This project surveys biochemical practice and sets the record straight regarding which parts of protein classification are pluralist. Assuming an approach that attempts to draw metaphysical conclusions by analyzing how multifaceted practices of science work, I tie the results of my survey of protein classification practices to the debate over natural kinds. I address which classificatory practice is likely to pick out a natural kind. I defend the thesis that dynamics is a fundamental description of proteins as kinds. This view is widely held in biochemistry but is absent from philosophical literature on biochemical kinds. / Master of Arts / This project surveys biochemical practice and sets the record straight regarding which parts of protein classification are pluralist. Assuming an approach that attempts to draw metaphysical conclusions by analyzing how multifaceted practices of science work, I tie the results of my survey of protein classification practices to the debate over natural kinds. I address which classificatory practice is likely to pick out a natural kind. I defend the thesis that dynamics is a fundamental description of proteins as kinds. This view is widely held in biochemistry but is absent from philosophical literature on biochemical kinds.

Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding is considered by many to be the locus classicus of a number of influential arguments for conventionalism, according to which there are no objective, privileged ways of classifying things in the natural world. In the dissertation I argue that Locke never meant to reject natural kinds. Still, the challenge is to explain how, within a metaphysics that explicitly denies mind-independent essences, we can make sense of a privileged, objective sorting of substances. I argue that we do so by looking to Locke's conception of God as divine architect of created substances. / Philosophy

Part I investigates the idea that kinds (as opposed to individuals) have some modal properties. I argue that concerning typical kind-essentialist claims there is a non-trivial question—the transworld identity problem—about what the relevant kind terms are supposed to refer to in non-actual possible worlds. I reject several ideas for solving the problem. The upshot is a worry about the coherence of modal talk concerning kinds. Waiving this worry for the sake of argument, in Part II the target is the use of modal talk in the sciences. I offer a deflationary account of modalities, based on the familiar idea of reducing modalities to logical relationships between non-modal statements and non-modal background theories. I argue that this account is adequate for making sense of modal talk in the sciences. Moreover, I argue that irreducible modal properties of the world, if there are any, cannot be scientifically discovered or inferred. Thus we have a number of arguments against modalities: the threat of incoherence, their epistemic inaccessibility, and the dispensability of modal talk in the sciences.

Part I investigates the idea that kinds (as opposed to individuals) have some modal properties. I argue that concerning typical kind-essentialist claims there is a non-trivial question—the transworld identity problem—about what the relevant kind terms are supposed to refer to in non-actual possible worlds. I reject several ideas for solving the problem. The upshot is a worry about the coherence of modal talk concerning kinds. Waiving this worry for the sake of argument, in Part II the target is the use of modal talk in the sciences. I offer a deflationary account of modalities, based on the familiar idea of reducing modalities to logical relationships between non-modal statements and non-modal background theories. I argue that this account is adequate for making sense of modal talk in the sciences. Moreover, I argue that irreducible modal properties of the world, if there are any, cannot be scientifically discovered or inferred. Thus we have a number of arguments against modalities: the threat of incoherence, their epistemic inaccessibility, and the dispensability of modal talk in the sciences.

In the scientific study of the emotions the goal is to find natural kinds. That is, to find categories about which interesting scientific generalizations and predictions can be formed. Core affect is dimensional approach to the emotions which claims that emotions emerge from the more basic psychological processes of valence (pleasant/unpleasant) and arousal (activation/deactivation). Lisa Feldman Barrett (2006b) has recently argued that the discrete emotion approach has failed to find natural kinds and thus should be dismissed as a failed paradigm. She offers core affect as an alternative theory that will better capture natural kinds in emotionally salient phenomena. In this thesis I evaluate Barrett’s claim on the basis of a philosophically robust understanding of natural kinds and a careful assessment of the empirical evidence. I argue that while core affect is not a natural kind, subsets of core affect space may be natural kinds.

The main claim of this thesis is that value-judgments should play a profound role in the construction and evaluation of species classifications. The arguments for this claim will be presented over the course of five chapters. These are divided into two main parts; part one, which consists of the two first chapters, presents an argument for a radical form of species pluralism; part two, which comprises the remaining chapters, discusses the implications of radical species pluralism for the role of values in species classification. The content of the five chapters is as follows. Chapter 1 starts with a discussion of the theoretical assumptions concerning species and natural kinds that form the broad framework within which the arguments of the thesis are placed. The aim of this chapter is to introduce a set of relatively uncontroversial assumptions that frame the rest of the thesis. On the basis of these assumptions, chapter 2 presents an argument for radical species pluralism. The chapter substantiates this argument with a broad range of examples, and compares this position to other forms of species pluralism. Chapter 3 returns to the main interest of the thesis, namely, the role of values in species classification. It introduces the notion of values and presents an argument for the value-ladenness of taxonomy on the basis of the considerations in the first two chapters. It then sketches three important views on values in science in the literature. Chapter 4 argues that the case presented in chapter 3 provides strong support for one of these views, called the ‘Aims View’, and against two other prominent views, called the ‘Epistemic Priority View’ and the ‘Value-Free Ideal’. The resulting view, in line with the Aims View, is that value-judgments should play a particularly substantial role in species classification. Chapter 5 then considers the popular assumption that these value-judgments in taxonomy commonly take the shape of generally accepted classificatory norms, and argues that this assumption is not tenable. Finally, a brief concluding chapter points at some implications of the claims and arguments in this thesis.

Throughout his career, Husserl characterizes the philosophical program he calls “phenomenology” as a “science of essences” (Ideas I, Introduction). But there are two distinct senses in which phenomenology is a science of essences. The first is that phenomenology has the essences of conscious acts for its subject matter. The second is that phenomenology is supposed to constitute a methodology for determining the essence of any natural kind. While the first sense has been a central theme in Husserl scholarship, very little critical analysis has been devoted to the second. My aim in this dissertation is to fill this lacuna by providing a systematic account of how phenomenology can be used to acquire knowledge of the essences of natural kinds. In doing so I hope to show that Husserl’s phenomenology is valuable to the contemporary metaphysics and epistemology of natural kinds. My primary thesis is that the phenomenological method can be used to defend the controversial position that natural kinds have mind-independent essences. In Chapter 1 I develop a general account of natural kinds as universals that impart structure to their instances, i.e., explain their regimentation into their specific parts. In Chapter 2 I attempt to establish the most perspicuous ideology by which to articulate natural kind essentialism, and I draw on Husserl’s realist account of universals to vindicate the intelligibility of the claim that natural kinds themselves, and not their individual instances, can be the subjects of essential truths. In Chapter 3 I raise two fundamental challenges for the account of natural kind essentialism that emerges from the argumentation of the first two chapters, the first concerning the unity of natural kinds and the second concerning the extendibility of their features across possible worlds. In Chapter 4 I base a solution to the first of these challenges on the unity-making role that essence plays in Husserl’s ontology of parts and wholes. In Chapter 5 I defend a novel interpretation of Husserl’s method for acquiring knowledge of essences, and I show how, on my conception, the method enables us to overcome the second challenge to natural kind essentialism. / 2024-03-30T00:00:00Z

This paper challenges the notion that the social sciences require a fundamentally different methodology from the natural sciences due to the interactivity of human kinds. By examining the concept of classificatory looping and its impact on human kinds, the author argues that understanding the causal pathways and utilizing behavioral science can offer reliable generalizations about human kinds. The paper presents examples such as the Buraku of Japan and African Americans to demonstrate how behavioral science can be employed to predict changes in properties of social groups. It posits that the social sciences can operate in a manner similar to the natural sciences by examining generic human tendencies that hold broadly across diverse social contexts. This exploration ultimately supports the unity thesis, emphasizing that social sciences can indeed gain a scientific understanding of human kinds comparable to the knowledge offered by natural sciences. / Master of Arts / This paper explores the idea that social sciences, which study human behavior and societies, can use methods similar to those in natural sciences, which study the natural world. The challenge lies in the fact that human behavior can change based on how people are classified, making it difficult to establish reliable patterns. The author argues that by understanding the reasons behind these changes and applying insights from behavioral science, we can still make valid generalizations about human behavior. Real-life examples, such as the Buraku people of Japan and African Americans, are used to demonstrate how behavioral science can help predict changes in social groups. By focusing on common human tendencies that apply across different social contexts, the paper supports the idea that social sciences can gain valuable insights into human behavior, much like the natural sciences do.

Reference is the relation held to obtain between an expression and what a speaker or thinker intends the expression to represent. Reference is a component of interpretation, the process of giving terms, sentences, and thoughts semantic content. An example of reference in a formal context involves the natural numbers, where each one can be taken to have a corresponding set-theoretic counterpart as its referent. In an informal context reference is exemplified by the relation between a name and the specific name-bearer when a speaker or thinker utters or has the name in mind. Recent debates over reference have concerned the mechanism of reference: How is it that we can refer? In informal contexts, externalists see the reference relation as explicable in terms of the salient causal relations involved in the naming of a thing, or a class of things, and the ensuing causal chains leading to a term’s use. Opponents of this view—internalists—see the reference relation as being conceptually direct, and they take the external approach to rely on untenable metaphysical assumptions about the world’s structure. Moreover, some internalists take the permutability—i.e. the consistent reinterpretation—of certain referential schemes to confound the externalist picture of reference. In this thesis I focus on the reference of theoretical terms in science, and I argue for an externalist treatment of natural kinds and other theoretical elements. Along the way I offer a defense of the externalist’s pre-theoretic metaphysical assumptions and emphasize their central role in the interpretation of scientific languages. The externalist approach acknowledges the necessary constraints on reference-fixing that account for the schemes we employ, and this, I argue, confounds the permutation strategy.

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a debilitating condition that results from the experience of a traumatic event. Natural kinds are mind-independent entities found in nature and are the objects of scientific inquiry. It is common to deny that PTSD is a natural kind, but extant denials assume a thesis of natural kinds that can be called “essentialism”. According to essentialism, many entities are not natural kinds that one would expect should be natural kinds. The homeostatic cluster view of natural kinds offers an alternative that accommodates these cases, including, superficially, the claim that PTSD is a natural kind. I introduce two novel objections to this claim and recommend a distinction aimed to resolve the newly introduced problems.