" Our thoughts are meaningful. We think about things in the outside world; how can that be
so? This is one of the deepest questions in contemporary philosophy. Ever since …

Over time the complex idea of" species" has evolved, yet its meaning is far from resolved.
This comprehensive work is a fresh look at an idea central to the field of biology by tracing its …

Categorization behavior can be fruitfully analyzed in terms of the trade‐off between as high
as possible faithfulness in the transmission of information about samples of the classes to be …

The article examines the role of natural kinds in semantic theorizing, which has largely been
conducted in isolation from relevant work in science, metaphysics, and philosophy of …

When we ask what natural kinds are, there are two different things we might have in mind.
The first, which I'll call the taxonomy question, is what distinguishes a category which is a …

According to the homeostatic property cluster family of accounts, one of the main conditions
for groups of properties to count as natural is that these properties be frequently co …

While scientific inquiry crucially relies on the extraction of patterns from data, we still have a
far from perfect understanding of the metaphysics of patterns—and, in particular, of what …

This volume explores linguistic reference. Reference is a two-place relation. One relata
refers, the other (the referent) is referred to. Candidate referring items include, among others …

When people argue for the need for descriptivism, they typically appeal to the need to
provide a semantics that accounts for the cognitive role of these terms: the role they play in …

Some philosophers of biology state that the metaphysical status of biological species is
context determined by the use different branches of biology make of their corresponding …