Natural Kind Thingamajigs

Abstract

I criticize the treatment of natural kinds as some sort of object, advocated in a recent paper by Alexander Bird. The arguments he gives for regimenting an illustrative statement featuring chemical kinds in his preferred manner are not conclusive, and his criticisms of an alternative strategy involving universally quantified sentences fail. This is important because of the widespread but poorly supported assumption that expressions of natural kinds should be treated as singular referring terms.

Acknowledgements

I should like to thank an anonymous referee for comments that were helpful in drawing up the final version of this note.

Notes

I have corrected the boiling point.