Ştefan Dragulinescu, Phase and Non-Phase Changes

Ştefan Dragulinescu, Phase and Non-Phase Changes


Abstract:

An important challenge for any account of natural kinds - given the threat of the so-called Spinozan or Heraclitan views on the nature of change -  is to deal with the phase/non-phase distinction and the problem of how kinds are singled out.. On the Heraclitan view, the number of kinds is indefinitely multiplied whereas on the Spinozan view, the number of kinds is dramatically reduced. The former view interprets as non-phase changes transitions that are commonly taken as phase changes whereas the latter interprets as phase changes transitions that are commonly taken as non-phase ones. Jonathan Lowe construes natural kinds as substantive universals and differentiates the phase from the non-phase (substantial) changes undergone by kind members by way of employing certain category-based and natural law-based criteria. Notably, these criteria entail that the diachronic conditions of identity for kind members undergoing phase and substantial kind changes have nothing to do with their kind membership. In this paper, I argue that Lowe cannot alleviate the Spinozan and Heraclitan threats on the reality of kinds that his construal of substantive universals seeks to bring into relief. To alleviate them, I suggest, the kind membership should be reckoned with in the diachronic conditions of identity for kind members. In other words, I propose that natural kinds should be understood as ontological categories, in Lowe's idiom.

 

Keywords:

Natural kinds, substantive universals, phase changes, Heraclitanism/Spinozism

Introduction

A strong construal of natural kinds recently re-introduced in the philosophical debate, most notably by Jonathan Lowe, Brian Ellis and David Oderberg, is that kinds represent substantive universals.[1] These kinds are viewed as a solution to a host of problems concerning natural laws, counterfactual conditionals, natural necessity, induction, dispositions, causation, etc.

An important task that Jonathan Lowe thinks the construal of kinds as substantive universals should undertake is to repudiate the possibility of an un-changing or ever-changing reality. That is, the appeal to substantive universals is meant, inter alia, to dismiss the so-called Spinozan or Heraclitan views on the nature of change, according to which all changes represent phases within the same 'substance' or, to the contrary, every change is a substantial, non-phase change.[2] The latter views have had numerous proponents in the history of philosophy - beside Spinoza and Heraclitus themselves, one could cite here (on one extreme or another) Parmenides, Hegel, Haeckel, Bohm or Bradley for instance[3] - and they resurface indeed in the contemporary discussions about the reality of kinds and the phase/non-phase distinction. Anyone who reckoned intelligible Quine's conjecture about our ontological frameworks being on a par with Homer's gods would gladly adopt either the Heraclitan or the Spinozan position, at least for argumentative reasons, in a discussion about kind realism or kind reductionism.[4] What precisely is the connection between the Heraclitan and Spinozan views and the discussion about kinds and their phases? The connection has to do with the transitions or changes undergone by kind members. Simply put, on the Spinozan view almost any transition undergone by kind members amount to a phase kind change, even when it is not intuitively so. On the Heraclitan view, in turn, almost no transition represents such a change - they are almost all non-phase, substantial kind changes. For instance, given the transition undergone by an individual caterpillar turning into an individual butterfly, the Heraclitan view would be that we have a substantial kind change, such that the individual in question changed membership from one natural kind (caterpillar) to another (butterfly).[5] The Spinozan view would be in agreement, in this case, with the common intuitions saying that a phase kind change is in place, such that the individual in question did not change its membership but remained all along part of the butterfly kind. Nonetheless, in other cases, the Spinozan view would also be in conflict with common intuitions. For instance, for the transition undergone by a sample of gold turning into a sample of lead (in a supernova), the Spinozan view would be that a phase kind change is in place as well, such that only one natural kind was involved (either gold or lead) with its phases.[6] Read more...

[1] I shall mainly refer in this paper to Lowe's account of kinds, as espoused in his (1989), (2001), (2006). Ellis lays out his account in his (2001) and (2002) whereas Oderberg's views can be found in his (2007).

[2] Cf. Lowe, 2001, p. 174

[3] see Hampshire (2005) and Sweet (2007) for discussion. Very recently, Jonathan Schaffer has argued in favour of a Spinozan position. See Schaffer, 2007

[4] Quine, 1951

[5] The transition from caterpillars to butterflies is part of a set of stock examples employed for expository reasons in the literature on kinds and their phases, when the accent is placed on the metaphysical and not scientific side of the discussion.

[6] I shall adopt in this paper a few terminological adjustments, merely for expository reasons. Hence, I shall speak about (natural) 'kinds' and their 'phases', (instead of 'natural kinds' and 'phase kinds'). As 'particulars' will be designated kind members (and not tropes or modes) - where kinds could be countable or mass kinds. Members of countable kinds will be designated as 'individuals' and they will be the main focus of this paper. However, everything I shall have to say here about countable kinds is readily applicable to mass kinds as well. For this reason, when discussing the absolute identity of kind members, I shall not mention their numerical identity but their diachronic conditions of identity.