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Essential Membership

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Joseph LaPorte
Joseph LaPorte*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
*
†Send reprint requests to the author, Department of Philosophy, Bartlett Hall, The University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Box 30525, Amherst MA 01003–0525, USA.
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Abstract

In this paper I take issue with the doctrine that organisms belong of their very essence to the natural kinds (or biological taxa, if these are not kinds) to which they belong. This view holds that any human essentially belongs to the species Homo sapiens, any feline essentially belongs to the cat family, and so on. I survey the various competing views in biological systematics. These offer different explanations for what it is that makes a member of one species, family, etc. a member of that taxon. Unfortunately, none of them offers an explanation that is compatible with the essentialism in question.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 64 , Issue 1 , March 1997 , pp. 96 - 112
Copyright
Copyright © 1997 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

For helpful comments on previous drafts of this paper and/or profitable discussion of issues in it, I thank Eddie Abrams, Bruce Aune, Phillip Bricker, Fred Feldman, Lucy O'Brien, and audiences at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, the 1996 Mid-South Philosophy Conference at the University of Memphis, and the 1996 Eastern Division Meeting of the APA in Atlanta. Special thanks to the commentators for these talks: Ben Bradley, Timothy Huson, and Marc Lange, respectively. I also thank anonymous referees for this journal.

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