Talk:Natural kind

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 20 August 2019 and 7 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Jag1498, Mmicah55. Peer reviewers: Mollyanne99, Buffy0123, AlexGiesting, Sola28, MollyMYZ.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 05:00, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Older comments

"That is, they would still be groups of things, distinct from other things as a group, even if there were no people around to say that they were members of the same group. The set of people who walked across the Brooklyn Bridge sometime last June, on the other hand, almost certainly does not comprise a natural kind. A person might group those people together for some purpose like traffic-control planning, but there is no particular reason that any other person should lump those people together instead of placing them in some other grouping."

Changed nonnatural kind example from above because the current example includes people. Since nonnatural kinds are defined as people-dependent, some confusion is possible.

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I'm not sure the given example is 100% clear. Why should the set of objects that weigh more than 50 pounds not be a natural kind? This seems projectible in the sense that if you put any member on the set on a balance scale, it will balance or tilt the scale in its favor. And if one member of the set can be used to crush a given object, then any member of the set should be able to do the same. The grue example is clear, but I think the explanation of why the 50-pounds-or-more-set is not a natural kind is incomplete. -Ben

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Mention should also be made, I think, of John Dupré's book: The Disorder Of Things (Harvard University Press, 1993).

Rosa Lichtenstein (talk) 22:13, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Footnote is invalid

Link doesn't work. Luot (talk) 20:12, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

External links modified

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removing warning template

I think my revision meets the need for references.TBR-qed (talk) 11:42, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

Ownership problem

I raise the following concerns:

• On two recent occasions, User:TBR-qed has deleted a list of topic-relevant references from the foot of this article, without any explanation, and without any justification.
• In addition, on previous occasions, this user has also deleted relevant-to-the-topic images, and has introduced sentences such as "This article identifies some contentious issues surrounding natural kinds", and many other acts that have seemed to very significantly increase the degree of fine-grained-ness of an article that, by contrast, ought to be explaining "natural kinds" to the general Wikipedia audience.
• Please compare: [1] with its next revision at [2].
• The extended-over-time editing of User:TBR-qed seems to be a case of a user assuming an unjustified level of proprietorship over the article's form and content that is in clear breach of the "no ownership" principles embodied in WP:Ownership. Lindsay658 (talk) 04:35, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for your concerns. I addressed the first on your talk page. I clearly made an error deleting references section, and need to learn how I can replace the footnote section with references.

The second concern puzzles me. Over several days I revised an article extensively. There had been no substantive revisions for years. Is one not allowed to propose substantive changes, and put them up for review?TBR-qed (talk) 20:08, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

One is always allowed to propose changes on an article talk page TBR-qed, or even to boldly make changes in an article. However if other editors think changes are not an improvement, and particularly if they revert such changes, then discussion on the talk page is the way to go, preferably including citing sources over any factual issues. How technical and article should be is a judgement call. Lindsay658, please do try to assume good faith here. Attempts to improve the article, even if you disagree with them, are not owbnership unless an editor refuses to permit anyone else's changes to stand, or otherwise will not engage in cooperative editing. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 19:35, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

My main concerns were (and still are) with the force of unexplained and unsubstantiated deletions, and, also with the deliberate and extreme narrowing of the focus of the article from the original general article designed to inform the general (rather than specialized) reader, to a very specific contemporary debate in an expensive single work of invited papers limited to the discussion of a specific technical issue. That being said, point taken; and, for time being, I will assume "good faith". Lindsay658 (talk) 03:05, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Again thank you, and let me explain my good faith. My revision intended exactly what you identify--design article for the general reader. I replaced the existing article, just defining technical terms, with some intellectual context, describing the issues major authors on the subject pursued over several centuries. My reference to current debate--a book just named in the earlier article--was intended to show continuing confusion, not to settle some technical issue. I would love to debate my substantive proposals rather than procedural issues.TBR-qed (talk) 14:18, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

(outdent) Regarding general criticism of articles like this one, see also Talk:Instrumentalism/Archive 2#Original_synthesis. --Omnipaedista (talk) 15:10, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Meta-statements

A paragraph such as:

This article identifies some contentious issues surrounding natural kinds. It presents a minority view expressed by John Dewey that natural kinds are a false conclusion of contaminated instrumental reasoning. It presents several majority views expressed by four more recent scholars—W.V.O. Quine, Hilary Kornblith, Hasok Chang, and Rasmus Winther—that natural kinds are real and important scientific facts.

in which the article comments on its own scope, is in my view not ideal for a Wikipedia article. It smacks of self-reference. And it cites no sources for what views are "minority" or "majority". I think such statements would be better left out of the article. Do other editors agree with this view, or disagree? DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 20:06, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

I agree 100% with your view.Lindsay658 (talk) 03:08, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

I have removed the paragraph. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 17:28, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

I also agree. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 18:46, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

Conforming to the NPOV requires editors to avoid “ownership” and “self-reference.” The question is whether or not my style violates these requirements. I obviously chose the six scholars identified in the paragraph quoted above (and since deleted.) I chose them because their mutual self-references display the state of understanding of natural kinds. I intended the quoted paragraph to inform readers of what is to come, not in any way my endorsement or rejection of any point of view. It permits readers to decide whether or not to continue reading. I would like to restore it.

As for quoting a source for my statement of minority and majority views, the entire article presents evidence that Dewey has been ignored and Quine has been widely accepted. It would be impossible for me to quote some source for this descriptive statement. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TBR-qed (talk • contribs) 15:54, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

Having no response to my explanation of the paragraph removed, I am restoring it.TBR-qed (talk) 19:20, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

Referencing style

This article had been using "General references", a list of source citations that are not related to specific statements in the article. More recent edits have been using footnotes generated by <ref>...</ref> tags, a form of inline citation. See WP:CITE for various citation formats in use in Wikipedia. Inline citations have certain advantages, but general references can also be used. I have placed the two in subsections of an overall References section. Editors can come to a consensus on the article talk page as to what format or formats to use, see WP:CITEVAR. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 21:06, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

The additional problem with the extraordinarily uncommunicative way that the references have been cited is that, any normal individual examining the Wikipedia article, will form the impression that a large lump of the references are being made to a particular book. In fact, the means through which the "information" has been recorded totally obscures the real situation: that there are three separate items, a paper by the collected works editor, and two quite separate invited papers by the individuals to whom the user has allocated an entire section of the article. Lindsay658 (talk) 03:15, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

The section on Putnam

The section about Hilary Putnam's theories of natural kind was written with perceived future edits on the article as a whole in mind. The article as a whole needs editing to remove bias and an overall argumentative tone in favor of a more informative structure. This section does respond to some of Quine's thinking (what Putnam refers to as Quine's pessimism) but it is not intended to further argue a view on natural kind. Putnam's thought experiments (the Twin-Earth and Lemon vs. Tiger) are meant to clarify what natural kind is.Mmicah55 (talk) 19:04, 3 December 2019 (UTC)Mmicah55

Induction & deduction

WP DEPENDS ON INDUCTION & DEDUCTION. THEIR MEANING SHOULD BE FIRM. This encyclopedia accepts the premise of enumerative induction that the more editors who agree on the content of an article, the more accurate and useful that content. Induction is practiced on every TALK page. Editors generalize from a few observations, and deduce concrete conclusions from their generalizations.

WP contains 4 repetitive and fragmentary articles on induction: [Inductive reasoning], [The problem of induction]; [New riddle of induction],[Inductivism]. I would like to rectify this chaotic situation by rewriting and merging these 4 articles, retaining only the reasoning title. I ask you—a participant in relevant TALK pages—to judge my rewrite/merge project: SHOULD I PROCEED? Below is the current proposed outline:

Definitions. Induction generalizes conceptually; deduction concludes empirically.

[David Hume], philosopher condemner.

[Pierre Duhem], physicist user.

[John Dewey], philosopher explainer.

[Bertrand Russell], philosopher condemner.

[Karl Popper], philosopher condemner.

Steven Sloman, psychologist explainer.

Lyle E. Bourne, Jr., psychologist user.

[Daniel Kahneman], psychologist user.

[Richard H. Thaler] economist user.

Please respond at Talk:Inductive reasoning. TBR-qed (talk) 16:11, 5 January 2020 (UTC)