Open AccessNatural kinds: a new synthesis
Author(s) -
Anouk Barberousse,
Françoise Longy,
Francesca Merlin,
Stéphanie Ruphy
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
theoria
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.2
H-Index - 15
eISSN - 2171-679X
pISSN - 0495-4548
DOI - 10.1387/theoria.21066
Subject(s) - natural (archaeology) , epistemology , proposition , reductionism , natural kind , naturalism , natural science , philosophy , articulation (sociology) , falsifiability , history , aesthetics , archaeology , politics , political science , law , identity (music)
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.