The Semantics and Metaphysics of Natural Kinds (eBook, ePUB)

Redaktion: Beebee, Helen; Sabbarton-Leary, Nigel

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

Essentialism--roughly, the view that natural kinds have discrete essences, generating truths that are necessary but knowable only a posteriori--is an increasingly popular view in the metaphysics of science. At the same time, philosophers of language have been subjecting Kripke's views about the existence and scope of the necessary a posteriori to rigorous analysis and criticism. Essentialists typically appeal to Kripkean semantics to motivate their radical extension of the realm of the necessary a posteriori; but they rarely attempt to provide any semantic arguments for this extension, or engage with the critical work being done by philosophers of language. This collection brings authors on both sides together in one volume, thus helping the reader to see the connections between views in philosophy of language on the one hand and the metaphysics of science on the other. The result is a book that will have a significant impact on the debate about essentialism, encouraging essentialists to engage with debates about the semantic presuppositions that underpin their position, and, encouraging philosophers of language to engage with the metaphysical presuppositions enshrined in Kripkean semantics.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Taylor & Francis
• Seitenzahl: 250
• Erscheinungstermin: 5. Mai 2010
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781136975769
• Artikelnr.: 42977987

Autorenporträt

Helen Beebee is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Birmingham, UK. Nigel Sabbarton-Leary is completing his PhD at the University of Birmingham, UK

Inhaltsangabe

Acknowledgments 1: Introduction
Helen Beebee and Nigel Sabbarton-Leary 2: Rigidity
Natural Kind Terms and Metasemantics
Corine Besson 3: General Terms as Designators: A Defence of The View
Genoveva Martí and José Martínez-Fernández 4: Are Natural Kind Terms Special? Åsa Wikforss 5: The Commonalities Between Proper Names and Natural Kind Terms: A Fregean Perspective
Harold Noonan 6: Theoretical Identity Statements
Their Truth
and Their Discovery
Joseph LaPorte 7: Discovering the Essences of Natural Kinds
Alexander Bird 8: The Elements and Conceptual Change
Robin Hendry 9: On the Abuse of the Necessary A Posterior
Helen Beebee and Nigel Sabbarton-Leary 10: Crosscutting Natural Kinds and the Hierarchy Thesis
Emma Tobin 11: From Constitutional Necessities to Causal Necessities
Jessica Wilson 12: Realism
Natural Kinds and Philosophical Methods
Richard Boyd Notes on Contributors Index