Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-29T18:02:44.019Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Hegel and Arguments for Natural Kind Essentialism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 March 2018

Franz Knappik
Franz Knappik*
Affiliation:
University of Bergen, [email protected]
Get access

Abstract

Natural Kind Essentialism (NKE) is the view that the objects of sciences like physics, chemistry and biology fall into natural kinds, and that such kinds have essences—sets of properties possession of which is necessary and sufficient for kind-membership. Since Putnam and Kripke brought NKE back onto the philosophical agenda, it has found many advocates. But comparatively little attention has been paid to the question of how this view can be positively motivated. After illustrating the current need for an argument for NKE through critical discussions of Putnam’s, Kripke’s and Ellis’s arguments for NKE, this article aims to show that Hegel offers the resources for an original argument for the view. This argument works by deriving metaphysical implications from an account of what it means to understand an explanandum.

Type
Research Article
Information
Hegel Bulletin , Volume 42 , Issue 3 , December 2021 , pp. 368 - 394
Check for updates
Copyright
© The Hegel Society of Great Britain 2018

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Armstrong, D. (1983), What Is a Law of Nature?. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Beebee, H. (2013), ‘How to Carve Across the Joints in Nature without Abandoning Kripke-Putnam Semantics’, in S. Mumford and M. Tugby (eds.), Metaphysics and Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bird, A. (2005), ‘The Dispositionalist Conception of Laws’, Foundations of Science 10: 353–370.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowman, B. (2013), Hegel and the Metaphysics of Absolute Negativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brandom, R. (2009), Reason in Philosophy. Animating Ideas. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cacchione, T., et al. (2016), ‘Are Apes Essentialists? Scope and Limits of Psychological Essentialism in Great Apes’, Animal Cognition 19: 921–937.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Charles, D. (2000), Aristotle on Meaning and Essence. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Charles, D. (2010), ‘Definition and Explanation in the Posterior Analytics and Metaphysics’, in D. Charles (ed.), Definition in Greek Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Devitt, M. (2008), ‘Resurrecting Biological Essentialism’, Philosophy of Science 75: 344–382.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
deVries, W. (1991), ‘The Dialectic of Teleology’, Philosophical Topics 19: 51–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellis, B. (2001), Scientific Essentialism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ellis, B. (2002), The Philosophy of Nature. A Guide to the New Essentialism. Chesham: Acumen.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldman, A. (1979), ‘What Is Justified Belief?’, in G. Pappas (ed.), Justification and Knowledge. Dordrecht: Reidel.Google Scholar
Hempel, C. (1965), Aspects of Scientific Explanation and Other Essays in the Philosophy of Science. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Hendry, R. F. (2006), ‘Elements, Compounds and Other Chemical Kinds’, Philosophy of Science 73: 864–875.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Khalidi, M. A. (2013), Natural Categories and Human Kinds. Classification in the Natural and Social Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kitcher, P. (1989), ‘Explanatory Unification and the Causal Structure of the World’, in P. Kitcher and W. Salmon (eds.), Scientific Explanation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Knappik, F. (2011), ‘Idealismus als Metaphysik der Freiheit: Hegel und Brandom’, International Yearbook of German Idealism 9: 215–244.Google Scholar
Knappik, F. (2013a), Im Reich der Freiheit. Hegels Theorie autonomer Vernunft. Berlin: de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knappik, F. (2013b), ‘Hegel on Consciousness, Self-Consciousness and Idealism’, International Yearbook of German Idealism 11: 215–244.Google Scholar
Knappik, F. (2016a), ‘Hegel’s Essentialism: Natural Kinds and the Metaphysics of Explanation in Hegel’s Theory of “the Concept”’, European Journal of Philosophy 24: 760–787.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knappik, F. (2016b), ‘And Yet He is a Monist: Comments on James Kreines, Reason in the World’, Hegel Bulletin, first view, doi: 10.1017/hgl.2016.30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kreines, J. (2006), ‘Hegel’s Metaphysics: Changing the Debate’, Philosophy Compass 1: 466–480.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kreines, J. (2015), Reason in the World. Hegel’s Metaphysics and its Philosophical Appeal . Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kripke, S. (1980), Naming and Necessity. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
LaPorte, J. (2004), Natural Kinds and Conceptual Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Leslie, S.-J. (2013), ‘Essence and Natural Kinds: When Science Meets Preschooler Intuition’, in T. S. Gendler and J. Hawthorne (eds.), Oxford Studies in Epistemology vol. 4. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lewis, D. (1973), Counterfactuals. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Lloyd, A. (1962), ‘Genus, Species and Ordered Series in Aristotle’, Phronesis 7: 67–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maudlin, T. (2007), The Metaphysics Within Physics. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mayr, E. (1982), The Growth of Biological Thought. Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance. Cambridge MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
McDowell, J. (1996), Mind and World. With a New Introduction. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Meyer, M., et al. (2013), ‘Essentialist Beliefs about Body Transplants in the United States and India’, Cognitive Science 37: 668–710.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Putnam, H. (1975), ‘The Meaning of “Meaning”’, Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science 7: 131–193.Google Scholar
Salmon, N. (1982), Reference and Essence. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Salmon, W. (1984), Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Stern, R. (1990), Hegel, Kant and the Structure of the Object. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Stern, R. (2009), Hegelian Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stern, R. (2016), ‘Kreines on the Problem of Metaphysics in Kant and Hegel’, Hegel Bulletin, first view, doi: 10.1017/hgl.2016.29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tobin, E. M. (2010), ‘Crosscutting Natural Kinds and the Hierarchy Thesis’, in H. Beebee (ed.), The Semantics and Metaphysics of Natural Kinds. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Walsh, D. (2006), ‘Evolutionary Essentialism’, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 57: 425–488.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Westphal, K. (1989), Hegel’s Epistemological Realism. A Study of the Aim and Method of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. Dordrecht: Kluwer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar