Natural Kinds and Crosscutting Categories

Khalidi, Muhammad Ali

doi:10.2307/2564567

Cited by 52 publications

(29 citation statements)

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“…The classification need not be hierarchical. Cross-cutting classifications of the same objects are also possible (e.g., ecological and genealogical classifications of species ;Dupré 1993;Khalidi 1998). In short, abstraction gives us (i) kinds of objects and processes, and (ii) classifications.…”

Section: Abstraction As Selectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Part-whole science

Winther

2009

Synthese

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A scientific explanatory project, part-whole explanation, and a kind of science, part-whole science are premised on identifying, investigating, and using parts and wholes. In the biological sciences, mechanistic, structuralist, and historical explanations are part-whole explanations. Each expresses different norms, explananda, and aims. Each is associated with a distinct partitioning frame for abstracting kinds of parts. These three explanatory projects can be complemented in order to provide an integrative vision of the whole system, as is shown for a detailed case study: the tetrapod limb. My diagnosis of part-whole explanation in the biological sciences as well as in other domains exploring evolved, complex, and integrated systems (e.g., psychology and cognitive science) cross-cuts standard philosophical categories of explanation: causal explanation and explanation as unification. Part-whole explanation is itself one essential aspect of part-whole science.

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Section: Abstraction As Selectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Part-whole science

Winther

2009

Synthese

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“…For instance, on the broadly popular pluralist view (Chakravartty 2007;Dupré 1995;Khalidi 1998;Kitcher 1984) there are 1 For helpful discussions of this paper, thanks to Richard Boyd, Marc Ereshefsky, Andrew Franklin-Hall, Sharon Street, Michael Strevens, participants in the Corridor Reading Group (Errol Lord, Barry Maguire, John Morrison and Kristin Primus), and an audience at Cornell University. Many thanks are also due to Elizabeth Radcliffe for organizing this volume and for her patience with my contribution to it.…”

Section: -Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Natural kinds as categorical bottlenecks

Franklin-Hall

2014

Philos Stud

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Both realist and anti-realist accounts of natural kinds possess prima facie virtues: realists can straightforwardly make sense of the apparent objectivity of the natural kinds, and anti-realists, their knowability. This paper formulates a properly anti-realist account designed to capture both merits. In particular, it recommends understanding natural kinds as 'categorical bottlenecks,' those categories that not only best serve us, with our idiosyncratic aims and cognitive capacities, but also those of a wide range of alternative agents. By endorsing an ultimately subjective categorical principle, this view sidesteps epistemological difficulties facing realist views. Yet, partly in consequence of the ubiquity of robust processes in our universe, it nevertheless identifies natural kinds that are fairly, though not completely, stance-independent or objective.

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“…In response to this fact, one might dig one's heels in and insist that a truly natural kind obeys the hierarchy thesis. Or one might (as Ian Hacking (2007) Khalidi 1998 andHacking 2007, 214). This is a (putative) case of intrataxonomic crosscutting because there is no disagreement within chemistry about what it takes for something to be an enzyme or a protein; rather, these kinds crosscut in the sense that they fail to fit either the stronger or the weaker hierarchical theses described above.…”

Section: Carving Nature Across Its Jointsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Metaphysics and Science

Mumford¹,

Tugby²

2013

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This volume brings together important new work within an emerging philosophical discipline: the metaphysics of science. In the opening chapter, a definition of the metaphysics of science is offered, one which explains why the topics of laws, causation, natural kinds, and emergence are at the discipline’s heart. The book is then divided into four sections, which group together papers from leading academics on each of those four topics. Among the questions discussed are: How are laws and measurement methods related? Can a satisfactory reductive account of laws be given? How can Lorentz transformation laws be explained? How are dispositions triggered? What role should dispositional properties play in our understanding of causation? Are natural kinds and natural properties distinct? How is the Kripke–Putnam semantics for natural kind terms related to the natural kind essentialist thesis? What would have to be the case for natural kind terms to have determinate reference? What bearing, if any, does nonlinearity in science have on the issue of metaphysical emergence?

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Natural Kinds and Crosscutting Categories

Cited by 52 publications

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Part-whole science

Part-whole science

Natural kinds as categorical bottlenecks

Metaphysics and Science

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