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Full Idea
To say that a class is natural is to say that when some of its members are shown to people they pick out others without hesitation and in agreement.
Gist of Idea
A class is natural when everybody can spot further members of it
Source
Anthony Quinton (The Nature of Things [1973], 9 'Nat')
Book Ref
Quinton,Anthony: 'The Nature of Things' [RKP 1973], p.264
A Reaction
He concedes a number of problems with his view, but I admire his attempt to at least begin to distinguish the natural (real!) classes from the ersatz ones. A mention of causal powers would greatly improve his story.
| 8625 | What physical facts could underlie 0 or 1, or very large numbers? [Frege on Mill] |
| 8469 | Russell's proposal was that only meaningful predicates have sets as their extensions [Russell, by Orenstein] |
| 21693 | Russell's antinomy challenged the idea that any condition can produce a set [Quine] |
| 9406 | A class is natural when everybody can spot further members of it [Quinton] |
| 9984 | We can have a series with identical members [Tait] |
| 17837 | Zermelo allows ur-elements, to enable the widespread application of set-theory [Hallett,M] |
| 8755 | Maddy replaces pure sets with just objects and perceived sets of objects [Maddy, by Shapiro] |
| 17824 | The master science is physical objects divided into sets [Maddy] |
| 9571 | ZFU refers to the physical world, when it talks of 'urelements' [Chihara] |
| 9642 | A flock of birds is not a set, because a set cannot go anywhere [Brown,JR] |