“Diseases and Natural Kinds”

Projection, symmetry, and natural kinds

Scientific practice involves two kinds of induction. In one, generalizations are drawn about the states of a particular system of variables. In the other, generalizations are drawn across systems in a class. We can discern two questions of correctness about both kinds of induction: (P1) what distinguishes those systems and classes of system that are ‘projectible’ in Nelson Goodman’s (1955) sens...

Naturalization without Natural Kinds:

Naturalization without Natural Kinds: On the prospects of a unified theory of religion. From the propagation of religion, it is not hard to understand the causes of the resolution of the same into its first seeds or principles; which are only an opinion of a deity, and powers invisible and supernatural; that can never be so abolished out of human nature but that new religions may again be made ...

Semantic Natural Kinds Brendan

The first of the two sentences in (1) entails the second; necessarily, if the first is true then so is the second. Moreover, (1) is an instance of a more general pattern whose validity doesn’t seem to depend on the specific meanings of the words in (1). The adverb ‘quickly’, for example, can be replaced with any of a wide range of adverbs without loss of validity; analogous remarks hold for the...

What are natural kinds ?

Are Emotions Natural Kinds?

Laypeople and scientists alike believe that they know anger, or sadness, or fear, when they see it. These emotions and a few others are presumed to have specific causal mechanisms in the brain and properties that are observable (on the face, in the voice, in the body, or in experience)-that is, they are assumed to be natural kinds. If a given emotion is a natural kind and can be identified obje...