Monday, July 14, 2025

Natural kinds across categories

Most philosophical discussions of natural kinds concern entities in the category of substance: particles, chemical substances, organisms, etc. But I think we shouldn’t forget that there is good reason to posit natural kinds of entities in other categories.

For instance, you and I are each engaging in a token activity that falls under the natural kind (say) mammalian breathing. The natural kind specifies some essential properties of the kind, namely that it is a kind of filling and/or emptying of the lungs, as well as some teleological features, such as that the filling and emptying should be rhythmic. Instances of the kind may be better or worse: given that I am congested after a long drawn-out cold, likely your breathing is better than mine.

There are, plausibly, such things as natural activities, which fall under activity natural kinds. These may kinds may include gravitational attraction, mating, fish respiration, etc.

Dispositions, too, may fall under natural kinds, indeed a nested sequence of them. We might say that some dispositions are habits, and some habits are virtues. Thus, perhaps, you and I each have a certain disposition to rationally withstand danger, a disposition that is a token of courage, a kind of virtue. Your and my courages are different: for instance, perhaps, I am more willing to withstand social danger while you are more willing to withstand physical danger. Whether indeed virtues are natural kinds seems to me to be a central question for the metaphysics of virtue ethics.

There may be natural kinds of relations, too. Thus, I think marriage is a natural kind. On the other hand, I think presidency is not.

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