Books

Published

Forthcoming & In Progress

The Nature of Biological Kinds

This book in progress brings together several of my previously-published papers on natural kinds together under the Stable Property Cluster (SPC) framework I published in "Natural Kindness" (BJPS 2015) and explores the interplay between realism (or something like it) and the vagaries of classificatory practice in a range of biological sub-disciplines.

Norms of Scientific Classification

This book offers a new view of scientific classifications, one with wide-ranging practical and theoretical implications. To start, we focus on how scientists actually practice and attempt to support their classificatory work and claims. How are scientific classifications made and revised? Are these episodes matters of discovery — more or less compelled by the world? Many scientists and philosophers seem to believe that the answer is yes. We call this traditional view the Discovery Picture. We argue that, while plausible, the Discovery Picture cannot be right. In many cases — maybe the vast majority — empirical data and arguments, while of course important to classification claims, fall short of justifying those claims than is typically realized. This raises serious questions about the objectivity of scientific claims. But it also advises us to move beyond disputes about objectivity, to focus instead on how classification claims are influenced by what we call pragmatic classificatory norms. Recognizing their influence puts us in position to locate the key good-making property of scientific classifications not in their objectivity, but in their rationality. Such rationality, after all, centrally incorporates the human goals, abilities, and values that pragmatic classificatory norms often encode.