Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-v2bm5 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-13T10:59:44.889Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Half-Naturalized Social Kinds

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Richard W. Miller
Richard W. Miller*
Affiliation:
Cornell University
*
†Send requests for reprints to the author, Department of Philosophy, Cornell University, 218 Goldwin Smith Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853–3201.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We often legitimately ascribe reality both to social and to natural kinds. But the bases for these ascriptions are not entirely the same. In both cases, reality is typically determined by what characterizations of causal factors are indispensable to adequate explanation. Nonetheless, a psychological role as part of an identity that instances embrace is sometimes, distinctively, a condition for ascribing reality to a social kind. Although such assessments of reality can be construed as employing a standard of causal activity shared with natural science, they reveal a distinctive moral dimension in the bases for ascribing reality to social kinds.

Type
Philosophy of the Social Sciences
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 67 , Issue S3: Supplement. Proceedings of the 1998 Biennial Meetings of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part II: Symposia Papers Sep., 2000 , 2000 , pp. S640 - S652
Copyright
Copyright © 2000 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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

Austin, J. L. (1964), Sense and Sensibilia. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ayers, Michael R. (1981), “Locke versus Aristotle on Natural Kinds”, Journal of Philosophy 78: 247–272.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ayers, Michael R. (1993), Locke: Epistemology and Ontology. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Boyd, Richard N. (1991), “Realism, Anti-foundationalism and the Enthusiasm for Natural Kinds”, Philosophical Studies 61: 127–148.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Du Bois, W. E. B. ([1897] 1996), “The Conservation of Races”, in W. E. B. Dubois, Collected Writings. New York: Library of America, 815–826.Google Scholar
Dupré, John (1993), The Disorder of Things. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hacking, Ian (1986), “Making Up People”, in Heller, Thomas C., Sosna, Morton, and Wellbery, David E. (eds.), Reconstructing Individualism. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 222–236.Google Scholar
Kitcher, Philip (1989), “Explanatory Unification and the Causal Structure of the World”, in Salmon, Wesley and Kitcher, Philip (eds.), Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. XIII. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 410–605.Google Scholar
Locke, John ([1690] 1975), An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Edited by Nidditch, Peter H. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oseo/instance.00018020CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, Richard W. (1987), Fact and Method: Explanation, Confirmation and Reality in the Natural and the Social Sciences. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Putnam, Hilary (1975), “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’ “, in Hilary Putnam, Language, Mind and Reality: Philosophical Papers, vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 215–271.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Root, Michael (1999), “How We Divide the World”, this issue.10.1086/392851CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shoemaker, Sydney (1980), “Causality and Properties”, in Inwagen, Peter van (ed.), Time and Change. Dordrecht: Reidel.Google Scholar
Spelke, Elizabeth S. (1990), “Principles of Object Perception”, Cognitive Science 14: 29–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Starr, Paul (1992), “Social Categories and Claims in the Liberal State”, in Douglas, Mary and Hull, David (eds.), How Classification Works. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press.Google Scholar
Williamson, Joel (1980), New People: Miscegnation and Mulattoes in the United States. Free Press: New York.Google Scholar