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    John Dupré's promiscuous realism and David Hull's process... — Carmelics
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    Supports→Species are not natural kinds, or the view that kindhood is fixed by intrinsic properties must be revised

    John Dupré's promiscuous realism and David Hull's process ontology demonstrate that biological species lack the homeostatic property clusters Boyd requires for natural kind membership.

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    Key Terms

    David Hull(as a philosopher referenced in a debate about biological classification)
    A philosopher of biology who examined how biologists actually define and use concepts like 'species' in their work.
    Homeostatic property clusters(as criteria proposed by Boyd for what counts as a natural kind)
    A group of related features that tend to occur together and maintain themselves—like how the properties that make something 'water' (H2O molecules, liquid at room temperature, etc.) cluster together and reinforce each other.
    John Dupré(the philosopher whose theory is referenced)
    A contemporary philosopher of biology who challenges the idea that species and other natural groups have fixed, unchanging essences.
    Ontology(Carnap argues this enterprise is based on a mistake)
    The philosophical discipline that tries to answer hard questions about what there really is.

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    Richard Boyd(as a key figure in Cornell Realism)
    A Cornell philosopher who developed the theory that words like 'good' refer to actual natural properties in the world that help humans live well, rather than being defined by their descriptions.
    natural kind(Used to argue that schizophrenia fails to qualify because it is a heterogeneous conjunction of distinct pathologies, not a unified entity)
    A category that carves nature at its joints — a real, unified class of phenomena sharing a common underlying nature or pathology
    process ontology(Proposed as an alternative to particle and field interpretations of QFT)
    An ontological approach to QFT that takes processes rather than particles or fields as the fundamental entities
    promiscuous realism(Dupré 1996)
    The view that as knowledge grows and practical interests shift, classifications can multiply and even cross-classify the same kinds, and this is acceptable so long as the kinds do the predictive or explanatory work intended for them in the context intended

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    Truth & Knowledge1 linkedModality & Possibility1 linked

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