Talk:Natural kind
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"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.
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
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)
