Mind-Dependent Kinds
Keywords:
natural kinds, social kinds, psychological kinds, human kinds, social ontologyAbstract
Many philosophers take mind-independence to be criterial for realism about kinds. This is problematic when it comes to psychological and social kinds, which are unavoidably mind-dependent. But reflection on the case of artificial or synthetic kinds (e.g. synthetic chemicals, genetically modified organisms) shows that the criterion of mind-independence needs to be qualified in certain ways. However, I argue that none of the usual variants on the criterion of mind-dependence is capable of distinguishing real or natural kinds from non-real kinds. Although there is a way of modifying the criterion of mind-independence in such a way as to rule in artificial kinds but rule out psychological and social kinds, this does not make the latter non-real. I conclude by proposing a different way of distinguishing real from non-real kinds, which does not involve mind-independence and does not necessarily exclude psychological and social kinds.
References
Alston, W. (1979): “Yes, Virginia, There is a Real World”. In: Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 52. No. 6, p. 779–808. https://doi.org/10.5840/apapa2013287
Armstrong, D. M. (1978): Universals and Scientific Realism. A Theory of Universals, vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bird, A. and E. Tobin (2008/2014): “Natural Kinds”. In: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Boyd, R. (1989): “What Realism Implies and What It Does Not”. In: Dialectica 43, p. 5–29. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1746-8361.1989.tb00928.x
Chakravartty, A. (2007): A Metaphysics for Scientific Realism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511487354
Devitt, M. (2005): “Scientific Realism”. In: F. Jackson and M. Smith (Eds.): Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Elder, C. L. (2007): “On the Place of Artifacts in Ontology”. In: E. Margolis and S. Laurence (Eds.): Creations of the Mind: Theories of Artifacts and Their Representation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Franklin-Hall, L. R. (2015): “Natural Kinds as Categorical Bottlenecks”. In: Philosophical Studies 172, p. 925–948. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-014-0326-8
Grandy, R. (2007): “Artifacts: Parts and Principles”. In: E. Margolis and S. Laurence (Eds.): Creations of the Mind: Theories of Artifacts and Their Representation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Guala, F. (2010): “Infallibilism and Human Kinds”. In: Philosophy of the Social Sciences 40, p. 244–264. https://doi.org/10.1177/0048393109343114
Hacking, I. (1995): “The Looping Effects of Human Kinds”. In: D. Sperber, D. Premack and A. J. Premack (Eds.): Causal Cognition: A Multi-Disciplinary Debate. Oxford: Clarendon Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198524021.003.0012
Hacking, I. (1999): The Social Construction of What? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Hare, B. and Tomasello, M. (2005): “Human-Like Social Skills in Dogs”. In: Trends in Cognitive Sciences 9. p. 439–444. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2005.07.003
Hare, B., M. Brown, C. Williamson and M. Tomasello (2002): “The Domestication of Social Cognition in Dogs”. In: Science 298. No. 5598, p. 1634–1636. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1072702
Hull, D. (1978): “A Matter of Individuality”. In: Philosophy of Science 45, p. 335–360. https://doi.org/10.1086/288811
Khalidi, M. A. (2010): “Interactive Kinds”. In: British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 61, p. 335–360. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjps/axp042
Khalidi, M. A. (2013): Natural Categories and Human Kinds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511998553
Khalidi, M. A. (2015): “Three Kinds of Social Kinds”. In: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 90, p. 96–112. https://doi.org/10.1111/phpr.12020
Kim, J. (1998): Mind in a Physical World. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/4629.001.0001
Kistler, M. (2005): “Necessary Laws”. In: J. Faye, P. Needham, U. Scheffler and M. Urchs (Eds.): Nature’s Principles. Dordrecht: Springer, p. 201–227. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-3258-7_8
Larson G. and D. G. Bradley (2014): “How Much is That in Dog Years? The Advent of Canine Population Genomics”. In: PLoS Genetics 10. No. 1, p. e1004093. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1004093
Lowe, E. J. (2011): “The Rationality of Metaphysics”. In: Synthese 178. No. 1, p. 99–109. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-009-9514-z
Magnus, P. D. (2012): Scientific Enquiry and Natural Kinds: From Planets to Mallards. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137271259
Reydon, T. A. C. (2014): “Metaphysical and Epistemological Approaches to Developing a Theory of Artifact Kinds”. In: M. Franssen, P. Kroes, T. Reydon, and P. E. Vermaas (Eds.): Artefact Kinds: Ontology and the Human-Made World. Dordrecht: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-00801-1
Rosen, G. (1994): “Objectivity and Modern Idealism: What is the Question?”. In: M. Michael and J. O’Leary-Hawthorne (Eds.): Philosophy in Mind. Dordrecht: Springer, p. 277–319. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-1008-2_17
Searle, J. (1995): The Construction of Social Reality. New York: Free Press.
Sperber, D. (2007): “Seedles Grapes: Nature and Culture”. In: E. Margolis and S. Laurence (Eds.): Creations of the Mind: Theories of Artifacts and Their Representation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Tahko, T. (2015): “Natural Kind Essentialism Revisited”. In: Mind 124, p. 795–822. https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/fzv027
Thomasson, A. (2003): “Realism and Human Kinds”. In: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 67, p. 580–609. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1933-1592.2003.tb00309.x
Thomasson, A. (2007): “Artifacts and Human Concepts”. In: E. Margolis and S. Laurence (Eds.): Creations of the Mind: Theories of Artifacts and Their Representation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Whewell, W. (1840/1847): The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, 2nd ed., Vol. 1. London: John W. Parker.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2016 Muhammad Ali Khalidi
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 Unported License.
