Document Type : Research Paper
Author
Ph.D Student in Philosophy of Science, Iranian Institute of Philosophy,
Abstract
According to Hilary Putnam, two different levels of empirical investigations regarding natural kinds are available: discovering essence and distinguishing genuine samples from fake ones. Recently, Joseph LaPorte has presented a dilemma in naming natural kinds. He showed that for any kind there are some vague samples which scientists cannot decide whether take them as an unknown variation of the kind or not to consider them as extensions of that kind. On the one hand, discovering the kind’s essence is possible for scientists only when they recognize the range of differences between kind’s variations; and on the other hand, they can distinguish different kind variations only when they know the kind’s essence. Here, LaPorte has presented his own solution. According to him, the kind's essence is not discovered but stipulated. In this essay we shall try to present an alternative solution in which discovering an essence is possible.
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