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A dilemma about kinds and kind terms

  • S.I.: Natural Kinds: Language, Science, and Metaphysics
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Abstract

‘The kind Lion’ denotes a kind. Yet many generics are thought to denote kinds also, like the subject-terms in ‘The lion has a mane’, ‘Dinosaurs are extinct’, and ‘The potato was cultivated in Ireland by the end of the 17th century.’ This view may be adequate for the linguist’s overall purposes—however, if we limit our attention to the theory of reference, it seems unworkable. The problem is that what is often predicated of kinds is not what is predicated of the lion, dinosaurs, and the potato. Thus, kinds are sometimes said to be abstract objects, immanent universals, nominal essences, etc. But the lion is a predatory cat—it is not an abstract object, nor an immanent universal, nor a nominal essence. I consider several proposals about resolving the dilemma; however, the conclusion is that none of the proposals are adequate. We are thus hard pressed to make sense of allegedly kind-denoting generics, and the lesson is a “Socratic” one about the depths of our ignorance.

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Notes

  1. It may be that (0) is only part of a philosophical dialect of English, rather than a proper sentence of English per se. Regardless, the point holds that its initial NP clearly denotes a kind.

  2. A classic introduction to this literature is Carlson and Pelletier (1995).

  3. I use ‘reference’ and ‘denotation’ interchangeably; ditto with their cognates. The exception is in Sect. 5, where an imagined objector proposes a distinction between them. But until then, the reader may regard them as equivalent.

  4. Moltmann (2013, p. 13) seems to note this kind of issue in passing: ‘Obviously…it is not the kind as such that is said to have a mane or to live in Africa’. But the problem seems dismissed in this remark, since nothing further is said. Yet unlike many linguists, Moltmann accepts that many so-called kind-denoting generics do not denote kinds. (Though she still thinks that a kind is denoted by a definite NP on its generic use, e.g., ‘The Siberian tiger’.)

  5. Liebesman (2011) has argued that sentences like (7)–(9) refer to kinds as well. But for a compelling rejoinder, see Leslie (2015). The reductio I present below resembles some of Leslie’s considerations, yet her remarks are just targeting Liebesman’s kind-denoting analysis of characterizing generics. In contrast, my reductio problematizes the kind-denoting analysis for almost any generic NP. It animates the question: Apart from cases like (0), how is it possible on anyone’s view for any generic NP to denote a kind?

  6. Leslie (2007, 2008) argues that the Gen operator should be seen as cognitively primitive (unanalyzable), owing to some of the difficult cases discussed here. Unfortunately, I cannot delve into Leslie’s view here, though I would argue that she offers a psychological solution to a specific group of problems—whereas our problems require a semantic solution. Also, for a useful critical discussion of Leslie, see Sterken (2015).

  7. Reviewer #2 observes (P†) would be acceptable in some contexts. But in those contexts, I doubt that ‘The potato’ co-refers with ‘The potato’ as it is used in (P). And it is the referent in that usage which concerns me.

  8. N.B., the issue in the reductio is not that of conflating the distributive versus collective reading of a plural NP. Carlson and Pelletier (1995, p. 80) illustrate that conflation in considering ‘The rabbit has a weight of more than one million tons’. After all, whereas the collective of rabbits has a weight, it is unclear whether the kind per se has a weight (especially if it is an abstractum). Perhaps it does if the kind just is the collective (and we will consider such a view at the end of Sect. 4). But I wish to stress that the reductio bears on a much wider range of views, especially given the variability in (v).

  9. There is other well-known evidence suggesting that, e.g., ‘The tiger’ in (1) is not simply quantifying over individuals. E.g., ‘tigers’ plausibly quantifies over individuals, yet it does not intersubstitute with ‘The tiger’, as shown in: (i) Tigers resemble each other. (ii) *The tiger resembles each other. Actually, I think this evidence is not conclusive, but as I say, I wish to leave aside examples (1)–(4) and focus on (P).

  10. Thus, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy informs us: “It is widely accepted that sentences like ‘dinosaurs are extinct’…are singular statements that predicate properties directly of kinds” (Leslie and Lerner 2016).

  11. The felt equivalence between (P) and (P-) might prompt the idea that ‘The potato’ in (P) refers to a kind of fictional object, which acts as a “proxy,” so to speak, for some specific group of potatoes. Yet then, (P) would say per impossibile that a fictional object was cultivated in Ireland by a certain time.

  12. My thanks to reviewer #1 for helpfully explaining this concern to me.

  13. At this stage, reviewer #1 suggests that perhaps the subject-term in (P) does not refer. This is not the suggestion that it refers to a fictional object (which I rejected in footnote 11). Rather, the thought is that there is some sort of failure of compositionality, like with the denotationless, dummy-subject in ‘It’s raining’. But with (P), I would tend to regard the dummy-subject proposal as a last resort, and I shall not pursue it here.

  14. My thanks to reviewer #3 for pressing me to clarify this.

  15. Note that an Armstrongian immanent universal is not just a scattered object. The latter merely has different parts at different places. An Armstrongian universal is much weirder—the whole occupies multiple places at once!

  16. An unregenerate Armstrongian might reply that if we are truly talking about the kind, then we should insist that the thing existed at several places at once. But this is a view that tries to embrace the absurdity of (‽), and we have already addressed that possibility in the previous section.

  17. I thank reviewer #2 in emphasizing this important difference to me.

  18. Here too, beware of the Liebesmanian idea that a part of the kind Potato makes it true that “The potato” was cultivated in Ireland by such-and-such time. That may result in an equivalent sentence as (P), but the question at hand concerns the denotation of the initial NP in (P). See Sect. 2.

  19. Reviewer #3 objects that the Boyd-Millikan view is not that a kind is a cluster of homeostatic properties, but rather a group of individuals who instantiate the homeostatic property-cluster. I am quite ready to agree that this is the better exegesis of Boyd-Millikan. However, it is a view which fares worse against the reductio. It would be a view where (KD) implies, in connection with (P), that the group of all potatoes was cultivated in Ireland by such-and-such a time. In this respect, the view would suffer exactly the same fate as Kitcher’s view.

  20. Notice that one would need to defend the intensionality of both predicates here, for instantiating either variable in the antecedent of (IR′) allows one to derive its consequent, thanks to the conjunct ‘Y = K’.

  21. Reviewer #1 presses that the reductio could be construed as the very evidence which shows the intensionality of the relevant terms. In which case, claiming intensionality would not be ad hoc, but rather an evidence-based discovery. (An analogy: It would be strange to accuse Frege (1892) of an ad hoc view about propositional attitude constructions, given the apparent substitution failures.) I admit I cannot fully quell the reviewer’s concern here. I confess my somewhat Quinean tendency to avoid intensionality whenever possible, unless there is fairly straightforward and undeniable evidence for it. Relatedly, I would argue that making “the potato” into an intensional object is just another way of making it metaphysically odd.

  22. I am not identifying kinds with properties. There is reason to say that properties are intensional, but that is less plausible with kinds. In biology at least, what is true of Panthera tigris seems ipso facto true of the kind Tiger.

  23. If {x | x is gold} is an “impure” set, this may not imply that gold is a set in any objectionable sense. In which case, the defender of (KD) may not yet have adequate warrant for rejecting (IR). But out of generosity to the defender, let us pass over this issue.

  24. In response to all this, I might try to stipulate that in (IR), ‘denotes’ expresses a relation between a term and the members of its extension (vs. the extension per se). The problem, however, is that ‘denotes’ in (KD) is the defender’s term, which she is free to define as she likes. Hence, if she construes ‘denotes’ in (KD) one way, and I read it the other way, then the issue threatens to be merely verbal.

  25. I thank two of my reviewers for (independently) raising this sort of Liebesman-based idea.

  26. N.B., although this type-shifting view originates with Carlson (1977), he abandoned it in his (1989), owing to problematic comparatives concerning kinds, and to donkey-anaphora cases involving kinds. Teichman, however, attempts to accommodate this and other recalcitrant data on behalf of the view.

  27. Thanks to reviewer #1 for drawing my attention to this possibility.

  28. My thanks to reviewer #3 for formulating the proposal in question.

  29. At times, reviewer #3 phrased this in terms of the set of potatoes cultivated in Ireland, etc., rather than a plurality of such potatoes. However, talk about a “set” may raise hackles about cultivating an abstractum in Irish soil. Yet if we are talking about an impure set, perhaps there is no issue. And in fact, it does not matter to my present remarks if we speak of an impure set rather than a plurality.

  30. Perhaps the relevant potato-plurality could be designated via an extremely restricted quantifier, one whose scope is contextually limited to those potatoes cultivated in Ireland, etc. But the basic worry of this appendix would still apply; it would still seem to make (P) into a necessary truth.

  31. Here, as in the rest of the paper, I am not assuming that the truth-condition of the sentence is identical to its meaning. Rather, I am just sticking to the extensional notions of denotation and truth-condition. Cf. the remarks at the end of Sect. 5.2.

  32. Granted, the relevant potato-plurality does not necessarily exist. But this does not prevent some statements about the (actual world) plurality from being necessarily true. In this respect, the necessity of (P3) is analogous to the necessity of ‘The current president of the U.S. is currently president of the U.S.’.

  33. Here and elsewhere, reviewer #3 expresses concern that the current paper exacerbates the “trivialization problem” concerning rigidity and natural kinds. Originally, the trivialization problem was that some artificial kind terms become rigid on some conceptions of artificial kinds. Yet the intuition is that only terms for natural kinds should be rigid; otherwise, rigidity is an unremarkable or “trivial” feature of terms. (See Schwartz 1980 for one expression of this intuition.) Similarly, if the reductio applies equally to natural and to artificial kind terms, that may further collapse the important distinction between them. I cannot adequately respond to this issue here. But let me confess sympathy with Laporte (2004); in essence, he embraces that the linguistic differences between artificial and natural kind terms may be rather small. (It does not yet follow, however, that the metaphysical distinction is small between artificial and natural kinds). However, see Schwartz (2002, 2018) for a response to Laporte’s view.

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Acknowledgements

My thanks to Jody Azzouni, Gary Ebbs, Ben Jantzen, William Lycan, and five reviewers for Synthese for feedback on this material. I also thank an audience at the 2016 Central Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association.

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Appendix: A third way?

Appendix: A third way?

A novel sort of account for (P) was recently brought to my attention, one which denies (KD), and instead isolates a select group of potatoes as the referent of ‘The potato’.Footnote 28 The proposal strikes me as worth exploring further, but in this appendix, I shall explain why I do not yet find it compelling.

The core idea is to regard ‘The potato’ as denoting a specific plurality of potatoes, viz., the plurality which was cultivated in Ireland by the end of the 17th century.Footnote 29 Accordingly, it is a view that denies (KD)—but at the same time, it does not invoke the Gen operator, whereby ‘The potato’ in (P) would refer to most/normal/average potatoes. Nor is ‘The potato’ denoting all/some potatoes. Rather, it is designating a single potato-subgroup (or potato-plurality if you prefer), where the relevant subgroup is indicated by context. It is thus a “third way” in departing both from (KD) and from the quantificational analyses which (in one way or another) regard ‘The potato’ in (P) as designating a quantity of individual potatoes.Footnote 30 Instead, it is view where ‘The potato’ denotes a single entity, albeit an entity that is a plurality, a plurality of potatoes which meet the relevant description.

Thus, the view would be that:

  1. (21)

    ‘The potato’ in (P) denotes the plurality of potatoes cultivated in Ireland by the end of the 17th century.

Now in consequence, the truth-condition of (P) would apparently be:Footnote 31

  • (P3) The plurality of potatoes cultivated in Ireland by the end of the 17th century was cultivated in Ireland by the end of the 17th century.

N.B., this may seem to create redundancy where there is none. But I myself do not regard that as a drawback. We are just concerned with an extensional semantics for (P), and “redundancy” in logical form is entirely possible. (Consider the “redundancy” in the Russellian analysis of ‘The present kind of France is bald’.)

It is more problematic, I think, that (P3) suggests that (P) holds of necessity. For (P3) expresses a necessary truth: The plurality of potatoes cultivated in Ireland by the end of the 17th century was cultivated in Ireland by the end of the 17th century.Footnote 32 However, (P) is not necessarily true. The potato was not necessarily cultivated in Ireland by the end of the 17th century. And so, while the proposal shows ingenuity, I doubt it will prove fully satisfying.Footnote 33

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Parent, T. A dilemma about kinds and kind terms. Synthese 198 (Suppl 12), 2987–3006 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-019-02278-7

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