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2 ideas
18613 | Artifacts can be natural kinds, when they are the object of historical enquiry [Machery] |
Full Idea: Some artifacts are the objects of inquiry in the social sciences ...such as prehistoric tools ...and hence, artifacts are bona fide natural kinds. | |
From: Edouard Machery (Doing Without Concepts [2009], 8.2.1) | |
A reaction: Presumably if a bird's nest can be a natural kind, then so can a flint axe, but then so can a mobile phone, for an urban anthropologist. 'Natural' is, to put it mildly, a tricky word. |
6613 | The natural kinds are objects, processes and properties/relations [Ellis] |
Full Idea: There are three hierarchies of natural kinds: objects or substances (substantive universals), events or processes (dynamic universals), and properties or relations (tropic universals). | |
From: Brian Ellis (Katzav on limitations of dispositions [2005], 91) | |
A reaction: Most interesting here is the identifying of natural kinds with universals, making universals into the families of nature. Universals are high-level sets of natural kinds. To grasp universals you must see patterns, and infer the underlying order. |