Abstract
We need to distinguish two sorts of natural kinds (NKs), scientific and common NKs, because the notion of NK, which has to satisfy demands at three different levels—ontological, semantic and epistemological—, is subject to two incompatible sets of constraints. In order to prove this, I focus on the much-discussed case of jade (how can we account for the fact that “jade”, which demonstrated all the features of an NK-term until the1860s, nowadays applies indistinctly to two different chemical NKs, jadeite and nephrite?). In the first part of the paper, I show that the current accounts are unsatisfactory because they are inconsistent. In the process, I explain why LaPorte’s (Natural kinds and conceptual change, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2004) analysis of “jade” as a vernacular NK-term with an open-texture meaning does not offer a way out. Using a reductio ad absurdum argument, I conclude that according to the main tenets of NK-term theories, today’s “jade” has to be an NK-term, and jade thereby an NK. In the second part of the paper, I argue for this conclusion in a positive manner. First, I present a series of thought experiments demonstrating that today’s “jade” has the specific features of an NK-term. Then, I show that the kind that we presently call “jade” exhibits the typical ontological and epistemological features of an NK. More generally, I expound on why common NKs are more than mere classes, and why categories such as “jade” are useful in many inferences and explanations.
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Notes
5 It is a debated issue among Locke scholars whether or not, for Locke, microstructural features could be sufficient to define an NK (I am indebted to a referee for pointing this out). Here, for argument’s sake, I follow the standard Locke reading within contemporary NK literature and consider him a microphysicalist NK-realist who is pessimistic about our ability to uncover micro-structures.
Also known as “naturalized metaphysics” and “metaphysics for scientific realism”.
Putnam (1975, p. 241) writes: “An interesting case is the case of jade. Although the Chinese do not recognize a difference, the term ‘jade’ applies to two minerals: jadeite and nephrite”.
9 This assumption, which may even seem obvious, has nevertheless been recently challenged by a small number of philosophers of language. See below, note 27.
The only exception might be Dupré (1993). Since he admits as NKs the kinds that craftspeople (cooks, carpenters, etc.) judge as natural, he should also count “jade” as an NK. However, to my knowledge, he has never given his opinion on this particular issue.
Kripke (1980, pp. 93–94) himself declared that what he was expounding was not a theory but just a better picture, in which the details had still to be filled in.
See, for instance, Raatikainen (2006) for a brief survey and critical appraisal of this school.
Kitcher and Stanford (2000) proposed adding negative instances to the reference-fixing sample. For instance, a panther pointed to while saying “it is not lion” delivers a negative instance of the term “lion”.
Let us stress here that conditions such as “being an instance of an NK of which all the other members of the class are instances” are not properties that can be used as membership criteria, and hence cannot be a part of a descriptive definition. They cannot be used because they don’t apply to every item independently; they suppose that all the members are given together.
Typical examples of descriptive conditions (or “nominal essences”), from Locke to Putnam and Kripke, mention superficial properties, that is, properties that can be either directly perceived (color, form, taste, etc.) or easily discovered (solidity, weight, etc.). However, there is no precise theory about which properties may figure in a descriptive condition and which may not.
For Kripke, “\(\hbox {H}_{2}\hbox {O}\)” necessarily designates an NK because he supposes that properties such as being \(\hbox {H}_{2}\hbox {O}\)—that is, certain microstructural properties—are essential. But, as Salmon (1981) makes clear, the thesis that material substances are determined by a determinate sort of microphysical property is a metaphysical thesis not implied by the semantics of NK-terms. Once you abstain from supposing this metaphysical thesis, “\(\hbox {H}_{2}\hbox {O}\)” does not necessarily refer to an NK.
See LaPorte (Ch. V. Sect. II.3.b.) “From vagueness to precision”, where he presents his view on this issue in detail. Open-texture vagueness is not a vagueness that is due to a continuous reality, as is the case with “bald” or “sand heap”. It rather comes from an indeterminacy of meaning related to new or unusual contexts. For example, it might be indeterminate whether “bed” applies to the pieces of furniture some extra-terrestrial population uses to rest upon.
Bird prefers to speak of concepts rather than of terms, which makes no difference here.
This suggests the following charitable interpretation of LaPorte’s affirmation of vernacular NK-term semantics (see preceding paragraph): the microstructural and descriptive conditions determine a set of possible references, at least one for each of the two conditions. This interpretation (as well as the conclusion of the previous paragraph) is confirmed in a later article, where he answers a series of criticisms. In this article, he proposes two possible understandings of the sort of vagueness he is talking about, the second of which follows the interpretation just propounded even though, confusingly, he speaks of essences and not of references or extensions. He writes: “What sort of essence is designated by vague words before the rise of science, and how would such an essence compare with the sort of essence that is designated after the rise of science, when vagueness is refined away? One possible response, if you permit me to speak of fuzzy essences with borderline extensions, is this: the earlier-designated essence is fuzzy in ways the later one is not. This suggestion will displease some. That is okay: there are other ways to accommodate vagueness. For example, we might say that vague terms oscillate between a range of essences, and that with refinement, that range narrows as vagueness is honed away” (2010, p. 122, note 13).
A precisification does not necessarily imply a choice between a scientific essence and a set of easily observable properties; it can concern two different scientific essences, as is the case when a scientific NK-term demonstrates vagueness.
For instance, the distinction between microstructural or scientifically significant properties, on the one side, and easily observed properties, on the other.
Braddon-Mitchell (2005) tries to specify the semantics that would accord with LaPorte’s reflections on meaning-change. He reaches the conclusion that LaPorte has “re-invented unawares causal descriptivism” (p. 860). But, as he then makes clear, this reading of LaPorte does not really help as far as “jade” is concerned. In fact, after considering the various interpretations one can give of the history of “jade”, he arrives at the general conclusion that none of them can support LaPorte’s claim.
This is, in fact, the reason why Putnam questioned the universal validity of the descriptivist semantics. If universal descriptivism was true, we would be ignoring a lot of semantic discontinuities. For instance, the word “whale” occurring in texts written before the 18th century would have to be translated as “great white shark” and not as “whal”, as we do currently
The whole passage is quoted above in Sect. 2.
A few philosophers of language have nonetheless questioned it. See for instance Gallois (1996) and Korman (2006). Häggqvist and Wikforss (2007) argue, convincingly, that the theory these philosophers defend is incoherent. Incidentally, the following paragraph, which explicates some of the consequences of rejecting the traditional assumption, gives a hint of the difficulties they have to face. Besides, the fact that their theory excludes the possibility of any sort of meaning precisification demonstrates that it cannot help in resolving the “jade” issue. We can therefore ignore it in this context, as have all philosophers who have addressed the jade issue until now.
The “behavior” of a term is dictated by its specific semantics, so a difference in behavior demonstrates a difference in semantics. A D-term defined by C1 would automatically apply to all these materials since they satisfy C1, but our intuition tells us that “jade” would not apply so obviously to all of them.
See Waismann (1945, p. ff.) for a series of vivid examples. However, since Waismann’s examples and analysis are tainted by his verificationist theory of meaning, they may be slightly confusing in today’s semantic context.
An absolutist would either contest that such a situation could occur among linguistically competent people or she would interpret it differently. She might, for example, claim that it reveals the existence of different linguistic communities, each of which gives a different (completely determinate) meaning to “jade”.
NK-terms typically have stereotypes attached to them. A stereotype looks like a definitory descriptive condition, but its semantic role is not to define the reference, as it would be for a real definition; it is just to help identify typical instances in some context or other. Contrary to definitions, in fact, stereotypes are defeasible (see Putnam 1975, pp. 249–50).
See Abbott (1999) for a synthetic presentation.
“One, ‘water as such,’ can be understood as applying to things that are largely \(\hbox {H}_{2}\hbox {O}\) and fall under no more salient category. Application of the other (‘water-in-a-mixture’) is, I have argued, even more directly dependent on something being \(\hbox {H}_{2}\hbox {O}\)” (Hendry 2010, p. 7). See also Bloom (2007) for arguments along the same lines.
I wish to thank Francesca Merlin, Arnaud Plagnol, Asa Wikforss, Mohammad Khalidi and two anonymous referees for their very helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.
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Longy, F. Do we need two notions of natural kind to account for the history of “jade”?. Synthese 195, 1459–1486 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1213-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1213-y