Against natural kind eliminativism

Synthese - It has recently been argued that the concept of natural kinds should be eliminated because it does not play a productive theoretical role and even harms philosophical research on...     

Functions in biological kind classification

Biological traits that serve functions, such as a zebra’s coloration (for camouflage) or a kangaroo’s tail (for balance), seem to have a special role in conceptual representations for biological kinds. In five experiments, we investigate whether and why functional features are privileged in biological kind classification. Experiment 1 experimentally manipulates whether a feature serves a function and finds that functional features are judged more diagnostic of category membership as well as more likely to have a deep evolutionary history, be frequent in the current population, and persist in future populations. Experiments 2–5 reveal that these inferences about history, frequency, and persistence account for nearly all the effect of function on classification. We conclude that functional features are privileged because their relationship with the kind is viewed as stable over time and thus as especially well suited for establishing category membership, with implications for theories of classification and folk biological understanding.     

Functions in biological kind classification

Biological traits that serve functions, such as a zebra's coloration (for camouflage) or a kangaroo's tail (for balance), seem to have a special role in conceptual representations for biological kinds. In five experiments, we investigate whether and why functional features are privileged in biological kind classification. Experiment 1 experimentally manipulates whether a feature serves a function and finds that functional features are judged more diagnostic of category membership as well as more likely to have a deep evolutionary history, be frequent in the current population, and persist in future populations. Experiments 2-5 reveal that these inferences about history, frequency, and persistence account for nearly all the effect of function on classification. We conclude that functional features are privileged because their relationship with the kind is viewed as stable over time and thus as especially well suited for establishing category membership, with implications for theories of classification and folk biological understanding.     

愚昧是一种束缚

据几年前中国科协发布的《中国公众科学素养调查》数据分析,达到基本要求者只占1.4%,即在1000人中只有14个人具备了基本的科学素养。     

One kind of negative therapeutic reaction

A case is reported in which a young man for several years experienced his analysis primarily as a source of pain. Each new insight he achieved was an occasion for increased distress rather than liberation. Considerable analytic work elucidating motives for this negative therapeutic reaction produced no change in it. Eventually, it could be determined that the patient's need to suffer within the treatment relationship served a specific form of denial in fantasy that has not, to the author's knowledge, been described elsewhere. The importance of covert libidinal, object-preservative aims in such frustrating and destructive impasses is discussed, as well as the role of countertransference enactment.     

Free actions as a natural kind

Synthese - Do we have free will? Understanding free will as the ability to act freely, and free actions as exercises of this ability, I maintain that the default answer to this question is...     

Semantic analysis of natural kind terms

This paper develops a model theoretic semantics for so called natural kind terms that reflects the viewpoint of (Kripke, 1980) and (Putnam, 1975). The semantics generates a formal counterpart of the K-mechanism investigated in (Salmon, 1981) and in unpublished work by Keith Donnellan.I would like to thank David Anderson, Bernard Linsky, Hilary Putnam, Nathan Salmon, Edward Zalta, and the participants of the 1992 SEP conference for much helpful discussion and encouragement regarding the project of this paper.     

Philosophy as a kind of courage

It is possible to reveal and to examine the collective and social fields of consciousness experimentally. An account is given of planned experiments based on quantitative calculations, which indicate that the effects of individual and collective fields of consciousness on matter may elicit directly observable physical results. Moreover, it is shown that collective coherent consciousness fields may enhance the physical effects of consciousness at a significant rate. The predicted results have a significance in our picture of our consciousness, in self‐assertion and dynamising of consciousness, the expansion of collective fields of consciousness, and thus the raising of the level of consciousness for humanity.     

Innateness as a natural cognitive kind

Innate cognitive capacities are widely posited in cognitive science, yet both philosophers and scientists have criticized the concept of innateness as being hopelessly confused. Despite a number of recent attempts to define or characterize innateness, critics have charged that it is associated with a diverse set of properties and encourages unwarranted inferences among properties that are frequently unrelated. This criticism can be countered by showing that the properties associated with innateness cluster together in reliable ways, at least in the context of the study of cognition (though perhaps not in other scientific domains). Even though the causal connections between these cognitive properties are not always strict, they are robust enough to warrant considering innateness to be a natural kind as used in contemporary cognitive science.     

What kind of mood influences what kind of memory: The role of arousal and information structure

Mood-congruent memory was investigated as a function of the structure of the information to be remembered (categorical vs. isolated) and the participant’s arousal (stimulating drug vs. placebo). Free recall of photographs showing either pleasant or unpleasant scenes was assessed for subjects under positive or neutral mood states, induced by the imagination of emotional experiences under relaxation. Although the arousal manipulation did not affect the recall performance, the findings highlight the importance of the information structure: a mood-congruency effect was obtained for the isolated pictures; however, the effect did not appear for categorical material, suggesting that structural constraints on the recall process can override the influence of mood on memory. Interestingly, the subject’s evaluations of the pictures also shifted toward their mood states. A general recall advantage of positive mood was observed.