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Natural kind - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia In philosophy a natural kind is a family of "entities possessing properties bound by natural law; we know of natural kinds in the form of categories of minerals, plants, or animals, and we know that different human cultures classify natural realities that surround them in a completely analogous fashion" (Molino 2000, p.168). Quine in his essay "Natural Kinds", where any set of objects forms a kind only if (and perhaps if) it is "projectible", meaning judgments made about some members of that set can plausibly be extended by scientific induction to other members. Hence "raven" and "fl" are natural kind terms, because any fl raven consistutes at least some evidence that all ravens are fl. en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Natural_kind   (328 words)

Social Research: Natural kinds, human kinds, and essentialism Nominal kinds are therefore quite different from natural kinds in Kripke and Putnam's sense; they have no underlying essential core, and they are mediated by concepts in a manner consistent with traditional theories of reference so that conceptual change brings about changes in reference. Fifth, natural kinds are immutable and historically stable; despite developmental transformations in the outward appearance of their members and historical changes in human understandings of their nature, the essential sameness of the kind remains. Sixth, natural kinds have great inductive potential; knowing that something is an instance of such a kind allows many things to be inferred about it and generalized from it, as natural kinds are richly organized and internally homogeneous. www.24hourscholar.com /p/articles/mi_m2267/is_n2_v65/ai_20964254   (1458 words)

Sorites-Natural Kinds   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-08) Kind words as characterized up to now thus seem to be unseparably linked to knowledge-changig practices, for the central rule for their use would then be to know exactly this: that they, although introduced and explained by descriptions, are not equivalent with them. To take the problems discovered by Goodman and the natural kind theorists seriously is to accept from the outset that empirically interpreted predicates are not equivalent or coextensional to some one description of their extension where they do not occur. Kind words exist in this view thanks to the experiences we make with things in the world and only assuming them to be such we can procede to an investigation of the objects in the domain that must not substantially change because of the results of the investigation (the changing descriptions) itself. sowi.iwp.uni-linz.ac.at /Sorites/Natural_Kinds.html   (8696 words)

Natural and Artificial - Title One interpretation of the distinction is that natural kinds are objective discoveries while artifactual kinds are invented conventions. The broadest conception of "natural kind" rests on the claim that the human mind is constructed to form some categories and not others (Keil, 1981; Quine, 1977). Natural kinds represent objective norms (akin to moral laws), artifactual kinds represent invented norms (akin to conventions). corundum.education.wisc.edu /papers/Ethno.html   (11065 words)

Evolution and natural law   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-08) Second, the thesis of “distinct kind” may not be the best candidate to be the foundation of natural law theory, because this notion could lead to an inflation of a sense of superiority and subsequently open the door to atrocity. The imperatives that are typical of natural law theory always involve evaluation of human conduct in order to unveil invariant and even universal principles, whereas the scientific law of nature also involves inferences of the hidden and immutable order of the universe. In summary, the foundation of natural law and moral code on the “natural and distinct kind” assumption seems to be egocentric: we consider ourselves to be rational and superior, and thus deserving of special treatment. seamonkey.ed.asu.edu /~alex/education/hps/koterski.htm   (7983 words)

Pragmatism and the Philosophy of Language   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-08) In the case of a natural kind term, on the other hand, both the question of which things are of that kind and the question of what it is to be that kind of thing (and so of the empirical adequacy of our theory) are questions of empirical fact. The idea that it is possible ostensively to define a natural kind term requires the myth of the given, the idea that an object can as a matter of fact, independent of what we conceive it as, fix a principle of inclusion for things of that kind. For, as will be argued, we can understand the empirical significance or applicability of a natural kind term to derive from the fact that a subject endorses the inferential relations that articulate the ("formal") meanings of the family of predicates to which it belongs as the inferential rules governing the correct use of those predicates. csmaclab-www.cs.uchicago.edu /philosophyProject/sellars/macbeth/macbeth.html   (9113 words)

Natural Law [Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy] There are a number of different kinds of natural law theories of law, differing from each other with respect to the role that morality plays in determining the authority of legal norms. The second thesis constituting the core of natural law moral theory is the claim that standards of morality are in some sense derived from, or entailed by, the nature of the world and the nature of human beings. Though there are different versions of natural law theory, all subscribe to the thesis that there are at least some laws that depend for their "authority" not on some pre-existing human convention, but on the logical relationship in which they stand to moral standards. www.utm.edu /research/iep/n/natlaw.htm   (5617 words)

Species A second tenet is that the essence of a kind is responsible for the traits typically associated with the members of that kind. Boyd's approach to natural kinds is distinct from the traditional essentialist approach to kinds in several ways. Natural kinds, in other words, can be individuals, so long as the members of a natural kind are sufficiently stable to allow prediction and explanation. plato.stanford.edu /entries/species   (5741 words)

Synopsis and selections from Dr. Michael P. Wolf's dissertation We cannot simply declare that the natural kind terms are those taken up by scientists and then hope to demonstrate the necessity of their appearance in some theoretical claims unless that necessity is reduced to a trivial sort of definition. To establish that something is of a natural kind and use a natural kind term to make some assertion is to entitle ourselves to certain causal explanatory possibilities that we would not have had otherwise. The natural kind terms that we are committed to including in our theories are those whose invocation serves as an explanatory reason for the broadest possible array of phenomena in the natural world. zimmer.csufresno.edu /~mwolf/me/synpro.html   (2792 words)

Untitled In general, science studies natural kinds, groups of objects whose members are governed by the same set of laws and whose properties are not relativized to any particular personal interest. Natural kind terms group sets of individuals, properties, processes, or states of affairs such that laws or principles governing that kind include all the members of that kind. One criterion suggested for a natural kind is that "the laws [which]...relate the various subclasses...should not have their content exhausted by a conjunction of the subordinate laws describing each subclass" (Wilkes 1988: 37). www.phil.vt.edu /Valerie/6014/6014papers/CNK.html   (5099 words)

[No title]   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-08) A kind term covered by the causal theory applies to all objects that are of the same kind as the actual sample in which the term was grounded (allowing perhaps for a few “errors” in the sample). The primary task is to distinguish kind terms that are not covered by a description theory from ones that are. This having been said, our examples of rigid appliers were natural kind terms and it is independently interesting to consider whether all natural kind terms are and whether any other terms are. The nature of a implement quite often involves not only a function but also a physical characteristic: a pencil is not a pen, a chair is not a stool, a sloop is not a yawl. web.gc.cuny.edu /Philosophy/devitt/RigidApp.doc   (9609 words)

In this paper I will be reviewing literature, mostly from cognitive science, related to the human brain’s processes ... Natural kinds are categories of objects and substances that are found in nature (e.g., tiger, water, cactus). One may certainly argue that, for some natural kinds such as ‘substances’ and ‘elements’, their chemical or atomic constitutions may qualify as a specification of a legitimately real essence; but the Darwinian revolution made it clear that biological natural kinds cannot be characterized as having real essences (Mayr 1964). Natural living kinds, in any case, do seem to come with essence placeholders that are not entirely empty (at least at the generic-species level), as revealed in children´s reasoning about development. www.sscnet.ucla.edu /anthro/faculty/fiske/facets/ugly_duckling_95.htm   (13419 words)

Metapsychology Online Book Reviews - Natural Kinds and Conceptual Change   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-08) After such a ceremony, our natural kind terms refer, but we don't quite know what it is they refer to until scientific investigation uncovers the essence of the natural kind (the essence is usually supposed to be its microstructure: its atomic weight, or chemical composition or genetic code). Since natural kind terms were supposed to refer to precisely the same entities before and after the revolution, they ensure that incommensurability is, at most, partial. Naturally, this view requires that we be able to distinguish meaning change from theory change. mentalhelp.net /books/books.php?type=de&id=2069   (1728 words)

Stephen P. Norris / BACHELORS, BUCKYBALLS, AND GANDERS: SEEKING ANALOGUES FOR DEFINITIONS OF "CRITICAL THINKER" As the final option, it is possible that “thinker” is a strict natural kind, as Churchland has postulated, but that “critical thinker” refers to a negotiated division within that kind, much like “gander” refers to a negotiated division of geese. If “critical thinker” is a non-strict natural kind term of this sort, then there will be properties associated with “critical thinker” that are negotiable according to value orientations, but an underlying trait that is the task of empirical educational research to discover. If “critical thinker” is a non-strict natural kind term, then the framers of critical thinking theories should play an active role in specifying what would count as evidence for or against those theories. www.ed.uiuc.edu /EPS/PES-yearbook/92_docs/Norris.HTM   (4047 words)

Ciceronian Review: No Kind of Kind Natural kinds do, and it is natural kinds which I think is doing the important work. Natural kinds fail if there are not clear answers to the boundaries of kinds. As of yet, I don't think any philosopher has come up with an adequate characterization of what a "natural kind" is. It remains one of those "I know it when I see it" sorts of concepts. ciceronianreview.typepad.com /ciceronian_review/2005/03/no_kind_of_kind.html   (301 words)

Review of Dickie, Art and Value On cultural theories, art is “a collective invention of human beings and not something that an artist produces simply out of his or her biological nature as a spider does a web” (10). While for natural kinds the underlying properties are micro-structural, for cultural-kind terms like “bachelor” and “art” the underlying properties form a cultural structure: they are “a small part of a larger reality that is constituted by webs of relations that are or would be instituted by a society of persons” (22). Dickie extends the analogy the histories of the discoveries of natural and cultural kinds: the word “gold’ stands to scientists’ investigations as the word “art” stands to cultural anthropologists’ investigations. www.aesthetics-online.org /ideas/adajian.html   (1365 words)

What is the Philosophy of Science   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-08) The kind of reductionism Fodor is concerned with is “psychological reductionism”, which is the doctrine that every psychological natural kind is coextensive with a neurological kind. Fodor’s main point is that natural kind predicates might be multiply realizable on the physical level. But we cannot reduce the natural kind predicates, and thus we cannot reduce the vocabulary of one science to another. www.u.arizona.edu /~mmueller/PhilScienceFodorReductionismSpring2005.htm   (1012 words)

Notes for Brian McLaughlin and Michael Tye, "Is Content-Externalism Compatible with Privileged Access?" The kind of supervenience that is purported to fail is so-called weak supervenience. As we noted earlier, introspective knowledge is a kind of a priori knowledge in the sense that the knower’s warrant or entitlement for belief is independent of evidence provided by sense experience or perceptual belief. The notion it invokes is that of a concept that aims to denote a natural kind, whether or not the concept succeeds. www.utexas.edu /cola/depts/philosophy/faculty/tye/ANotes.html   (1854 words)

Vegetarian Times: Color me kind - using natural and cruelty-free cosmetics and hair-care products While natural food stores may lack the glamour of department stores or the variety of a drugstore, they sell more of what you're looking for: REAL beauty. As the idea of cruelty-free, natural beauty caught on with consumers, the cosmetics industry began to notice the marketing benefits of labels proclaiming products "natural" and "cruelty-free." The problem is that these words have been misused, rendering them virtually meaningless to the consumer. Natural cosmetics companies cater to skeptical consumers by eliminating artificial colors, fragrances, chemicals, common skin irritants (talc) and comedogenic ingredients (mineral oil). www.findarticles.com /p/articles/mi_m0820/is_n238/ai_19684400   (1352 words)

Cafe Gives Organic Experience   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-08) McFoster's Natural Kind Cafe on 38th and Farnam streets may not be your kind of restaurant. I was impressed with the food at the Natural Kind Cafe. The Natural Kind Cafe is a great change of pace for students who find themselves trapped in the Perkins-Applebee's-Chili's rut every weekend. www.creighton.edu /~apatch/reviews3.html   (545 words)

Definition of natural - Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary man> b : living in or as if in a state of nature untouched by the influences of civilization and society implies lacking artificiality and self-consciousness and having a spontaneousness suggesting the natural rather than the man-made world natural manner>. suggests a naturalness resulting from unawareness of the effect one is producing on others . www.m-w.com /cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=natural   (565 words)

Monist, The: Is `natural kind' a natural kind term?(The Philosophy of Biology) Monist, The: Is `natural kind' a natural kind term?(The Philosophy of Biology) The traditional home for the concept of a natural kind in biology is of course taxonomy, the sorting of organisms into a nested hierarchy of kinds. But at any rate if the species, genera and so on of biological taxonomy are kinds at all, there are various respects in which they fall short of the traditional requirements of... www.findarticles.com /p/articles/mi_hb1364/is_200201/ai_n5536766   (295 words)

Jean Nicod Online Papers: Concepts are Not a Natural Kind In cognitive psychology, concepts are those data structures that are stored in long-term memory and are used by default in human beings’ higher cognitive processes (categorization, inductive and deductive reasoning ). It is argued that a growing body of evidence suggests that concepts do not constitute a natural kind. Hence, the notion of concept is inappropriate to carve human beings’ mental representations at their joints, if one aims at formulating scientifically relevant inductive generalizations about the human mind. jeannicod.ccsd.cnrs.fr /documents/disk0/00/00/05/34   (156 words)

All-natural, delicious snacks and easy-to-prepare foods from around the world. All-natural, delicious snacks and easy-to-prepare foods from around the world. We are donating 100% of our profits from the sale of BALI SPICE to American Red Cross, Unicef or Oxfam for the duration of Year 2005. Our ventures give back by providing 5% of our profits to groups fostering peace, or by mobilizing people to work together who are traditionally embattled. www.peaceworks.com   (70 words)

Natural Baby Shampoo | All Natural Baby | Baby Shower Gifts   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-08) All Natural Baby offers you a fine selection of truly natural baby care, family, skin, hair and household cleaning products that are chemical-free and toxin-free. At All Natural Baby we believe life is to be cherished in joy, love and great health. By making 100% natural products a part of your everyday routine, you make a conscious choice to avoid many of the potentially dangerous chemicals commonly found in ordinary baby care and household cleaning products. www.allnaturalbaby.biz   (604 words)

Oxford Scholarship Online: Beyond Rigidity Appealing again to his new understanding of the relationship between meaning and information asserted and conveyed, Soames attempts to reconcile the central semantic doctrines of Millianism and Russellianism with Fregean intuitions about the information carried by belief and other propositional attitude ascriptions. Finally, Soames investigates the relationship between proper names and natural kind terms, including mass nouns, count nouns, and adjectives functioning as predicates. Finally, Soames uses key elements of Kripke's discussion to construct an alternative explanation of the necessary a posteriori character of these sentences that is based on the nondescriptionality of simple natural kind predicates, and the manner in which their meaning and reference is determined. www.oxfordscholarship.com /oso/public/content/philosophy/0195145283/toc.html   (357 words)

1 Of A Kind   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-08) Note: Care has been taken but some oxidation has inevitably taken place on some of the meteorites (i.e., some of the meteorites have started to rust). This is a natural occurrence caused by the meteorites, which are mostly iron, interacting with the oxygen in the atmosphere. The extent of the oxidation is identified on the individual meteorite pages. www.1ofakind.com   (121 words)

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