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Carving Nature at the Joints

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Muhammad Ali Khalidi
Muhammad Ali Khalidi*
Affiliation:
Society of Fellows in the Humanities, Columbia University
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Abstract

This paper discusses a philosophical issue in taxonomy. At least one philosopher has suggested the taxonomic principle that scientific kinds are disjoint. An opposing position is defended here by marshalling examples of nondisjoint categories which belong to different, coexisting classification schemes. This denial of the disjointness principle can be recast as the claim that scientific classification is “interest-relative”. But why would anyone have held that scientific categories are disjoint in the first place? It is argued that this assumption is needed in one attempt to derive essentialism. This shows why the essentialist and interest-relative approaches to classification are in conflict.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 60 , Issue 1 , March 1993 , pp. 100 - 113
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1993

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Footnotes

†

For very helpful comments on earlier drafts, I am grateful to Liam Murphy and to Nathan Salmon. I have also benefited from discussing some of these issues with Akeel Bilgrami and Isaac Levi.

‡

Send reprint requests to the author, Society of Fellows in the Humanities, Box 100 Central Mail Room, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027, USA.

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