'Locke, Natural Kinds, And Essentialism' argues for a minimalist theory of natural kinds. I begin with a historical treatment of Locke's account of natural kinds, which was a conventionalist view. I then build a theory of natural kinds that recognizes a restricted class of natural kinds, while remaining conventionalist in important respects, in the spirit of Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding In Chapter 1, I argue that Locke clearly denies the existence of natural kinds, and I explain how he defends this position. I will also show the connection between Locke's metaphysical position regarding natural kinds, and his descriptive account of the meaning of natural kind terms Chapter 2 consists of several attempts to build a realist account of natural kinds within a Lockean framework. They are all unsuccessful, but I hope the endeavor can show why a natural kind realist may be driven toward some form of essentialism in order to defend natural kind realism In Chapter 3, I develop my minimalist theory of natural kinds. I argue that natural kinds may be found among the fundamental entities of the world, if there are any, but nowhere else The project of Chapter 4 is to examine one of the major contemporary motivations for natural kind realism: the attempt to extend the theory of direct reference for proper names to natural kind terms. I argue that this cannot be done within a respectable and well-motivated metaphysics of natural kinds, such as the one I defend / acase@tulane.edu
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TULANE/oai:http://digitallibrary.tulane.edu/:tulane_25243 |
| Date | January 1999 |
| Contributors | Crane, Judith Kathryn (Author), Forbes, Graeme (Thesis advisor) |
| Publisher | Tulane University |
| Source Sets | Tulane University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | Access requires a license to the Dissertations and Theses (ProQuest) database., Copyright is in accordance with U.S. Copyright law |
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