Abstract
In his theory of categories, Aristotle introduces a distinction between two types of universals, i.e., kinds and attributes. While attributes determine how their subjects are, kinds determine what something is: kinds represent unified ways of being which account for the existence and identity of particular objects. Since its introduction into the philosophical discussion, the concept of a kind has attracted criticism. The most important objection argues that no separate category of kinds is needed because all kinds can be reduced to conjunctions of ordinary attributes. The present paper explores one possible response to this reductionist challenge on behalf of the Aristotelian—one which takes issue with the view that conjunctive properties license a reduction of kinds to attributes. The aim of this exploration is not only to defend an Aristotelian doctrine of kinds—i.e., to convey a better understanding of why we actually need an irreducible category of kinds—but also to define the Aristotelian position more precisely; i.e., to shed more light on the concept of kinds and the very the idea of kindhood.
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Notes
Aristotle makes a subtle distinction between the necessary essential attributes of an object that define or characterize the kind under which the object falls—such as rationality in the case of human beings—and necessary but nonessential attributes (so-called propria) which are not part of the definition of the kind to which the object belongs but which nevertheless ‘flow’ from its essence—such as the capability of learning grammar. Aristotle also distinguishes between attributes that characterize a kind primarily and those that characterize it only derivatively. For example, even though sentience is a necessary characteristic of all humans, it characterizes humanity only derivatively, for it is primarily associated with the higher-order genus of animals of which the human kind is a lower-order species. For the sake of simplicity, we will ignore all these distinctions.
That said, one may, of course, allege that the same mechanisms which cause the ks are also constitutive of their characteristic propensities (as, for instance, in homeostatic cluster theories and other naturalist accounts of kinds). Far from stating a truism or triviality, however, this will be a substantive metaphysical hypothesis, not already established by the etiology of ks, but requiring further argument. Authors such as Boyd (1991) and Khalidi (2013) have delivered arguments to this end which we cannot adequately address within the scope of this paper (though the relevant issues will, to some extent, loom in the following discussion; cf., e.g., footnote 11). Suffice it to say that these authors are not guilty of committing the fallacy we are attacking here, which resides in the rash and general identification of causal and constitutive grounds of unity.
As a convention, let capital letters with subscript numbers from now on stand for particular properties. Correspondingly, capital letters without subscripts will stand for universal properties.
For clarity, we shall write ‘\(\wedge \)’ to signify logical conjunction and ‘&’ to signify ontological conjunction.
The term ‘operator’ is by no means intended to direct our analysis to Castañeda’s (1975) theory of concretizing operators or Vallicella’s (2002) theory of the external unification operator. In our context, ‘operator’ is a descriptor topic-neutral with respect to relationalist or nonrelationalist interpretations of unifiers.
It might still be wondered why a primitivist explanation of unification should be methodologically any worse than the introduction of a novel ontological category of unifiers in the first place (thanks to an anonymous reviewer for pointing this out). But this is a comparison at different levels. At the present stage of the argument, the postulation of unifiers (substrata, bundling relations or kinds) is already beyond discussion. What is at issue is how these unifiers are able to accomplish their unificatory task. With regard to this question, primitivist accounts are clearly inferior to any solution that succeeds in terms of more familiar explanatory concepts (such as entailment, see below).
Both Simons and Armstrong try to forestall these consequences by fiat. Simons simply defines the relation of mutual entailment among properties (what he, following Husserl, calls strong foundation) such that mutually entailing properties are still different from one another (see Simons 1994, p. 559). Armstrong, in turn, just posits a bare numerical difference between universals that are necessarily coinstantiated by the same particulars (see Armstrong 2004, p. 146).
To illustrate the problem for the substratum theorist, take Armstrong’s (2004) recent ‘intersection theory’ of unification, according to which particulars and properties form states of affairs by virtue of (logically) participating in each other. While it is easy to understand how properties can participate in a particular when the particular is taken to be thick, i.e., considered as the substratum along with all its properties, it is utterly mysterious how properties could ever be part of a thin particular—which, after all, is identified with the substratum in abstraction from all its properties. Thus, the crucial unity of substrata and properties within states of affairs is left unexplained.
Cf. Armstrong (1978, p. 98) for a similar argument against Russell’s version of a bundle theory of unification.
Cf. O’Leary-Hawthorne and Cover (1998, p. 214) for an analogous conclusion (in a bundle theoretic setting) drawn from Armstrong’s objection against Russell (cf. footnote 9).
This is also a problem for the so-called property cluster view of kinds as proposed by, e.g., Boyd (1991) and Millikan (1998). According to this view, natural kinds are brought about by causal or evolutionary mechanisms that make certain combinations of properties more frequently coinstantiated than others. Hence, in water fowls, webbed feet are found to be correlated with round beaks because round beaks and webbed feet are adapted to the environment in which water fowls live (see Andersen et al. 2006, p. 44). The problem for the cluster view is that webbed feet and round beak are not universally correlated but only in fowl (otters have webbed feet due to the same environmental pressures, yet lack beaks). Thus, one first has to identify something as a fowl before one can draw inductive inferences about its features. This rather complies with Lowe’s (2015, pp. 82–83) view that there need not always be general laws tying the characteristic attributes of kinds together; often, it is the kind itself that unifies the characteristics of its members.
This order of priority is not to belie the fact that, unlike cookie cutters, Aristotelian forms do not exist independently of the matter they inform.
Kinds theorists will agree that not any old set of attributes is associated with a kind. The question which attributes enter into the constitution of a kind is partly the question what makes a kind natural (Hawley and Bird 2011, p. 205). We will set this question aside; our concern is not the naturalness of kinds but kindhood as such.
Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for putting this point.
Since unification operators are irreducibly polyadic, there are by definition no ‘sub-conjunctions’ within a conjunction.
In the cited passage, Aristotle actually speaks of the genus as the matter of a species. In Metaphysics IX.6, 1048b2–3, however, he explicitly assimilates potentiality and actuality to matter and form, and there is scholarly agreement that Aristotle calls genus the matter of a species because of the relation of potentiality that it bears to the latter (cf. Owens 1963; Thorp 2009).
This definition corresponds to Wilson’s (2008, p. 13) mereological account of property determination. There are subtle differences between the potentiality-actuality relationship and the determinable-determinate relationship (cf. Hommen forthcoming) which, however, do not affect the present discussion.
Cf. Wilson (2008, p. 15) for corresponding proposals in terms of property determination.
For the sake of simplicity, we will pretend that carbon and hydrogen are simple kinds.
The fact that most (if not all) of the properties of objects can be analyzed in terms of the behavior of these objects does not imply that these properties are of a purely dispositional kind, or that they are semantically reducible to the lawlike regularities by which they can be empirically measured. It merely reflects the fact that these properties have the status of theoretical entities that are implicitly characterized by their explanatory role within a scientific theory (see Beckermann 1992, p. 113).
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Hommen, D. Kinds as Universals: A Neo-Aristotelian Approach. Erkenn 86, 295–323 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-019-00105-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-019-00105-6