Mauro Murzi

A Defence of Pluralism in the Debate about Natural Kinds: Case Study from the Classification of Celestial Objects

Article
12/2 - Fall 2007, pages 359-377
Date of online publication: 15 novembre 2007
Date of publication: 01 novembre 2007

Abstract

I reconsider the monism/pluralism debate about natural kinds. Monism claims that there is a privileged division of reality into natural kinds, while pluralism states that there are many ways of classifying objects according to different purposes. I compare three different monistic accounts of natural kinds with the pluralism advocated by promiscuous realism. The analysis of some examples of the classification of celestial objects suggest that there are indeed different legitimate ways of classifying things according to different purposes; contrary to monism, the boundaries between kinds are not fixed. These results show that promiscuous realism is a better account of natural kind.

Keywords

Cite this article

Murzi, Mauro. “A Defence of Pluralism in the Debate about Natural Kinds: Case Study from the Classification of Celestial Objects.” Forum Philosophicum 12, no. 2 (2007): 359–77. doi:10.35765/forphil.2007.1202.27.

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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License