Concept
Homeostatic property cluster theory
Overview
Homeostatic property cluster theory (HPC theory) is an account of natural kinds in the philosophy of science, introduced by Richard Boyd as a non-essentialist alternative to views that define kinds by necessary and sufficient conditions. On this account, many natural kinds are characterised by clusters of properties whose co-occurrence is maintained by causal mechanisms, even though no single property need be shared by every member and the boundaries of the kind may be vague.
Boyd introduced the account in a 1988 essay on moral realism, where the illustrative cases were moral goodness and health, and afterwards developed it chiefly with biological species in mind. It became the most widely discussed alternative to essentialism in debates over natural kinds and was adopted across the philosophy of biology, psychiatry, and the social sciences.
The account has been criticised for the difficulty of individuating the causal mechanisms it requires, for failing to specify what fixes membership in a kind, and for matching poorly the classifications that scientists actually use. P. D. Magnus has argued that being a natural kind is neither necessary nor sufficient for being an HPC, and that the account is better understood as describing the ontological basis of some natural kinds rather than defining natural kinds as such. Matthew Slater has proposed a refinement, the stable property cluster (SPC) account, which replaces the mechanism requirement with a more general notion of stability.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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Although the scientific arrangements of organic nature afford as yet the only complete example of the true principles of rational classification, whether as to the formation of groups or of series, those principles are applicable to all cases in which mankind are called upon to bring the various parts of any extensive subject into mental co-ordination. They are as much to the point when objects are to be classed for…
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive
States what Homeostatic property cluster theory is; the author is tied to Homeostatic property cluster theory in the knowledge graph.
Among present-day philosophies, we may distinguish three principal types, often combined in varying proportions by a single philosopher, but in essence and tendency distinct. The first of these, which I shall call the classical tradition, descends in the main from Kant and Hegel; it represents the attempt to adapt to present needs the methods and results of the great constructive philosophers from Plato downwards…
Bertrand Russell, Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy
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"Mnemic phenomena" are defined as those due to engrams; in animals, they are specially associated with the nervous system, but not exclusively, even in man. When two stimuli occur together, one of them, occurring afterwards, may call out the reaction for the other also. We call this an "ekphoric influence," and stimuli having this character are called "ekphoric stimuli." In such a case we call the engrams of the two…
Bertrand Russell, The Analysis of Mind
States what Homeostatic property cluster theory is; the author is tied to Homeostatic property cluster theory in the knowledge graph.
Philosophers who discussed Homeostatic property cluster theory
Related ideas
- Natural kind
- The Philosophical Quarterly
- Philosophy of biology
- John Stuart Mill
- Necessity and sufficiency
- Synthese
- Philosophical Studies
- Psychiatry
- Explanation
- Psychology
- Scientific law
- Scientific realism
- Cornell University Press
- Ian Hacking
- Vagueness
- Family resemblance
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Philosophy of science
- Inductive reasoning
- Bertrand Russell
- Essentialism
- Richard Boyd
- Chemistry
- Analytic–synthetic distinction
Place in the tradition
Part of Essentialism.
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