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Oddělení analytické filosofie Filosofického ústavu AV ČR
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uvádí
Brice Bantegnie (FLÚ AV ČR)
ENDING THE TRADITION
OF NATURAL KINDS
Ian Hacking has written about a tradition of natural kinds, stretching back to Whewell and Mill
(Hacking 1991). This tradition is still with us today. In addition to providing new accounts of
what natural kinds are (Magnus 2012, Khalidi 2013, Ereshefsky and Reydon 2015, FranklinHall
2015, Slater 2015), contemporary philosophers of science have also examined the question
of whether ecosystems (Slater 2018), emotions (Griffiths 2004), planets (Bokulich 2014),
proteins (Bartols 2016), and genders, among other things, are natural kinds. In more recent
work, Hacking has expressed his skepticism about this tradition (Hacking 2007) and David
Ludwig has recently joined him in the skeptic camp (Ludwig 2018). In this talk I will also argue
that this tradition of natural kind should end. Contrary to Hacking I don't think that the problem
is with the "slew of distinct analyses directed at unrelated projects". Neither do I think, as
Ludwig does, that a pluralistic framework should be preferred and that such a framework 'does
not leave any substantial work for the notion "natural kind"'. Instead, I take it that the problem
comes from the very project that philosophers of science have set themselves in trying to
elaborate a theory of natural kinds. In this talk, I aim at showing that this is the case.
čtvrtek 11. 6. 2020, 13:30
Akademické konferenční centrum, Jilská 1, Praha 1
(Zoom link: https://cesnet.zoom.us/j/92017157799)