Natural kinds: a new synthesis

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Published 16-10-2020
DOI https://doi.org/10.1387/theoria.21066
Anouk Barberousse
UFR de Philosophie, Faculté des Lettres, Sorbonne Université, 1 rue Victor Cousin, 75005 Paris, France
Françoise Longy
Faculté de Philosophie, Université de Strasbourg, 7 rue de l’Université, 67000 Strasbourg, France & Institut d’histoire et de philosophie des sciences et des techniques (IHPST), 13 rue du Four, 75006 Paris, France
Francesca Merlin
Institut d’histoire et de philosophie des sciences et des techniques (IHPST), CNRS & Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, 13 rue du Four, 75006 Paris, France
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2335-3429

Stéphanie Ruphy
Faculté de Philosophie, Université de Lyon, 15 Quai Claude Bernard, 69007 Lyon, France
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7078-5136

Abstract

What is a natural kind? This old yet lasting philosophical question has recently received new competing answers (e.g., Chakravartty, 2007; Magnus, 2014; Khalidi, 2013; Slater, 2015; Ereshefsky & Reydon, 2015). We show that the main ingredients of an encompassing and coherent account of natural kinds are actually on the table, but in need of the right articulation. It is by adopting a non-reductionist, naturalistic and non-conceptualist approach that, in this paper, we elaborate a new synthesis of all these ingredients. Our resulting proposition is a multiple-compartment theory of natural kinds that defines them in purely ontological terms, clearly distinguishes and relates ontological and epistemological issues - more precisely, two grains of ontological descriptions and two grains of explanatory success of natural kinds -, and which sheds light on why natural kinds play an epistemic role both within science and in everyday life.

How to Cite

Barberousse, A., Longy, F., Merlin, F., & Ruphy, S. (2020). Natural kinds: a new synthesis. THEORIA. An International Journal for Theory, History and Foundations of Science, 35(3), 365–387. https://doi.org/10.1387/theoria.21066
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Keywords

Natural Kind, HPC, Essentialism

Issue
Vol. 35 No. 3 (2020)
Section
ARTICLES

Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons License.