Indigenous and Scientific Kinds

Ludwig, David

doi:10.1093/bjps/axv031

Cited by 26 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 50 publications

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“…More recently, human epistemic practices behind each natural kind have been put centre-stage by Kendig (2016a) in what she calls 'kinding' processes, and by Reydon (2016), who refers to the 'co-creation' of categories by merging empirical properties with human cognition. Ludwig's practice-dependent kinds have further strengthened this approach by looking at examples in ethnobotany and ethnozoology (see Ludwig 2017, and Ludwig and Weiskopf 2019. And Bursten's work on kinds in nanotechnology (2016, 2018, 2020a) has offered further material for reflecting on what natural kinds really are.…”

Section: Neurath's Boat and The Inferentialist Turnmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perspectival Realism

Massimi¹

2022

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What does it mean to be a realist about science if one takes seriously the view that scientific knowledge is always perspectival, namely historically and culturally situated? In Perspectival Realism, Michela Massimi articulates an original answer to this question. The result is a philosophical view that goes under the name of ‘perspectival realism’ and it offers a new lens for thinking about scientific knowledge, realism, and pluralism in science. Perspectival Realism begins with an exploration of how epistemic communities often resort to several models and a plurality of practices in some areas of inquiry, drawing on examples from nuclear physics, climate science, and developmental psychology. Taking this plurality in science as a starting point, Massimi explains the perspectival nature of scientific representation, the role of scientific models as inferential blueprints, and the variety of realism that naturally accompanies such a view. Perspectival realism is realism about phenomena (rather than about theories or unobservable entities). The result of this novel view is a portrait of scientific knowledge as a collaborative inquiry, where the reliability of science is made possible by a plurality of historically and culturally situated scientific perspectives. Along the way, Massimi offers insights into the nature of scientific modelling, scientific knowledge qua modal knowledge, data-to-phenomena inferences, and natural kinds as sortal concepts. Perspectival realism offers a realist view that takes the multicultural roots of science seriously and couples it with cosmopolitan duties about how one ought to think about scientific knowledge and the distribution of benefits gained from scientific advancements.

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Section: Neurath's Boat and The Inferentialist Turnmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perspectival Realism

Massimi¹

2022

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“…Philosophical understandings of the concept of natural kinds and debates about the usefulness of the very concept for understanding scientific classification and conceptual change are still evolving as philosophers of science expand the focus of their inquiry to a number of diverse and interdisciplinary areas of science (see e.g., Bolker, 2013;Brigandt, 2003Brigandt, , 2010Brigandt, , 2012Bursten, 2016;Godman, 2013;Kendig, 2016aKendig, , 2016bLudwig, 2017;Ludwig, 2018;Muszynski & Malaterre, 2020;Ruphy, 2010;Slater, 2015;Slater, 2013;Tabb, 2019;Tsou, 2013;Zachar, 2000). Natural kinds realists have expressed optimism that just so long as the aims of classification in a given scientific domain are broadly epistemic, natural kinds in some form (e.g., HPC, MPC) will be in the offing (e.g., Boyd, 2019;Kendler et al, 2011;Khalidi, 2013), and there may be different epistemically admirable ways of conceptually carving up the world that cross-cut each other (e.g., Khalidi, 2013).…”

Section: Constructed Kindsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Classification, kinds, taxonomic stability and conceptual change

Mattu

Sullivan

2021

Aggression and Violent Behavior

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Scientists represent their world, grouping and organizing phenomena into classes by means of concepts. Philosophers of science have historically been interested in the nature of these concepts, the criteria that inform their application and the nature of the kinds that the concepts individuate. They also have sought to understand whether and how different systems of classification are related and more recently, how investigative practices shape conceptual development and change. Our aim in this paper is to provide a critical overview of some of the key developments in this philosophical literature and identify some interesting issues it raises about the prospects of the so-called "special sciences", including psychiatry, psychology, and the mind-brain sciences more generally, to discover natural kinds. 2. Principles of classification: a brief historical overview 2.1. Conventionalism Human beings impose conceptual order on their world. In the most basic terms, we are born into a world of language users; learning the meanings of words requires the abilities to detect objects having certain properties in the world, to recognize similarities and differences among those objects with respect to those properties and to understand that things that others identify using the same name share certain properties in common. We learn these basic rules of classification and assign things that share properties in common to groups having unique names. Common examples of groups include stars, mammals, trees, beliefs and feelings. We learn that stars have the basic properties of being luminous and visible in the night sky and that beliefs are things that humans and some non-human animals have that can be assigned a truth value. Sometimes we place unlike things into the same group-we misclassify

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“…This objection is often raised in the context of debates over ontological pluralism (Dupré, ; Ereshefsky, ; Ludwig, ) However, we should resist it. It is not relevant that there might be a better classificatory scheme available somewhere, since that is true of every scheme we employ, including the ones in our best science.…”

Section: Anthropic Realismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Anthropic Concepts

Weiskopf

2018

Nous

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Natural kind concepts have the function of tracking categories that exist independently of our beliefs and purposes. But not all ways of tracking categories in the natural world involve conceiving of them as natural kinds. Anthropic concepts represent groups of natural, mind-independent entities that are apt for serving various human interests, goals, and projects. They represent the natural world under a practical mode of presentation, as a set of material resources that can be transformed to further a host of functions and ends. I argue that cross-cultural studies of traditional ecological knowledge provide evidence that many chemical, mineral, and biological concepts that are frequently taken to be natural kind concepts turn out on closer inspection to be anthropic concepts. Anthropic concepts are distinguished from artifact concepts, and a form of realism about the anthropic kinds that they refer to is defended.

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Indigenous and Scientific Kinds

Cited by 26 publications

References 50 publications

Perspectival Realism

Perspectival Realism

Classification, kinds, taxonomic stability and conceptual change

Anthropic Concepts

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