16935
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If similarity has no degrees, kinds cannot be contained within one another [Quine]
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Full Idea:
If similarity has no degrees there is no containing of kinds within broader kinds. If colored things are a kind, they are similar, but red things are too narrow for a kind. If red things are a kind, colored things are not similar, and it's too broad.
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From:
Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.118)
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A reaction:
[compressed] I'm on Quine's side with this. We glibly talk of 'kinds', but the criteria for sorting things into kinds seems to be a mess. Quine goes on to offer a better account than the (diadic, yes-no) one rejected here.
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16937
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You can't base kinds just on resemblance, because chains of resemblance are a muddle [Quine]
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Full Idea:
If kinds are based on similarity, this has the Imperfect Community problem. Red round, red wooden and round wooden things all resemble one another somehow. There may be nothing outside the set resembling them, so it meets the definition of kind.
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From:
Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.120)
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A reaction:
[ref. to Goodman 'Structure' 2nd 163- , which attacks Carnap on this] This suggests an invocation of Wittgenstein's family resemblance, which won't be much help for natural kinds.
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15093
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We might say laws are necessary by combining causal properties with Armstrong-Dretske-Tooley laws [Shoemaker]
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Full Idea:
One way to get the conclusion that laws are necessary is to combine my view of properties with the view of Armstrong, Dretske and Tooley, that laws are, or assert, relations between properties.
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From:
Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], I)
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A reaction:
This is interesting, because Armstrong in particular wants the necessity to arise from relations between properties as universals, but if we define properties causally, and make them necessary, we might get the same result without universals.
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