Abstract
This chapter deals with the main characteristics of natural kinds, and analyzes three approaches to them. The first approach argues that natural kinds are characterized by their essential properties (in a modern, scientific sense), but encounter difficulties even on the physico-chemical level, which is where it seems to be better implemented. On the other hand, the constructivist stance, much more liberal, does not explain why certain kinds are inductively useful and not others. Third, an introduction, with comments, is provided on the approach of Richard Boyd, among others, which understands natural kinds as homeostatic property clusters that accommodate to the causal structure of the world. In this view, natural kinds are usually fuzzy sets with no clear boundaries, subject to time and space limitations, and relative to some perspective. However, it solves the problems of the other approaches mentioned without forgoing a realistic conception of natural kinds. Finally, a proposal is made on how an application of Boyd’s ideas to the analysis of laws of nature can help to solve the old chestnut about the distinction between scientific laws and accidentally true generalizations.
This work has been granted by Spanish Government, “Ministerio de Economía y Competividad”, Research Projects FFI2008-01205 (Points of View. A Philosophical Investigation) and FFI2011-24549, (Points of View and Temporal Structures).
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Notes
- 1.
In this chapter I will consider the metaphysical aspect of natural kinds, and not the semantic one; these are two sufficiently distinct aspects, because the position one adopts on one of them does not determine the answer to the other.
- 2.
“… some things … hold some or all of their intrinsic properties necessarily in the sense that they could not lose any of these properties without ceasing to be things of the kind they are, and nothing could acquire any set of kind-identifying properties without becoming a thing of this kind. These kind-identifying sets of intrinsic properties are the ones I call the real essences of the natural kinds” [12, 237–238].
- 3.
- 4.
Ellis identifies three types of natural kinds: substantive (elements, particles, gases, salts), dynamic (interactions, processes), and properties (mass, load, shape) [13, 141–142].
- 5.
Although Boyd states that “kinds useful for induction and explanation must always ‘cut the world at its joints’” [3, 139], he does so simply to stress that natural kinds are not merely arbitrary and conventionally accepted constructions, but instead their inductive usefulness resides in their accommodation to the causal structure of the world.
- 6.
There are those who contend, in contrast, that the laws of nature are ontologically more basic than natural kinds. See, for example, Bird [1, Chap. 3].
- 7.
It is obvious that, according to Boyd, the natural laws in this second sense would be ontologically more basic than natural kinds.
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Álvarez Toledo, S. (2015). Kinds, Laws and Perspectives. In: Vázquez Campos, M., Liz Gutiérrez, A. (eds) Temporal Points of View. Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics, vol 23. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19815-6_8
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