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    Phenotypic properties cannot ground species membership as... — Carmelics
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    Home/Philosophy of Language
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    Phenotypic properties cannot ground species membership as a natural kind.

    Modality & Possibility
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Evolutionary change may eliminate phenotypic properties shared by members of a species without a new species arising.
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    • 2.A property that can be lost without triggering speciation cannot be a necessary condition for species membership.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
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    • 1.Homeostatic property clusters (Boyd 1999) ground natural kinds via stable, causally sustained phenotypic co-occurrences, not necessary conditions.
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    • 2.If species membership requires no single essential property but a weighted cluster of phenotypic traits, losing one property need not dissolve kind membership.
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    • 3.Boyd's HPC account is explicitly designed to accommodate within-kind variation while preserving the explanatory and inductive role of natural kinds.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Phenotypic similarity grounds successful inductive and explanatory practice in taxonomy, which is a defeasible criterion for natural kind status (Quine, Goodman).
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    • 2.The argument from evolutionary change conflates diachronic instability with synchronic failure to demarcate kinds, which are distinct epistemic problems.
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    Topics

    Philosophy of LanguageModality & Possibility

    Related

    A property that can be lost without triggering speciation cannot be a necessary ...Boyd's HPC account is explicitly designed to accommodate within-kind variation w...Evolutionary change may eliminate phenotypic properties shared by members of a s...Homeostatic property clusters (Boyd 1999) ground natural kinds via stable, causa...
    +3 moreShow less
    If species membership requires no single essential property but a weighted clust...Phenotypic similarity grounds successful inductive and explanatory practice in t...The argument from evolutionary change conflates diachronic instability with sync...

    Similar

    If a property is necessary and sufficient for membership in a species,...84%A property that can be lost without triggering speciation cannot be a ...84%If species are individuals, then species membership cannot be determin...83%If species are individuals, intrinsic properties cannot individuate th...83%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: natural-kinds
    View source passageHide passage
    The second consequence implies that intrinsic similarity is not necessary for membership of the same species. There exists a high degree of variation in intraspecific morphology and genetic makeup. While members of kinds need not be intrinsically identical (e.g., there may be isotopic variation between samples of a chemical element), there will nonetheless be certain distinctive intrinsic natural properties common to all members of the kind (e.g., nuclear charge in the case of atoms of the same
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit