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Humanitarian sciences in Siberia

2005 year, number

The Problem of Individuation for Referents of Natural Kinds Terms.

Khlebalin A.V.
Institute of philosophy and law SB RAS, Novosibirsk

Abstract

The paper presents an attempt to consider two well-known approaches to the problem of individuation of referents for natural kinds terms. Traditional semantic theory tries to solve this task by interpreting the descriptive content of a name as the criterion of individuation for referents of natural kinds terms. In contrast, the proponents of the direct reference theory solve this problem by appealing to the concept of essential property which belongs to each member of class constituting the class of referents of the term. Each of these approaches has its problems, the main of which consists in the ambiguity of the notion "natural kind". Traditional semantic theory extends the notion of the nominal kind onto the natural kind, whereas the theory of direct reference extends the notion of the natural kind onto the nominal kinds. The author concludes by proposing to take the notion of "kind" as basic for the theory of individuation for referents of natural kinds terms. In this case, we can solve the problem of distinguishing between natural and nominal kinds.