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11907 | Maybe the identity of kinds is necessary, but instances being of that kind is not [Mackie,P] |
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. | |
From: Penelope Mackie (How Things Might Have Been [2006], 10.2) | |
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. |