Abstract
In this paper, I argue that the causal and description theories of natural kind term reference involve certain psychological elements. My main goal is to refine these theories with the help of empirical psychology of concepts, and to argue that the refinement process ultimately leads to the dissolution of boundaries between the two kinds of theories. However, neither the refined theories nor any other existing theories provide an adequate answer to the question of what makes natural kind terms rigid. To provide an answer to this question I conclude my paper by introducing a framework of a unified theory of natural kind term reference that is built on the empirical psychology of concepts.
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Notes
The motivation to avoid introducing internal elements is to avoid introducing descriptivist elements in the theory. Thus, not any internal elements are important to avoid (in fact, they cannot be avoided), but just such classifying elements that descriptivism is committed to.
Something like this is suggested by Putnam (1975), who claims that the meaning of the term “water”, for instance, includes a syntactic marker specifying that it is a concrete mass noun (p. 269).
Brown calls the third qua-problem the “higher level kinds problem”, but this is misleading. Brown still acknowledges both the lower and higher level problems (pp. 275–276).
Originally raised by Kripke (1980).
Following Kripke, to whom this kind of an argument is originally due (1980: p. 118), we may speculate that the cured speakers would not say that they erred in believing that there is gold; instead, they could say gold is different than they thought it was.
See also footnote 11.
Strevens (2000).
To be precise, the minimal hypothesis does the modelling on the basis of so-called K-laws people implicitly believe about the objects. These laws determine which observable features are connected with the object’s property of belonging to a certain kind (Strevens 2000: p. 154 ff).
I wish to stress that it is a psychological theory that is ditched by the psychologists (the ‘classical theory of concepts’, see e.g., Smith and Medin 1981), since there is also a very similar philosophical theory of concepts (‘concepts’ in the philosophical sense). Of these two, the philosophical theory came first, and the psychologists examined later on whether it could also work as a psychological theory of concepts (‘concepts’ in the psychological sense). The result was that it was ditched as a psychological theory. (For discussion about the differences between these two notions of concept see e.g., Rey 1983; Smith et al. 1984.)
Consider the case of a three-legged pygmy albino pet tiger, the paragraph following the next.
On the other hand, the descriptivist might also take another, more empirically neutral, route, and claim that natural kind terms apply in virtue of the objects triggering some recognitional capacity, or notion, associated to the term.
Given actual facts we are able to say what belongs to a term’s extension. Compare to Braddon-Mitchell’s (2004) claim that we are “masters of our meanings”.
Granted, the traditional theory might be in need of some refining to account especially for the lower level kinds problems.
One might worry about the fact that it is only contingently so that the number of electrons determines both the element and the perceivable features. Could it not turn out (in the actual world) that an element’s perceivable features are caused by the number of its neutrons; would this not cause problems for the account? One can only ask herself how silver, for instance, would be referred to if the actual world were such that the two naturally occurring isotopes of silver did not share perceivable features—naturally, people would have introduced two different terms for these kinds.
The recognitional component already excludes a number of non-natural kinds a gold sample might instantiate, such as valuable substance, shiny substance, etc., but the recognitional component (even together with the indexicality operator) alone is insufficient to distinguish between the natural kind gold and the non-natural goldish kind.
For example, Schwartz (2002) writes that “[c]learly there is an important difference between natural kind terms like ‘gold’ and nominal kind terms like ‘bachelor’—and isn’t this difference based on the rigidity of the one and non-rigidity of the other?” (p. 266).
Gelman’s work focuses on children’s essentialist beliefs, but the results can be generalised (see e.g., Gelman 2003, Introduction).
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Acknowledgements
Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the University of Turku, at the 2006 annual conference of the European Society for Philosophy and Psychology at Queen’s University, Belfast, and at the University of Hamburg. I want to thank an anonymous referee, Tobias Rosefeldt, Benjamin Schnieder, and especially Jussi Haukioja for helpful discussions and comments. This work has been financially supported by the Academy of Finland (project 214088).
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Jylkkä, J.W. Theories of natural kind term reference and empirical psychology. Philos Stud 139, 153–169 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-007-9107-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-007-9107-y