Experimental Philosophy versus Natural Kind Essentialism

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Philosophy Now
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Experimental Philosophy versus Natural Kind Essentialism

Post by Philosophy Now »

Mark Pinder puts Hilary Putnam’s essential philosophical theory to the test.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/120/Experimental_Philosophy_versus_Natural_Kind_Essentialism
Person62
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Re: Experimental Philosophy versus Natural Kind Essentialism

Post by Person62 »

What does natural kind essentialism add or clarify in our understanding of nature, e.g., the phase transitions of water do not occur by way of a single molecule? "Nature is a symbiosis, a concerted action", a dynamic network. Our catalogues emphasize static and "eternal" features. But those are best captured in laws of nature, which first define relationships, and then entities.
bluepants77
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Re: Experimental Philosophy versus Natural Kind Essentialism

Post by bluepants77 »

I have to admit to being rather puzzled by Pinder's article, on two fronts. Firstly it is not immediately obvious to me how refuting Putnam's argument that "meanings aren't in the head" is going to undermine natural kinds essentialism. I have tended to understand Putnam as *assuming* natural kinds in his defense of externalist semantics, rather than using semantics to prove the existence of natural kinds (it's not that words mean by referring to things that makes natural kinds real, but that there are natural kinds to refer to that allows meaning to be external). But then, I've never been confident that I've really got Putnam, so I could well be missing something obvious.

On the other front, I'm surprised by Pinder's appeal to "experiment". Firstly, the experiment he cites is only experimental if we are being particularly generous in our use of the term: asking a few people what they think about a rather abstract hypothetical scenario isn't the most rigorous research design (and the results are hard to interpret as being substantively significant, even if somehow p<5), and secondly, plenty of people have long made similar points based on much more nuanced observations without the need to appeal to the magical term "experimental". Those interested in ordinary language philosophy, linguistics, pragmatics, semiotics, hermeneutics, or any other inquiry that actually requires contact with how people use language, have always found Putnam's argument suspect, and there are plenty of good theories of how meaning works that eschew any kind of essentialism, natural kind or otherwise. Given this, I just can't see what a dubious "experiment" really adds to the debate over either the nature of meaning or the nature of natural kinds.
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