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Stable Property Clusters and Their Grounds

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Eduardo J. Martinez
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Abstract

I argue against Matthew Slater’s rejection of what he calls the grounding claim in his stable property cluster (SPC) account of natural kinds. This claim states that the epistemic value of natural kinds depends on the existence of some ground to bind together a kind’s properties. Using two test cases from academic medicine, I show that grounds are genuinely explanatory of scientific epistemic practices and that the SPC account should not do without them in its philosophical analysis of natural kinds.

Type
Laws and Natural Kinds
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 84 , Issue 5 , December 2017 , pp. 944 - 955
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

Thanks to Annabelle Anandappa, Justin Bzovy, Davis Goodnight, Josh Hunt, Max Lewis, Pierce Randall, Matthew Slater, Naomi Stark, Quayshawn Spencer, Mingjun Zhang, and audiences at the 2016 Philosophy of Science Association Biennial Meeting and the philosophy department of the University of Michigan for helpful comments and discussions.

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