Mill on species and Kinds

Comments (7)

1. It is curious that people categorize something, then insist that the assigned category has some intrinsic metaphysical status.

   Essence, form, genus, species are linguistic or at least just convenient ways of categorizing. It’s why I never thought much of Aristotles ‘Categories’, he seems to slip between his somewhat arbitrary division, for the sake of classification, which has no hidden disasters, to the assumption that these categories or predicates are something profound or ontologically necessary…oh, and the version I have says something like ‘everything predicated of the species is predicated of the genus and this holds good in all cases.’ Given that humanity is not itself rational in most instances, but that is deemed to be the differentia, the genus animal is certainly not rational and if it were to be predicated of animals, how would it be a differentia?

   I can only assume that my translation of the Stagirite is as poor as my understanding of philosophy.

   1. So you think that “trees” or “dogs” are just linguistic inventions?

2. Oh dear. I think they are convenient categories. I don’t think there is an essence or form of dogness or treeness. Perhaps my choice of words was the problem?

3. Does it apply also to stars on the sky? That stars are just some “convenient category”? If you reject essence, form, species etc… I wonder on what is your categories based on. Unless they are some Kant’s a priori categories of course.

   You also seem to be struggling in your post with the concept of man as animal rationale .
   It was M.Heidegger who repeatedly rejected this very definition of man.

4. VMartin: If you reject essence, form, species etc… I wonder on what is your categories based on

   On what is convenient to acheive the end desired.

   If I want to categorize things based on being multicellular, then it a tree and a dog are the same sort of thing. If I want to categorize things into those that are good to whack with versus those that are not, then a fist, cricket bat and a rock are the same kind of thing.

   There is no need to say, ‘whacking is the essence of the species and the genus is ….’. That to me just seems to be reifying categories or bits of language as if they signified something metaphysical. We use categories to sort things and these categories alter all the time and we could imagine for a different form of rational life, they would use different categories. I think the error is assuming that because these things sort well to our ends, that there is something behind that. Perhaps we could say that given we evolved in a universe of a certain type, it stands to reason we’d categorize things a certain way. I guess. But it’s still not metaphysical.

   I sometimes think Kant was onto something with his synthetic a priori that space and time are intuitions, and in the sense that we evolved to see space a certain way; molecules as solids when they’re mostly empty void and experience time a certain way, they might be said to be the form of our experience. But where he went wrong was trying to enforce how we perceive things as binding on the universe. Space might seem Euclidean to us, but that doesn’t mean it is. So, then, we might have some evolved categorization traits that were useful in a certain evolutionary environment…That probably didn’t make sense. I am not a philosopher as you’ll have noted. 🙂

   I don’t think I struggle with man = rational animal at all. I think it’s wrong, I think many animals are rational, at least some of the time.I was referring to the passage in my copy of the categories that if something is predicated of the species it is also predicated of the genus and this holds good in all cases.

   So:

   1. Anything predicated of the species is predicated of the genus.
   2. Aristotle believed rationallity was predicated of man
   3. Man is a species and the genus is animal.
   4. Therefore, all animals must be rational.

   Now, as I said, perhaps my translation is poor, or perhaps I’ve misunderstood all the talk of categories and such. But the point is there, given the assumptions as I’ve understood them. And thus the differentia, ratinonality, is lost because it is said to be predicated of all animals. A difference that makes no distinction.

5. Aristotle defined man as animal politicus . On the other hand animal rationale is much more easier target to attack by Neodarwinists.

   1. No he did not. He said humans are political animals, not that this defines them. He also said that wasps, bees, ants and cranes (the bird) are political animals too.

      At best this is an essential (not accidental) property of humans, but not being unique to humans it is not a definition. Two things are important when reading Aristotle:

      1. He does not require that essences have definitions, nor that they are something had by every member of a group (he allowed they could be had “more or less” and that deviant members could lack some traits that are proper to the kind);

      2. He does not focus upon the same things when talking about humans as he does when talking about other animals. So politikos has onemeaning when applied to animals that we would now call eusocial, and another meaning when dealing with humans directly. I refer you to the excellent paper below for a full discussion.

      The notion that Aristotle is all about definitions is much later; and in his own works it applies to his logical tracts only. That is, Aristotle thinks that we can gather knowledge by understanding words (predicates), but in the end definition is about words.

      Mulgan, R. G. 1974. Aristotle’s Doctrine That Man Is a Political Animal. Hermes 102 (3):438-445.

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