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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Van Inwagen's argument against the well-definability of cohesion may be resisted by fixing paradigm cases of non-living complexes and identifying cohesion with whatever bonding holds in those cases.

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

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.Putnam's natural kinds strategy fixes paradigm cases and identifies the kind by whatever underlying nature those cases share.
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    • 2.A similar strategy applied to non-living composites would define the required cohesion as whatever bonding relation holds in paradigm cases of such composites.
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    • 3.There is likely a reasonably tidy scientific account of how atoms bond in such cases.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
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    • 1.Kripke's causal-historical semantics grounds reference in initial baptism events, not prior descriptive criteria, making paradigm-fixing semantically primitive.
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    • 2.If 'water' picks out H2O via paradigm samples without antecedent chemical definitions, 'cohesion' can similarly pick out covalent/ionic bonding via paradigm composites.
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    • 3.The objection that cohesion lacks definitional tidiness proves too much, since it would equally undermine natural kind terms before their underlying science was articulated.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Reflective equilibrium methodology, as deployed by Rawls and extended by Goodman, permits concepts to be refined by iterating between paradigm cases and theoretical principles.
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    • 2.Van Inwagen's demand for prior well-definability before ontological deployment sets an impossibly high standard that no ostensively grounded concept could satisfy at the outset.
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