Determination of Real Kinds in Artistotle and in Fact

FAIN: FT-12380-75

Samuel Crane Wheeler III
University of Connecticut (Storrs, CT 06269-9000)

To explicate Aristotle's theory of how objective kinds are discovered and extracted from the indefinite array of possible groupings of data into objects and properties that are compatible with a given set of experiences will comprise the first phase of this study. The second phase of the project will try to adapt this explication to the solution of Nelson Goodman's skeptical rejection of the possibility of objective justification of choice of a system of kinds, the meaningfulness of claims about the world being objectively divided into one set of kinds rather than another, and the consequent meaningfulness of notions of real, language-independent necessity.