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Natural Kinds and Concept Eliminativism

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EPSA11 Perspectives and Foundational Problems in Philosophy of Science

Part of the book series: The European Philosophy of Science Association Proceedings ((EPSP,volume 2))

Abstract

Recently in the philosophy of psychology it has been suggested that several putative phenomena such as emotions, memory, or concepts are not genuine natural kinds and should therefore be eliminated from the vocabulary of scientific psychology. In this paper I examine the perhaps most well known case of scientific eliminativism, Edouard Machery’s concept eliminativism. I argue that the split-lump-eliminate scheme of conceptual change underlying Machery’s eliminativist proposal assumes a simplistic view of the functioning of scientific concepts. Conceiving of scientific concepts as natural kind terms is an important reason for the impasse between Machery and anti-eliminativists, as both sides allude to properties of natural kinds in their contradicting arguments. As a solution I propose that, in order to develop a more satisfactory theory of conceptual change in science, one needs to distinguish between three different types of scientific concepts, hitherto conflated under the loaded notion of natural kind.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In this paper, the term ‘concept’ appears in two different meanings. ‘Concept’ in the psychological sense refers to a putative cognitive structure of an individual. ‘Scientific concepts’, on the other hand, are things featured in scientific theories and employed collaboratively by scientists in their research practices. Although there certainly are continuities between these two uses of the term, it is important to clearly distinguish between them.

  2. 2.

    See Brigandt (2010) for a somewhat similar picture of the conceptual dynamics of science. In attempting to account for the rationality of conceptual change, Brigandt emphasizes inferential role and epistemic goal as important semantic dimensions of scientific concepts.

  3. 3.

    Boyd (2010) himself recognizes this conventionalist aspect of scientific classification, when he states that there are no kinds that are natural simpliciter, but instead kinds are natural with respect to the inferential architectures of particular disciplinary matrices.

  4. 4.

    Peirce (1903) observed this tension already in Mill’s account of kinds: Mill (1891) requires that a small group of properties must not account for the rest of a real kind’s properties but, on the other hand, the aim of scientific research to find law-like relationships between the properties of kinds appears to undermine their independence.

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Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 14th Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science (CLMPS) at Nancy. I thank audiences both at CLMPS and at EPSA11 for their comments. I also thank Petri Ylikoski and Marion Godman for valuable feedback on earlier drafts.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. TINT/Social and Moral Philosophy, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

    Samuli Pöyhönen

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  1. Samuli Pöyhönen
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Correspondence to Samuli Pöyhönen .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy and History of Science, Faculty of Sciences, University of Athens, Athens, Greece

    Vassilios Karakostas

  2. Inst. History & Foundations of Science, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Dennis Dieks

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Pöyhönen, S. (2013). Natural Kinds and Concept Eliminativism. In: Karakostas, V., Dieks, D. (eds) EPSA11 Perspectives and Foundational Problems in Philosophy of Science. The European Philosophy of Science Association Proceedings, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01306-0_14

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