This post is a continuation of my posts on natrual kinds; see my take on Quine’s account of kinds, and my two-parter on Kripke’s account of kinds.
Putnam’s views on issues of metaphysics and language have actually evolved extensively over time, and his main arguments for realism about natural kinds, which I’ll present here, do not [...]
In this post, I argued that, contra Kripke, when the baptismal origin of a natural kind term has none of the properties we associate with that term, the term no longer refers to a kind that includes its baptismal origin. I then promised that I argue that, when objects not “of the same kind” (in [...]
Unlike my attack on Quine’s argument for natural kinds realism, my problems with Kripke’s natural kinds realism did make it into my dissertaion. My focus there wasn’t on natural kinds; it was, instead, on Kripke’s general theory of non-connotativity of certain terms (and natural kind terms are among them). But, at least for Kripke, non-connotativity [...]
So, I’ve been obsessed lately with a couple of really good posts over on Thoughts, Arguments, and Rants about decision theory. In particular, there’s this post about a game Brian Weatherson calls (for reasons that are clear if you read the post) “Asymmetric Death in Damascus.”
Weatherson’s Original Example
Here’s a quick summary of the game. Predictor [...]
