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Natural Kinds
PhD seminar
Fall 2008
Bence Nanay
Assistant Professor
Department of Philosophy
Syracuse University
Office: 541 Hall of Languages
Web: http://web.syr.edu/~nanay
Email: nanay@.syr.edu
When: Thursday 3.30-6.10 pm
Where: 538 Hall of Languages
Office Hours: TBA
Course description:
We are supposed to carve nature at its joints. But does nature have joints? If so, how are we
supposed to find them? What does it mean to say that some kinds are natural kinds, whereas others
are not? Are there such things as natural kinds at all? If so, what makes them ‘natural’? What are the
reasons for being realist about natural kinds? What are the reasons for being essentialist about them?
Are biological kinds somehow different from other natural kinds? Are natural kinds in the social
sciences different? We’ll explore some of the classic questions in philosophy of science with some
detours into metaphysics, philosophy of biology and even philosophy of mind.
Books:
LaPorte, J. 2004 Natural Kinds and Conceptual Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dupré, J. 2002 Humans and other Animals, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
All the other texts are available on the website.
Course requirements and grading:
Class presentation (30%)
Participation in class (20%)
Final research paper (50%)
Approximate schedule:
Unit 1: What are natural kinds? Realism and anti-realism about natural kinds
Unit 2: Essentialism and anti-essentialism about natural kinds
Unit 3: What is the relation between natural kind terms and natural kinds?
Unit 4: Kinds of natural kinds
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Unit 5: Biological kinds: are they different?
Unit 6: Human kinds: are they different?
Unit 7: Is race a natural kind? Is sex/gender a natural kind?
Preliminary Schedule:
This really is preliminary, the actual list of assigned papers can and will change, but the aim
is to read one paper per week, but do it thoroughly.
See the list of ‘additional readings’ below for the exact references of the assigned papers.
August 28: Introduction
September 4: Quine 1969, recommended: Goodman 1955
September 11: Alexander Bird: Natural kinds (forthcoming in SEP), recommended: LaPorte 2004,
Chapter 1
September 18: LaPorte 2004, Chapter 2, recommended: Mellor 1977, Reid 2002
September 25: Bence Nanay: Three ways of resisting essentialism about natural kinds. Forthcoming
in M. Slater (ed.): Carving Nature at its Joints. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009.
October 2: Hacking 2007b, recommended: Roy Sorensen: Para-natural kinds (manuscript)
October 9: No class (School holiday: Yom Kippur)
October 16: Dupré 2002, Chapter 1, recommended: Dupré 2002, Chapter 5
October 23: Okasha 2002, plus Mayr 1959/1994
October 30: Human kinds: Dupré 2002, Chapter 8, recommended: Hull 1986
November 6: No class
November 13: No class
November 20: Race: Kitcher 2007, recommended: Hull 1998, Hacking 2005
November 27: No class (Thanksgiving)
December 4: Wrap-up, papers are due.
Additional Readings:
Ayers, M. (1981) ‘Locke versus Aristotle on Natural Kinds’, The Journal of Philosophy 78 (5): 247-272.
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Boyd, R.N., 1991, “Realism, Anti-foundationalism, and the Enthusiasm for Natural Kinds”,
Philosophical Studies 61: 127-148.
Boyd, R. (1999) ‘Homeostasis, species and higher taxa’, in R. Wilson (ed.) Species: new interdisciplinary
essays, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 141-185.
Broad, C. D. 1918-1920 ‘On the Relation between Induction and Probability’, Mind 27: 389–404;
and Mind 29: 11–45, Reprinted in Induction, Probability, and Causation: Selected Papers by C. D.
Broad. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1968, pp. 1–52.
Brown, Jessica 1998 Natural kind terms and recognitional capacities. Mind 107: 275-303.
Browning, Douglas 1978 "Believing in Natural Kinds," South West Journal of Philosophy 9: 135-148
Cooper, R. 2004 ‘Why Hacking is Wrong about Human Kinds’, British Journal for the Philosophy of
Science 55: 73–85.
De Sousa, Ronald 1984 "The Natural Shiftiness of Natural Kinds," Canadian Journal of Philosophy 14:
561-580
Donellan, Keith S. "Kripke and Natural Kind Terms" in Carl Ginet, ed., Knowledge and Mind:
Philosophical Essays, New York: Oxford University Press, 84--104.
Dupré, J. 1981 "Natural Kinds and Biological Taxa," The PhilosophicalReview90 (1981), 66--90.
Dupré, J. 1986 'Sex, Gender, and Essence', Midwest Studies in Philosophy 11: 441-457.
Dupré, J. 1989 Wilkerson on natural kinds. Philosophy 64: 248-251.
Dupré, J. 1993: The Disunity of Science: Metaphysical Foundation of the Disunity of Science. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press. Chapter 1.
Dupré, J. 1996 Promiscuous realism: Reply to Wilson. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 47:
441-444
Dupré, J. 2001 ‘In Defence of Classification’ Studies in the History and Philosophy of the Biological and
Biomedical Sciences 32: 203–219; reprinted in Humans and Other Animals (Oxford: Clarendon,
2002), 81–99.
Dupré, J. (2002) Humans and other Animals, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dupré, J. 2002 Is ‘natural kind’ a natural kind term. The Monist 85:29-49. Reprinted in Dupré 2002
Humans and Other Animals.
Elder, Crawford L 1989 'Realism, Naturalism, and Culturally Generated Kinds', Philosophical Quarterly
39: 425-444.
Elder, Crawford L 1995 A different kind of natural kind. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 73: 516-531.
Ellis, Brian 2001. Scientific Essentialism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ereshefsky, M 1998 Species pluralism and anti-realism. Philosophy of Science 65: 103-120.
Ereshefsky, M. (2001) The Poverty of the Linnaean Hierarchy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ereshefsky, M., Matthen, M. (2005) ‘Taxonomy, polymorphism, and history: an introduction to
population structure theory’, Philosophy of Science 72: 1-21.
Goodman, N. 1955/1983 The new riddle of induction. Reprinted as Chapter III of Nelson
Goodman (1983): Fact, Fiction, and Forecast. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp.
59-83.
Goodman, N. 1970. Seven strictures on similarity. In L. Foster and J. W. Swanson (eds.): Experience
and Theory. Boston: University of Massachusetts Press. Reprinted in Goodman, Problems and
Projects, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1972, pp. 437–46.
Goodman, N., 1973. Fact Fiction and Forecast, 3rd edition. Indianapolis and New York: Bobbs-Merrill.
Goodman, N., 1978 Ways of Worldmaking. Indianapolis: Hackett.
Griffiths, P.E., 1996, “Darwinism, Process Structuralism, and Natural Kinds”, Philosophy of Science 63:
1-9.
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Griffiths, P.E., 1997, What Emotions Really Are: The Problem of Psychological Categories. Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press.
Griffiths, Paul 1999 Squaring the circle: Natural kinds with historical essences. In: R. Wilson (ed.):
Species: New Interdisciplinary Essays. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, pp. 209-228.
Hacking, I. 1990: ‘Natural Kinds’. In Barrett & Gibson 1990 Perspectives on Quine.
Hacking, I. (1991) ‘A Tradition of Natural Kinds’, Philosophical Studies 61: 109-126.
Hacking, I. (2007a) Natural Kinds: Rosy Dawn, Scholastic Twilight. In: Anthony O'Hear (ed.): The
Philosophy of Science (Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements Volume 61). Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, pp. 203-239.
Hacking, I. 2007b The contingencies of ambiguity. Analysis 67: 269-277.
Hacking, I. Forthcoming a. Putnam’s theory of natural kinds and their names is not the same as
Kripke’s. Principia: Revista Internacional de Epistemologica (Florianopolis, Brazil)
Hacking, I. Forthcoming b. Natural kinds, hidden structures, and pragmatic instincts. In The
Philosophy of Hilary Putnam, ed. R. Auxier. Peru, Ill.: Open Court.
Hacking, I. Forthcoming c. ‘Kinds of People: Moving Targets’, forthcoming in Proceedings of the British
Academy.
Hacking, I. Forthcoming d. The Tradition of Natural Kinds Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hull, D. (1965) ‘The effect of essentialism on taxonomy: two thousand years of stasis’, British
Journal for the Philosophy of Science. 15: 314-326, 16: 1-18.
Khalidi, Muhammad Ali 1993 Carving Nature at the Joints. Philosophy of Science 60: 100-113.
Khalidi, Muhammad Ali 1998 Natural Kinds and Crosscutting Categories. Journal of Philosophy 95: 3350.
Kitts, David B. and David J. Kitts, 1979 'Biological Species as Natural Kinds', Philosophy of Science 46:
613-622.
Kripke, S. (1972) ‘Naming and necessity’, in D. Davidson and G. Harmon (eds.) Semantics of Natural
Language, Dordrecht: Reidel, 253-355.
LaPorte, J. 1997 Essential membership. Philosophy of Science 64: 96-112.
LaPorte, J. 2004. Natural Kinds and Conceptual Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lewis, David (1983) 'New Work for a Theory of Universals', Australasian Journal of Philosophy 61: 343377.
Lewis, David (1984) 'Putnam's paradox', Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 62: 221-236.
Mayr, Ernst 1959/1994 Typological versus population thinking. In: B. J. Meggers (ed.): Evolution and
Anthropology. Washington: The Anthropological Society of America, pp. 409-412. Reprinted
in: Elliott Sober (ed.): Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press,
1994, pp. 325-328.
Mayr, Ernst 1969/1976 The biological meaning of species. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 1:
311-320. Reprinted in Ernst Mayr: Evolution and the Diversity of Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, pp. 515-525.
Mayr, Ernst 1988 The ontology of the species taxon. In: Ernst Mayr: Towards a New Philosophy of
Biology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 335-358.
Mayr, Ernst 1996 What is a species, and what is not? Philosophy of Science 63: 262-277.
Mellor, D. H. 1977 Natural Kinds. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 28: 299-312.
Mill, J. S. 1843 A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive. Being a Connected View of the Principles of
Evidence and the Methods of Scientific Investigation. London: Longman.
Miller, Richard B. 1992: "A Purely Causal Solution to One of the Qua Problems". Australasian Journal
of Philosophy 70: 425-434.
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Millikan, Ruth G. 1999 Historical Kinds and the “Special Sciences”. Philosophical Studies 95: 45–65.
Mumford, S. 2005. Kinds, Essences, Powers. Ratio 18: 420–36.
Okasha, S. (2002) ‘Darwinian Metaphysics: Species and the Question of Essentialism’, Synthese 131:
191-213.
Platts, Mark 1983 Explanatory kinds. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 34: 133-148.
Putnam, H. (1970) 'Is Semantics Possible?', in H. E. Kiefer and M. K. Munitz (eds.), Language, Belief
and Metaphysics. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Reprinted as Chapter 8 in
Putnam, H.: Mind Language and Reality; Philosophical Papers, volume 2, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Putnam, H. (1973) 'Explanation and Reference' In: G. Pearce and P. Maynard (eds.) Conceptual
Change. Dordrecht: Reidel, 199-221. Reprinted as Chapter 11 of Putnam, H.: Mind Language
and Reality; Philosophical Papers, volume 2, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Putnam, H. (1975) 'The Meaning of "Meaning" ', In: Keith Gunderson (ed.) Language, Mind and
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Press.
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reprinted in Putnam, Meaning and the Moral Sciences. Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978
Putnam, H. 1990. Is water necessarily H2O? In Realism with a Human Face, ed. J. Conant, 54–79.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Quine, W. V. 1969 Natural Kinds. In: Quine, W. V. Ontological Relativity and Other Essays. New York:
Columbia University Press, pp. 114-138.
Reid, Jasper 2002 Natural kind essentialism. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 80: 62-74.
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Sankey, H. 1997 ‘Induction and Natural Kinds’, Principia: Revista Internacional de Epistemologia 1: 239–
254.
Schwartz, S.P. 1980 'Natural Kinds and Nominal Kinds. Mind 89: 182-195.
Soames, Scott 2009 What are natural kinds? Philosophical Topics, forthcoming
Stanford, P. K., and P. Kitcher. 2000. Refining the causal theory of reference for natural kind terms.
Philosophical Studies 97: 99–129.
Sterelny, Kim 1983: "Natural Kind Terms". Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 64: 110-125.
Uzgalis,W. L. 1988. The Anti-essential Locke and Natural Kinds. Philosophical Quarterly 38: 330–338.
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Perspectives 11: 17-42.
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