Title
Under Pressure from the Empirical Data: Does Externalism Rest on a Mistaken Psychological Theory?
Date of Award
8-6-2007
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
Philosophy
First Advisor
Andrea Scarantino - Co-Chair
Second Advisor
Eddy Nahmias - Co-Chair
Third Advisor
Sebastian Rand
Abstract
The tradition of semantic externalism that follows Kripke (1972) and Putnam (1975) is built on the assumption that the folk have essentialist commitments about natural kinds. Externalists commonly take the body of empirical data concerning psychological essentialism as support for this claim. However, recent empirical findings (Malt, 1994; Kalish, 2002) call the psychological theory of essentialism into question. This thesis examines the relevance of these findings to both essentialism and semantic externalism. I argue that these findings suggest that these theories fail to reflect folk beliefs about natural kinds and folk natural kind term usage. This leads me to propose an alternative thesis-- the Ambiguity Thesis-- that is better able to accommodate the existing body of empirical data.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.57709/1059761
Recommended Citation
Miller, Bryan Temples, "Under Pressure from the Empirical Data: Does Externalism Rest on a Mistaken Psychological Theory?." Thesis, Georgia State University, 2007.
doi: https://doi.org/10.57709/1059761