display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
1 idea
10398 | Natural kinds are not special; they are just well-defined resemblance collections [Abelard, by King,P] |
Full Idea: In Abelard's view a natural kind is a well-defined collection of things that have the same features, so that natural kinds have no special status, being no more than discrete integral wholes whose principle of membership is similarity. | |
From: report of Peter Abelard (works [1135]) by Peter King - Peter Abelard 2 | |
A reaction: I take a natural kind to be a completely stable and invariant class of things. Presumably this invariance has an underlying explanation, but Abelard seems to take the Humean line that we cannot penetrate beyond the experienced surface. |