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Full Idea
One could be an essentialist about natural kinds (of tigers, or water) while holding that every actual instance or sample of a natural kind is only accidentally an instance or a sample of that kind.
Gist of Idea
Maybe the identity of kinds is necessary, but instances being of that kind is not
Source
Penelope Mackie (How Things Might Have Been [2006], 10.2)
Book Ref
Mackie,Penelope: 'How Things Might Have Been' [OUP 2006], p.173
A Reaction
You wonder, then, in what the necessity of the kind consists, if it is not rooted in the instances, and presumably it could only result from a stipulative definition, and hence be conventional.
| 12375 | Whatever holds of a kind intrinsically holds of it necessarily [Aristotle] |
| 5446 | For essentialists two members of a natural kind must be identical [Ellis] |
| 5480 | The whole of our world is a natural kind, so all worlds like it necessarily have the same laws [Ellis] |
| 17053 | Gold's atomic number might not be 79, but if it is, could non-79 stuff be gold? [Kripke] |
| 4964 | 'Cats are animals' has turned out to be a necessary truth [Kripke] |
| 15292 | We can base the idea of a natural kind on the mechanisms that produce natural necessity [Harré/Madden] |
| 11907 | Maybe the identity of kinds is necessary, but instances being of that kind is not [Mackie,P] |