. More recently, Ruth Millikan has argued that mentality can only be treated scientifically if it is considered to be a biological property, and Noam Chomsky (et tu, Noam?) seems to agree, averring that ''there is no interest in taking 'mental types' to be non-biological, any more than there would be in defining 'chemical' or 'optical types' that share some properties of chemical and optical aspects of the world.'' (Chomsky 2003, 261) For both Millikan and Chomsky, the proper subject of a serious science is mentality as we find it, instantiated in brains. In Millikan's view, the question whether Data has a mind is as idle a question as whether Emma Bovary had a freckle on her left knee; in Chomsky's view, it's akin to the question of whether airplanes ''really'' fly-a matter for stipulation, not discovery. Kim is no doubt sympathetic to all these points. But his particular challenge to MR has more bite. None of the critics mentioned above claims that there's anything incoherent about MR. Kim's objection, however, if correct, would show that the arguments standardly given in favor of multiple realizability are self-undermining. I don't think that this aspect of Kim's argument has been widely appreciated, so let me start by showing how this radical challenge emerges from the explanatory exclusion argument. Kim's first premise is the Principle of the Causal Closure of the Physical (CC)-the principle that every physical event (that has a cause at all) 3 has a physical cause. It follows immediately from CC that for every physical event, there is a complete causal explanation in terms of purely physical properties. Now, Kim says, consider a particular physical event-say, an upward motion of my left forefinger at time t. Let us suppose that this particular physical event has a mental cause-say, my wanting to bring my E[ into better tune. CC requires that this motion of my forefinger must have, in addition to the causal explanation in terms of my desire to play in better tune, a complete physicalistic explanation. But now, Kim argues, it looks

2024, Classifying Psychopathology, ed. H. Kincaid and J. Sullivan, MIT Press

I argue for two main theses in this chapter--that there are some types of psychopathology that can reasonably and usefully be thought of as constituting natural kinds, given a naturalist take on the latter, and that those kinds are best thought of as categorical rather than dimensional. I also make some arguments about what must be done—but largely has not been done--methodologically to identity psychopathologic kinds of the sort I defend. In section 1 I argue for one picture of natural kinds, theories and explanation appropriate for the social and behavioral sciences. Section 2 looks at a number of mostly confused arguments that psychopathology must be thought of as dimensional. I either reject them or show how they are compatible with categorical approaches. Section 3 applies the perspective from section 1 and insights from section 2 to argue that there is a plausible case to be made that certain types of depression constitute natural kinds in my favored sense.

2024, Philosophical Papers

Critical notice of Joshua Glasgow, Sally Haslanger, Chike Jeffers, and Quayshawn Spencer, What Is Race? Four Philosophical Views (Oxford University Press, 2019)

2024

It is commonly assumed that natural kind terms constitute a distinct semantic category. This idea emerged during the 1970's following Kripke's and Putnam's well-known remarks on natural kind terms. ...

2024, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science

The article examines the role of natural kinds in semantic theorizing, which has largely been conducted in isolation from relevant work in science, metaphysics, and philosophy of science. We argue that the Kripke–Putnam account of natural kind terms, despite recent claims to the contrary, depends on a certain metaphysics of natural kinds; that the metaphysics usually assumed—micro-essentialism—is untenable even in a ‘placeholder’ version; and that the currently popular homeostatic property cluster theory of natural kinds is correct only to an extent that fails to vindicate the Kripke–Putnam account. This undermines the metasemantics required for anti-descriptivist semantics. 1 Introduction2 From Semantics to Metaphysics3 Metaphysics, Part I: The Demise of Micro-essentialism 3.1 Original micro-essentialism 3.2 Placeholder essentialism4 Metaphysics, Part II: Homeostatic Property Cluster Theory5 Prospects for Natural Kind Term Semantics

2024, Erkenntnis

The traditional thesis of the autonomy of psychology from neuroscience is grounded in a metaphysical thesis; the irreducibility thesis. Anti-reductionism is still dominant nowadays, and, as a consequence, autonomists arguably stand on firmer grounds. Still, an anti-autonomist might have the intuition that even if psychology is not reducible to neuroscience, there is a sense, not metaphysically grounded but epistemologically grounded, in which psychology clearly is not autonomous from neuroscience. The challenge is then to offer a concept of autonomy which allows for the articulation of a new and significant autonomy thesis and to show that the thesis is false. The thesis that psychologists need not consider neuroscientific explanations when putting forward psychological explanations is such a thesis. I take it that both this characterization of autonomy and an anti-autonomist argument in this sense can already be found in a paper co-authored by Gualtiero Piccinini and Carl Craver. Piccinini and Craver’s attack on this thesis is grounded on the claim that psychologists should support their functional analyses by means of mechanistic explanations for the former to be justified at all. I also take it that, as Lawrence Shapiro has shown, their argument ultimately fails. But this was a very valuable attempt, and, in this paper, I intend to build on it with the aim of offering a new and hopefully effective anti-autonomist argument. I contend that psychologists do need to consider neuroscientific explanations when putting forward psychological explanations, and this stems from the fact that they provide the same type of explanations of the same kind of phenomena as neuroscientist, or so I argue.

2024, Öncül Analitik Felsefe Dergisi

Aslında ontoloji ve metafizik için geçerli olan, AF’nin diğer alan- ları için de geçerlidir. AF’nin yakın tarihinde popüler olacak kadar alevlenen, lisansüstü öğrencilerin önemli bir bölümünü cezbetmesine rağmen hiçbir net çözüm... more

2024, Jazyky v pohybu a potenciál změny Sborníky z konferencí Filozofické fakulty, sv. 3

In this paper I will discuss two main theories of metaphor in pragmatics: Proposition Theory and Image Theory. I will notice how each theory focuses on different kinds of metaphor and I will provide a model able to put the two theories in dialogue and give account of a wider array of metaphors, to which correspond different interpretative processes. In particular, in the first paragraph I will analyse Proposition Theories and Image Theories of metaphor. In the second paragraph I will show that the two kinds of theories are not only opposites and complementary but describe different kinds of metaphor. I will argue that each theory is not able to give full account of metaphors because of its alleged universality and because the classifications of metaphors it offers are monodimensional, being linked to a single parameter. Finally, in the third paragraph I will try to put Proposition Theories and Image Theories of metaphor in dialogue to offer a bidimensional model of metaphor able to give full account of different kinds of metaphor.

2024

The question of how to define life has been an unresolved question in the philosophy of biology for many years, but developing a definition of life that is useful in both technical and everyday contexts has become more urgent as researchers around the world attempt to create fully synthetics cells in the laboratory, develop more and more intelligent and autonomous robots, and search for signatures of life elsewhere in the galaxy. Developments in these areas may end up overturning our current ideas about the distinction between life and non-life. It is therefore important to consider whether it is possible to develop a definition of life that encompasses currently known lifeforms, while at the same time having the potential to be applied to as-yet unknown lifeforms. Here, we discuss the pros and cons of some of the current approaches to defining life, then propose an alternative approach based on family resemblance. We also present preliminary data applying our new approach within a statistical modelling framework, and find that although living and non-living entities can be grouped according to overall similarity, it is difficult to find a single set of criteria which is sufficient for defining known forms of life while at the same time being inclusive enough to be useful in identifying or characterizing novel forms of life. We hope that the family resemblance approach will prove to be a fruitful alternative to traditional approaches to defining life.

2024

16 The question of how to define life has been an unresolved question in the philosophy of biology for 17 many years, but developing a definition of life that is useful in both technical and everyday contexts 18 has become more urgent as researchers around the world attempt to create fully synthetics cells in 19 the laboratory, develop more and more intelligent and autonomous robots, and search for 20 signatures of life elsewhere in the galaxy. Developments in these areas may end up overturning our 21 current ideas about the distinction between life and non-life. It is therefore important to consider 22 whether it is possible to develop a definition of life that encompasses currently known lifeforms, 23 while at the same time having the potential to be applied to as-yet unknown lifeforms. Here, we 24 discuss the pros and cons of some of the current approaches to defining life, then propose an 25 alternative approach based on family resemblance. We also present preliminary data apply...

2024, Institute of Philosophy

2024

In corvids and apes, cognition evolved convergently instead of being inherited by a shared ancestor. In biology, natural kinds are classified according to common ancestry. So, if we were to apply the same strategy to psychology, cognition among corvids and apes would not be the same natural kind. However, Cameron Buckner claims that cognition is a natural kind. I suggest that by using Ladyman and Ross's strategy of taking natural kinds as real patterns, we can support that cognition is a natural kind. Cognition seems to have the properties of predictability and compressibility, which are necessary conditions for real patternhood. Thus, convergent evolution examples of cognition, such as that found in corvids and apes, can be the same natural kind.

2024, Minds and Machines

Cognitive ontology has become a popular topic in philosophy, cognitive psychology, and cognitive neuroscience. At its center is the question of which cognitive capaci-ties should be included in the ontology of cognitive psychology and cognitive neuro-science. One common strategy for answering this question is to look at brain struc-tures and determine the cognitive capacities for which they are responsible. Some authors interpret this strategy as a search for neural mechanisms, as understood by the so-called new mechanistic approach. In this article, I will show that this new mechanistic answer is confronted with what I call the triviality problem. A discus-sion of this problem will show that one cannot derive a meaningful cognitive ontol-ogy from neural mechanisms alone. Nonetheless, neural mechanisms play a crucial role in the discovery of a cognitive ontology because they are epistemic proxies for best systematizations.

2024, American Ethnologist

Folk science investigates the nature of human knowledge and the relationship between man's knowledge of his environment and his adaptation to that environment. A fundamental issue remains controversial: Does folk science involve mental processes comparable to those of modern science and, if so, to what degree? Until recently anthropologists have stressed the dissimilarities. During the early decades of this century it was generally believed that "primitive mentality" was based largely on principles contrary to those of science. More recently, cultural relativists have asserted that each culture was free to compartmentalize i t s experience of the world as it wished, independent of objective constraints. In Sapir's words, "the worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached" (1921 :209). Recent work with color terminology (Berlin and Kay 1969) and in folk biology, however, sharply qualify this position. The impressive similarities between the scientific classification of organisms and folk bio-taxonomic systems revealed by this latter research suggest that folk science is appropriately named. T o clarify this issue it is important to describe more precisely the degree to which folk and scientific descriptions of the natural environment stem from universal cognitive processes, on the one hand, and from unique cultural and environmental conditions, on the other.

2024, Indiana University

In response to the crisis of confidence in the validity of the DSM’s diagnostic categories, psychiatry has seen a proliferation of alternative research frameworks for studying and classifying psychiatric disorders in new ways. The big... more

2024

In this paper I examine and question Marc Lange’s account of laws, and his claim that the law delineating the range of natural kinds of fundamental particle has a lesser grade of necessity that the laws connecting the fundamental... more

2024

LaPorte gives a range of interesting and informative examples. Most of these are in biology but some come from chemistry. I shall start with the latter. LaPorte starts with the example of jade and argues that contrary to the tradition following Putnam, jade present an example very similar to his Twin Earth thought experiment, but with a different outcome. For many centuries the jade that the Chinese work with and called 'yü' was just nephrite. Only towards the end of the eighteenth century was jadeite from Burma introduced into China. Chinese jade experts were aware that it was a different material, but nonetheless decided also to regard it as 'yü'. LaPorte argues that the terms 'jade' and 'yü' have a certain kind of vagueness, such that it was not determinate whether the new jade, jadeite, was within the extension of those terms. A decision was made to include the new material, thus introducing a change to the concepts 'jade' and 'yü', rater than an application of previous, unchanging concepts. Furthermore, that decision went in a different direction to the direction that is alleged in the Twin Earth story. There we are supposed to reject XYZ as water despite superficial similarity. With jade the chemically different but superficially similar jadeite was included, not rejected. If LaPorte's understanding of this case is right, then the extension of 'yü' is not fully determinate but is vague. Given that for centuries the Chinese only ever knew nephrite, one might have expected, from Putnam's Twin Earth story, that they would reject jadeite, on the grounds that is is different kind of substance. But, they eventually decided against that. LaPorte then contrasts the cases of topaz and ruby. Topaz was initially identified by its yellow colour, but the discovery that some blue minerals have the same chemical composition led to their inclusion under the extension of 'topaz'. Ruby is also identified by its colour, this time red, but in this case the existence of blue minerals with the same underlying structure were not included within the term's extension. The contrasting cases seems to suggest that it is a matter of choice whether we take the extension of a term to include newly discovered items that share some of the features of established sample but not others. Since it is a matter of choice that topaz is the mineral with formula Al 2 SiO 4 (F,OH) 2-presumably the discovery of blue minerals with the same formula could, as in the case of ruby, have led to a restriction of 'topaz' just to the yellow variety of the mineral-that essence is a matter of stipulation. The story here, I think, may be a little more complicated. For in the case of ruby there was already a term available for the mineral species of which ruby is a variety, viz. corundum, and furthermore, there was already a name available for blue corundum, viz. sapphire. So it is not clear how much choice played a part in the case of ruby. In which case it would not offer a fair contrast to the case of topaz, which in turn may then look less like a case of choice too. However, the real problem with the cases of jade, topaz, and ruby is that we are dealing here with gemstones and so there are interests competing here with the scientific ones. It would not be a surprise to find that when there is tension between the two that the former predominate. It is not that the scientific concept is forgotten completely but rather that some compromise is sought. And so one could take the view that jade really was just nephrite but that the makers of jade artifacts decided that it was in their interests to allow jadeite also to count as jade. As LaPorte makes clear, not just any old

2024, Theoria. An International Journal for Theory, History and Foundations of Science

The use of dispositions has been put into question many times in the philosophical literature, especially with regards to how dispositional attributions can be justified. Yet, dispositions are an important part not only of our everyday talk but also of our scientific practices. In this paper, we develop an argument that infers the epistemic justification of dispositional talk from its indispensability for carrying out basic epistemological projects, and we apply it to the use of dispositions in evolutionary biology. For doing this, we first advocate for a function-based strategy for the epistemic justification of dispositional attributions. We next review the functional role of some key dispositional notions in evolutionary biology, such as fitness and evolvability. Then, we show that alternative non-dispositional substitutes of these dispositions fail to fulfill their roles to the same degree. We conclude that the use of dispositions is justified in evolutionary biology.

2024, Philosophy of Science

Homology is a biological sameness relation that is purported to hold in the face of changes in form, composition, and function. In spite of the centrality and importance of homology, there is no consensus on how we should understand this concept. The two leading views of homology, the genealogical and developmental accounts, have significant shortcomings. We propose a new account, the hierarchical-dependency account of homology, which avoids these shortcomings. Furthermore, our account provides for continuity between special, general, and serial homology.

2024, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie

I argue that Locke's distinction between 'determined' and 'undetermined' ideas incorporates an account of semantic indeterminacy: if the complex idea to which a general term is annexed is 'undetermined', the term lacks a determinate extension. I propose that a closer look at this account of semantic indeterminacy illuminates various charges of confusion, misuse and abuse of language Locke levels against his philosophical contemporaries.

2024, Synthese

To be an Aristotelian about universals is to hold that universals depend for their existence on their exemplifiers. An argument against Aristotelianism about universals has recently been put forward by Costa to the effect that a contradiction follows from assuming a certain formulation of Aristotelianism together with some highly plausible principles governing the notions employed in that formulation. In this paper, we provide different ways of articulating the Aristotelian position which, while being related with some of the main contributions in the current Aristotelian tradition, do not fall prey to the argument.

2024, Synthese

2024

"Hilary Putnam’s Philosophical Naturalism: Making Philosophy Matter for Life" emphasizes both the nature of Hilary Putnam’s link to the logical positivist tradition and his progressive critical departure from it. Massimo Dell’Utri argues that one of the main senses of this departure resides in implicitly revealing that there is no opposition between philosophy concerned with hard technical questions and philosophy concerned with ‘how to live.’ It is this innovative combination that made Putnam offer what is widely regarded as the most sensible interpretation of philosophical naturalism ever articulated. From the latter comes a multilevel image of reality, the realization of which required a lifelong reflection not only on science and its importance, but also on mathematics, knowledge, mind, truth, religion, morality, and more. This variegated reflection provides insight into how, despite shifts in opinion, Putnam’s thought reveals strong continuities and a systematic backbone issues of central philosophical importance.

2024, Journal of Cognition and Neuroethics

There are many views about the structure of concepts, a plausible one of which is the theory-theory. Though this view is plausible for concrete concepts, it is unclear that it would work for abstract concepts, and then for moral concepts. The goal of this paper is to provide a plausible theory-theory account for moral concepts and show that it is supported by results in the moral psychology literature. Such studies in moral psychology do not explicitly contend for the theory-theory of moral concepts, but I demonstrate that they actually do provide evidence for the use of theory knowledge at times in moral categorization and decision-making. In philosophy of cognitive science, I newly show that there is evidence that the theory-theory does apply to some moral concepts.

2024, Argumenta

In this paper I reconstruct Spencer (2014)'s argument supporting the conclusion that 'race', in its current U.S. meaning, is a rigidly designating proper name for a biologically real entity, specifically for the partition at the K = 5 level of human population structure. Then, I object to the argument by contesting three distinct key assertions in it. First, I contest the assumption that if a term t has a logically inconsistent set of identifying conditions but a robust extension, then it is appropriate to identify the meaning of t as just its referent. Second, I contest the thesis that 'race', in its current U.S. meaning, is a rigidly designating proper name for a specific set of five race categories. Third, I contest the thesis that the partition at the K = 5 level of human population structure that Spencer identifies with the human population continental distribution, or 'the Blumenbach partition' as Spencer calls it, is biologically real in the sense Spencer needs. If even only one of my objections is convincing, Spencer's "radical solution to the race problem" is seriously undermined.