How to Philosophically Tackle Kinds without Talking about “Natural Kinds”

Brigandt, Ingo

doi:10.1017/can.2020.29

Cited by 16 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 106 publications

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“…It should be reminded that concepts like target-based and phenotype-based are abstract and arbitrary and any attempt to find concrete definitions in the outside world is futile. Because of the lack of an already established definition, the definitions I have used are inevitably subjective; however, I have tried my best to provide simple definitions that would be maximally useful for our purpose and also would provide the most objectivity in the categorizations 161 . Apart from all the employed hypotheses and rationalizations, were the drug or its lead structures discovered based on observing the effects of molecules on "targets" or phenotypes.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Target-based Drug Discovery Is Inefficient: Discovery and “Off-target” Mechanisms of All Drugs

Sadri¹

2022

Preprint

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For years, the low productivity of drug discovery has been a dilemma. More surprising has been the fact that our current productivity is far lower than 70 years ago. How could our ancestors, from thousands to a hundred years ago, discover drug-leads, like opioids, that we still rely on, yet we, with incomparably advanced technologies and knowledge, are desperate to do so? Based on massive evidence, I argue that the primary cause is the dominance of the reductionist “rational” drug discovery which tries to reduce the effects of molecules on highly complex phenotypes to single variables: affinity toward single hypothesized “targets.” Detailed analysis of the discovery origins of all currently used small-molecule drugs shows that, despite decades of dominance, only about 9% of them have “target-based” origins. More conclusively, even this minimal contribution depends on luckiness rather than sheer “rationality” as these “target-based” drugs have numerous “off-target” therapeutic mechanisms. These observations reveal the real-world inefficacy of “rational” drug discovery and imply that currently, powerful assets like artificial intelligence and deep learning are being employed by an ultimately inefficient paradigm.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Target-based Drug Discovery Is Inefficient: Discovery and “Off-target” Mechanisms of All Drugs

Sadri¹

2022

Preprint

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“…This account of how classification proceeds in science is highly idealized; if natural kinds are ultimately the goal of science, investigations into the nature of scientific practice reveal that classificatory practices and kind discovery in science do not follow this logical trajectory (e.g., Andersen, 2010;Bloch-Mullins, 2020a, 2020b, Chang, 2004Hacking, 1992b;Feest & Steinle, 2012;Kendig, 2016aKendig, , 2016bNersessian, 2008). Numerous philosophers of science and scientists have noted that exploratory and hypothesis-driven research often proceed in science without a firm grasp of what the objects of inquiry are nor how the kinds of things under study fit into some broader taxonomy of kinds (e.g., Anderson, 2015;Brigandt, 2003Brigandt, , 2020Chang, 2004Chang, , 2012Colaço, 2020;Feest, 2005Feest, , 2010Feest, , 2011Feest, , 2012Feest, , 2017Feest & Steinle, 2012;Griffiths, 1997Griffiths, , 2004Haueis & Slaby, 2017;Kendig, 2016aKendig, , 2016bMuszynski & Malaterre 2020;Rheinberger, 1997;Sullivan, 2009, 2017b, Sullivan, 2010Sullivan, 2019;Sullivan, 2020).…”

Section: Scientific Practice Coordinated Pluralism and Coordinated Kmentioning

confidence: 99%

Classification, kinds, taxonomic stability and conceptual change

Mattu

Sullivan

2021

Aggression and Violent Behavior

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Scientists represent their world, grouping and organizing phenomena into classes by means of concepts. Philosophers of science have historically been interested in the nature of these concepts, the criteria that inform their application and the nature of the kinds that the concepts individuate. They also have sought to understand whether and how different systems of classification are related and more recently, how investigative practices shape conceptual development and change. Our aim in this paper is to provide a critical overview of some of the key developments in this philosophical literature and identify some interesting issues it raises about the prospects of the so-called "special sciences", including psychiatry, psychology, and the mind-brain sciences more generally, to discover natural kinds. 2. Principles of classification: a brief historical overview 2.1. Conventionalism Human beings impose conceptual order on their world. In the most basic terms, we are born into a world of language users; learning the meanings of words requires the abilities to detect objects having certain properties in the world, to recognize similarities and differences among those objects with respect to those properties and to understand that things that others identify using the same name share certain properties in common. We learn these basic rules of classification and assign things that share properties in common to groups having unique names. Common examples of groups include stars, mammals, trees, beliefs and feelings. We learn that stars have the basic properties of being luminous and visible in the night sky and that beliefs are things that humans and some non-human animals have that can be assigned a truth value. Sometimes we place unlike things into the same group-we misclassify

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“…See e.g. Brigandt (2020). 46 See Finn (2018), Finn and Isaac (forthcoming), and Kingma and Finn (2020).…”

Section: Why It Mattersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Methodology for the metaphysics of pregnancy

Finn

2021

Euro Jnl Phil Sci

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One of the central questions in the metaphysics of pregnancy is this: Is the foetus a part of the mother? In this paper I aim not to answer this question, but rather to raise methodological concerns regarding how to approach answering it. I will outline how various areas attempt to answer whether the foetus is a part of the mother so as to demonstrate the methodological problems that each faces. My positive suggestion will be to adopt a method of reflective equilibrium. The aim of this is to ensure that pregnancy be included in the tribunal of experience that our theories are held up against such that our theories can accommodate what we say about pregnancy, whilst also ensuring that what we say about pregnancy be theoretically informed. That way, we rethink pregnancy in light of our theories as well as rethinking our theories in light of pregnancy.

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How to Philosophically Tackle Kinds without Talking about “Natural Kinds”

Cited by 16 publications

References 106 publications

Target-based Drug Discovery Is Inefficient: Discovery and “Off-target” Mechanisms of All Drugs

Target-based Drug Discovery Is Inefficient: Discovery and “Off-target” Mechanisms of All Drugs

Classification, kinds, taxonomic stability and conceptual change

Methodology for the metaphysics of pregnancy

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