The Menace of Triviality

Abstract

In this chapter, I consider some objections to the account of natural kinds that I have developed and illustrated in the previous chapters. The objections allege that the account of natural kinds is too liberal. It counts too many kinds as natural kinds, they say, making the modifier ‘natural’ a mere flourish and robbing it of any scientific or philosophical significance. To put the charge differently: If every kind turns out to be a ‘natural kind’, then we might just as well say that there are no natural kinds.