Defending Intrinsic Biological Essentialism

Devitt, Michael

doi:10.1086/710029

Cited by 10 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…In a series of recent papers Michael Devitt has argued, against this historical account, that biological taxa have intrinsic "essences" in the form of shared genetic material and associated developmental mechanisms (Devitt, 2008(Devitt, , 2010(Devitt, , 2018(Devitt, , 2021. However, while Devitt's genomic developmental programmes can explain why a taxon's shared properties arise within each member, they don't satisfactorily explain why the properties are correlated across the taxon members.…”

Section: Functional and Historical Kindsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Swampman, teleosemantics and kind essences

Papineau

2022

Synthese

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One powerful and influential approach to mental representation analyses representation in terms of biological functions, and biological functions in terms of histories of natural selection. This “teleosemantic” package, however, faces a familiar challenge. Surely representation depends only on the present-day structures of cognitive systems, and not on their historical provenance. “Swampman” drives the point home. Suppose a bolt of lightning creates an intrinsic duplicate of a human being in a steamy tropic swamp; will not this creature be representing its surroundings, despite its lack of any selectional history? In this paper I shall answer this challenge by showing how a proper appreciation of the structure of natural kinds in general, and of mental representation in particular, implies that selectional histories are indeed built into the nature of mental representation. In particular, I shall address a recent argument by Peter Schulte against this general line of argument.

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Section: Functional and Historical Kindsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Swampman, teleosemantics and kind essences

Papineau

2022

Synthese

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“…But the debate about essentialism is hardly settled. In recent years, various authors have defended biological natural kind essentialism (Austin 2019;Devitt 2021), argued that essentialism about natural kinds is established by science and semantics (Nimtz 2021), and suggested that the homeostatic property cluster view (Taylor's preferred alternative to essentialism) is compatible with essentialism (Bird 2018). What is more, French and Phillips (Phillips 2018b;French and Phillips forthcoming) have recently argued that perception should be considered a manifest kind as opposed to scientific kind (see Sect.…”

Section: Is It Really Perception?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Seeing colours unconsciously

Zięba

2022

Synthese

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According to unconscious perception hypothesis (UP), mental states of the same fundamental kind as ordinary conscious seeing can occur unconsciously. The proponents of UP often support it with empirical evidence for a more specific hypothesis, according to which colours can be seen unconsciously (UPC). However, UPC is a general claim that admits of many interpretations. The main aim of this paper is to determine which of them is the most plausible. To this end, I investigate how adopting various conceptions of colour and perceptual phenomenal character affects UPC’s resilience to objections. This brings me to the conclusion that the most plausible reading of UPC is the one according to which the phenomenal character of colour perception (i) is constituted by colours qua primitive mind-independent qualities of the environment and (ii) is not essentially tied to consciousness. My conclusion not only identifies the most plausible interpretation of UPC, but also highlights and supports an unorthodox version of the relational theory of perception, which is a perfectly viable yet so far overlooked stance in the debate about unconscious perception.

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“… 2 As argued persuasively by Godman et al ( 2020 ) and Godman and Papineau ( 2020 ), however this is controversial (cf. Devitt, 2008 , 2021 ). …”

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confidence: 99%

Reactive natural kinds and varieties of dependence

Fagerberg

2022

Euro Jnl Phil Sci

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This paper asks when a natural disease kind is truly ‘reactive’ and when it is merely associated with a corresponding social kind. I begin with a permissive account of real kinds and their structure, distinguishing natural kinds, indifferent kinds and reactive kinds as varieties of real kind characterised by super-explanatory properties. I then situate disease kinds within this framework, arguing that many disease kinds prima facie are both natural and reactive. I proceed to distinguish ‘simple dependence’, ‘secondary dependence’ and ‘essential dependence’ between a natural kind and its classification, and argue that a natural kind is only really reactive, in an important sense, under conditions of essential dependence. On this basis, I offer a principled hypothesis for why psychiatric kinds may be more metaphysically unstable than paradigm somatic disease kinds.

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Defending Intrinsic Biological Essentialism

Cited by 10 publications

References 31 publications

Swampman, teleosemantics and kind essences

Swampman, teleosemantics and kind essences

Seeing colours unconsciously

Reactive natural kinds and varieties of dependence

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