Locke, Natural Kinds, and Essentialism
Dissertation, Tulane University (
1999)
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Abstract
"Locke, Natural Kinds, And Essentialism" argues for a minimalist theory of natural kinds. I begin with a historical treatment of Locke's account of natural kinds, which was a conventionalist view. I then build a theory of natural kinds that recognizes a restricted class of natural kinds, while remaining conventionalist in important respects, in the spirit of Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding. ;In Chapter 1, I argue that Locke clearly denies the existence of natural kinds, and I explain how he defends this position. I will also show the connection between Locke's metaphysical position regarding natural kinds, and his descriptive account of the meaning of natural kind terms. ;Chapter 2 consists of several attempts to build a realist account of natural kinds within a Lockean framework. They are all unsuccessful, but I hope the endeavor can show why a natural kind realist may be driven toward some form of essentialism in order to defend natural kind realism. ;In Chapter 3, I develop my minimalist theory of natural kinds. I argue that natural kinds may be found among the fundamental entities of the world, if there are any, but nowhere else. ;The project of Chapter 4 is to examine one of the major contemporary motivations for natural kind realism: the attempt to extend the theory of direct reference for proper names to natural kind terms. I argue that this cannot be done within a respectable and well-motivated metaphysics of natural kinds, such as the one I defend