Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

Many experimental studies on natural kind terms have found a dual pattern in ordinary speakers' use and understanding of natural kind terms: while they often are used in a way that suggests that their extensions are determined by underlying causal properties (as causal-historical theories would have it), they appear sometimes also to be used in a way that suggests their extensions to be determined by superficial properties (as classical descriptivism would have it). In my talk, I will discuss some different possible reactions to such results. My main focus will be on a suggestion that has recently gained some popularity: the view that natural kind terms are ambiguous, having both a causal-historical and a descriptivist sense. In particular, a recent paper by Tobia et al. (2020) defends this view, on the basis of results from their own experiments. I will discuss some shortcomings of Tobia et al's experimental setup, and present results from a recent experiment that I ran with my colleagues. Our results strongly suggest that natural kind terms are not ambiguous in the way suggested by Tobia et al.