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Population thinking as trope nominalism

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Abstract

The concept of population thinking was introduced by Ernst Mayr as the right way of thinking about the biological domain, but it is difficult to find an interpretation of this notion that is both unproblematic and does the theoretical work it was intended to do. I argue that, properly conceived, Mayr’s population thinking is a version of trope nominalism: the view that biological property-types do not exist or at least they play no explanatory role. Further, although population thinking has been traditionally used to argue against essentialism about biological kinds, recently it has been suggested that it may be consistent with at least some forms of essentialism—ones that construe essential properties as relational. I argue that if population thinking is a version of trope nominalism, then, as Mayr originally claimed, it rules out any version of essentialism about biological kinds.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, 13244, USA

    Bence Nanay

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  1. Bence Nanay
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Correspondence to Bence Nanay.

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I am grateful for comments by Peter Godfrey-Smith, Karen Neander, David Sanford, Marc Lange, David Papineau, Roberta Balarin, Jason Rhein, Kris McDaniels, Ben Bradley, Kevan Edwards and James Young on an earlier version of this paper.

I presented this paper at the Inland Northwest Philosophy Conference, at the British Columbia Philosophy Conference and at the SPDMBABWS group at Syracuse University. I am grateful for my commentators as well as the audiences. This paper grew out of the discussion at my PhD seminar on natural kinds at Syracuse University. I am also grateful for detailed comments from two referees at Synthese.

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Nanay, B. Population thinking as trope nominalism. Synthese 177, 91–109 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-009-9641-6

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