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    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Scientific explanations of inductive projectibility and causal laws systematically depend on kind membership, as Quine and Boyd independently argued.

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.Physics operates successfully with mathematical functions and dispositions, not kind membership; kinds may be explanatory conveniences, not necessities.
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    • 2.The distinction between 'natural' and 'artificial' kinds remains philosophically contested; claiming systematic dependence on unclear concepts is premature.
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    • 3.Many successful inductions ignore kind membership entirely (predictive models in ML, statistical regularities without categorical structure).
      ?

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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.Natural kind categories (gold, water, tigers) carve nature at joints, enabling reliable inductive generalizations across instances.
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    • 2.Causal laws require stable, objective properties; arbitrary classifications cannot ground genuine causal regularities or projectible predicates.
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    • 3.Quine's indeterminacy and Boyd's homeostatic property clusters both explain why some predicates succeed inductively while others systematically fail.
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