Transient or non-universal features of a kind cannot cons... — Carmelics

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Transient or non-universal features of a kind cannot constitute the essence of that kind.

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1.To know what a human being is, one must identify what makes a human being human, not features that are transient or fail to hold universally.
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2.Aristotle's favored locution 'to ti ên einai' asks what it was for an instance of kind K to be an instance of kind K, presupposing a deep, non-transient answer.
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Reasons Against

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1.Biological species are constituted by population-level statistical norms rather than necessary and universal properties shared by all members.
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2.Post-Darwinian essentialism (Sober, Hull) shows that evolutionary taxa lack intrinsic essences, yet species remain real, explanatory kinds.
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3.If natural kinds can be genuine without universal essences, transient or variable features may still ground kind membership.
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