Conceptual analysis and natural kinds: The case of knowledge

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Conceptual Analysis and Natural Kinds:

The Case of Knowledge

Joachim Horvath

University of Cologne

April 29, 2015

Final Version*

Abstract: There is a line of reasoning in metaepistemology that is congenial to

naturalism and hard to resist, yet ultimately misguided: that knowledge might be a

natural kind, and that this would undermine the use of conceptual analysis in the theory

of knowledge. In this paper, I first bring out various problems with Hilary Kornblith’s

argument from the causal-‐explanatory indispensability of knowledge to the natural

kindhood of knowledge. I then criticize the argument from the natural kindhood of

knowledge against the method of conceptual analysis in the theory of knowledge. A

natural motivation for this argument is the following seemingly plausible principle: if

knowledge is a natural kind, then the concept of knowledge is a natural kind concept.

Since this principle lacks adequate support, the crucial semantic claim that the concept

of knowledge is a natural kind concept must be defended in some more direct way.

However, there are two striking epistemic disanalogies between the concept of

knowledge and paradigmatic natural kind concepts that militate against this semantic

claim. Conceptual analyses of knowledge are not affected by total error, and the

proponents of such analyses are not subject to a priori conceptual obliviousness. I

conclude that the argument from natural kindhood does not succeed in undermining the

use of conceptual analysis in the theory of knowledge.

* The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11229-015-0751-z.

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1. Introduction

There is a certain temptation in metaepistemology that is congenial to naturalism and

hard to resist, even though it is ultimately misguided. This temptation can be brought

out as follows. Suppose you are an epistemologist working on the theory of knowledge

and God tells you one day that knowledge is a natural kind. Your reaction to this divine

revelation might be the following: “All these years of hard armchair work on the analysis

of knowledge, all this wrestling with tricky cases and counterexamples, all these

countless refinements and improvements of my analysis of knowledge: it was all a giant

waste of time! I should have gotten out of the armchair a long time ago and studied

knowledge just like any other empirical phenomenon.” Even though it would be

tempting to react in this way (see, e.g., Heller 1996, 335; Kornblith 2007, 47; Kumar

2014, 442; Ludwig 2013, 232), this temptation should nevertheless be resisted, as I will

argue in this paper.

The philosopher who has given in to this temptation more than any other

philosopher is Hilary Kornblith (cf. Kornblith 1999, 2002, 2007). The main point of his

book Knowledge and Its Place in Nature (2002) is to argue for the radical

metaepistemological claim that knowledge is a natural kind. According to Kornblith,

knowledge should therefore be investigated with the methods of empirical science, and

not by means of armchair conceptual analysis or intuitions. Even though Kornblith also

advances other objections to conceptual analysis in epistemology (cf. Kornblith 2007,

2013), the argument from the natural kindhood of knowledge arguably takes center

stage in his particular brand of naturalized epistemology. He summarizes the argument

as follows in the final chapter of Knowledge and Its Place in Nature:

I have been urging that knowledge is a natural kind and thus that a proper understanding

of the nature of knowledge requires a certain sort of empirical investigation. It is a mistake

to investigate our intuitions about knowledge or our concept of knowledge because

these may be importantly incomplete or importantly mistaken or both. (Kornblith 2002,

163; my emphasis)2

2 Other proponents of naturalized epistemology tend to concur. For example, Victor Kumar claims: “If knowledge is a natural kind, then the satisfaction conditions for ‘knowledge’ cannot be discovered through armchair reflection of the sort that is characteristic of traditional conceptual analysis.” (Kumar 2014, 442).

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As it stands, the argument challenges any kind of apriorism in the theory of knowledge,

and not just the use of conceptual analysis or intuitions, because Kornblith draws the

very general conclusion that the natural kindhood of knowledge “requires a certain sort

of empirical investigation”. In this paper, I want to address the more specific question

whether the natural kindhood of knowledge undermines the use of conceptual analysis

in the theory of knowledge. I will conclude that the metaphysical claim that knowledge

is a natural kind does not by itself undermine the methodological claim that conceptual

analysis is an adequate method for analyzing knowledge. To challenge the latter claim,

one must focus on the concept of knowledge instead, and argue that it is a natural kind

concept like WATER or GOLD.3 However, the prospects for such an argument are dim,

because KNOWLEDGE behaves very unlike paradigmatic natural kind concepts.

2. The Argument from the Natural Kindhood of Knowledge

The standard view in the theory of knowledge is that conceptual analysis aims at an

analysis of knowledge in terms of an illuminating4 set of individually necessary and

jointly sufficient conditions for knowledge,5 of the kind that potentially6 reveals the

essence or nature7 of the property or kind knowledge.8 Proposed analyses of knowledge

are standardly expressed by (metaphysically) necessary biconditionals, such as

‘necessarily, something is knowledge if and only if it is a justified true belief’ (cf.

3 I follow the usual convention of indicating reference to concepts with SMALL CAPS. 4 This qualification is supposed to rule out circular or irrelevant necessary conditions, such as the condition of being self-identical or being such that 2 + 2 = 4. In fact, I think that an adequate account of philosophical analysis requires a more substantial and specific condition than the fairly vague requirement of being illuminating (cf. Horvath ms). But for our present purposes, this condition should work reasonably well. 5 For example, in his An Introduction to Contemporary Epistemology Matthias Steup writes: “For an analysis to be correct, the analysans must specify conditions that are individually necessary and jointly sufficient for the analysandum. […] For an analysis to be successful, it must be illuminating […].” (Steup 1996, 27–28) 6 Why this hedged formulation? Because the connection between a philosophical analysis and the essence of the relevant property or kind is less straightforward than is commonly assumed (cf. Horvath ms). In particular, the nature of this link depends on one’s general metaphysical commitments concerning the metaphysics of properties and essences. For example, if one takes properties to be mere sets of possibilia (cf. Lewis 1986, chap. 1.5), then all necessarily co-instantiated properties will be identical, and thus a necessary biconditional that states necessary and sufficient conditions for X will effectively just tell us that a certain property X—which can be expressed in at least two different ways—is necessarily self-co-instantiated. However, such general truths about properties arguably do not belong to the essence of any particular property, and thus the necessary biconditional in question would not reveal the specific nature of the property of being X (cf. Fine 1995). In this case, an analysis of X would be more like an informative identity claim, such as ‘Hesperus is Phosphorus’, than like a claim about the essence of being X—because being the set of all possible Xs might already exhaust the latter. 7 I use the terms ‘essence’ and ‘nature’ interchangeably in this paper. 8 I indicate reference to properties or kinds with italics, and I will mostly gloss over the difference, if any, between properties and kinds (unless explicitly noted otherwise).

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Williamson 2007; Malmgren 2011). If successful, the argument from natural kindhood

would undermine the status of conceptual analysis as a proper method for seeking an

analysis of knowledge in this sense.

Let us now make this argument more explicit:

(1) Knowledge is a natural kind.

(2) If knowledge is a natural kind, then illuminating necessary and

sufficient conditions for knowledge can only be figured out with

empirical methods.

(3) Conceptual analysis is not an empirical method.

(C) Illuminating necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge

cannot be figured out with conceptual analysis.

Since the argument is clearly valid, let us therefore consider its premises. The least

controversial premise should be (3), that conceptual analysis is not an empirical

method. Indeed, the method of conceptual analysis is typically seen as a paradigm of an

a priori method, and given that a priori methods are standardly understood as non-‐

empirical methods, premise (3) simply follows from these widely held assumptions.

Even though there are a few dissenting voices (cf. Miščević 2000, 2005; Schwitzgebel

2008), I will simply take premise (3) for granted in the following.

3. Knowledge as a Natural Kind?

What can be said in favor of premise (1) of the argument from natural kindhood, i.e., the

claim that knowledge is a natural kind? Let us consider how Kornblith (2002, ch. 2)

argues for this seemingly radical thesis.

Kornblith’s key move is to point out that knowledge plays a robust explanatory

role in cognitive ethology, which is a branch of behavioral biology. On the basis of

behavioral evidence about animals such as ravens or chimpanzees, Kornblith argues—

following many cognitive ethologists—that the ascription of knowledge, instead of mere

true belief, is often indispensable for explaining sophisticated forms of animal behavior,

for example, co-‐operative hunting behavior in ravens (cf. Kornblith 2002, 31). The key

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idea is that the animals in question could not behave in the way they do unless certain

knowledge-‐states were among the causally relevant antecedents of their behavior.

How do these considerations from cognitive ethology support the claim that

knowledge is a natural kind? On Kornblith’s preferred account of natural kinds,

something is a natural kind just in case it is a homeostatic cluster of properties,9 i.e., a

cluster of properties that is “mutually supporting and reinforcing in the face of external

change” (Kornblith 2002, 61). Such homeostatic clusters of properties display a degree

of causal stability that is “not found in just any random collection” of properties (ibid.).

Therefore, homeostatic clusters are able to support various inductive inferences or

natural (causal) laws. They also explain the characteristic surface-‐properties of natural

kinds, such as the liquidity of water, which is explained by the homeostatic character of

H2O molecules and their causal interactions with other H2O molecules under ordinary

conditions of pressure and temperature. Natural kinds are thus understood as

particularly stable nodes in the causal network of the world, i.e., they are individuated in

causal-‐explanatory terms. Given that Kornblith subscribes to a causal view of natural

kinds, it makes sense to identify natural kinds and their essential features by the role

they play in our best causal explanations. And given that knowledge seems to play an

indispensable role in the causal explanation of sophisticated animal behavior, it thus

makes sense to conclude that knowledge is a natural kind.

Kornblith’s key empirical claim that knowledge is an indispensable factor in

causal explanations is open to various objections (see, e.g., Pernu 2009), but I do not

want to take issue with this part of his argument here. For the sake of the argument, I

will assume that he is completely right about that. What seems more committal from a

philosophical point of view is the crucial inference from ‘playing an indispensable

causal-‐explanatory role’ to ‘being a natural kind’. The main justification for this move is

the assumption, adopted via Boyd’s (1988, 1991) homeostatic cluster account of natural

kinds, that natural kinds are individuated in causal terms.

However, the homeostatic cluster view has a striking feature that makes it

especially problematic in the context of a methodological argument against conceptual

analysis. On the homeostatic cluster view, natural kinds are causally stable clusters of

properties. Since causal stability is a matter of degree, it can be more or less perfect. As a

result, there will be instances of natural kinds that lack some of the properties in the

9 The account is mainly developed in Kornblith (1993), and it is basically a version of Richard Boyd’s account of natural kinds (cf. Boyd 1988, 1991).

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relevant cluster, e.g., borderline instances of biological species. The consequence is that

the properties in a homeostatic cluster do not specify necessary and sufficient

conditions for membership in the relevant kind. Here is how Boyd sums up this point:

The natural definition of one of these homeostatic property cluster kinds is determined

by the members of a cluster of often co-‐occurring properties and by the (“homeostatic”)

mechanisms that bring about their co-‐occurrence. […] In cases of imperfect homeostasis

in which some of the properties in the cluster are absent or some of the mechanisms

inoperative it will sometimes happen that neither theoretical nor methodological

considerations assign the object being classified determinately to the kind or to its

complement, with the result that the homeostatic property-‐cluster definition fails to

specify necessary and sufficient conditions for kind membership. (Boyd 1991, 141–142)

Recall that the standard goal of conceptual analysis is to come up with an analysis in

terms of illuminating necessary and sufficient conditions. Someone who relies on a

homeostatic cluster view of natural kinds, like Kornblith, would thus be unable to

contribute to that goal, for reasons that have nothing specifically to do with the rejection

of a priori methods. For, if knowledge were a homeostatic cluster kind, then no method

could possibly deliver a set of illuminating necessary and sufficient conditions for

knowledge, simply because knowledge would not be the sort of thing that has

illuminating necessary and sufficient conditions. Therefore, it seems that Kornblith

would have to reject conceptual analysis not primarily because of its a priori character,

but rather by (implicitly) rejecting its very goal of specifying illuminating necessary and

sufficient conditions.10 However, this is not how Kornblith actually argues in the passage

quoted above, where he seems to hold on to the standard goal of conceptual analysis

and merely objects to its non-‐empirical character. To reject both the standard goal

(illuminating necessary and sufficient conditions) and method (conceptual analysis,

intuition) of analyzing knowledge would make Kornblith’s naturalism even more radical

than it already is.

10 One might object that conceptual analysis could also pursue the weaker goal of providing a cluster analysis, e.g., in the sense of Searle (1969, chap. 7), which would seem to be compatible with the homeostatic cluster account of natural kinds (thanks to an anonymous reviewer for raising this issue). The basic idea is that something only needs to satisfy sufficiently many (but not all) of the analyzing features that a cluster analysis of some category K specifies in order to qualify as an instance of K. From a methodological point of view, however, this can only be seen as a highly revisionary proposal, at least with respect to the category of knowledge—it certainly does not reflect how most epistemologists conceive of their own attempts at analyzing knowledge.

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Given Kornblith’s own emphasis on the rejection of conceptual analysis qua a

priori method, it would thus seem fitting to adopt the more orthodox conception of

natural kinds by Putnam (1975) and Kripke (1980). This conception allows for the

discovery of a posteriori identities, such as ‘water is H2O’ or ‘gold is the element with

atomic number 79’, that specify the underlying microstructure of the natural kinds in

question.11 Since a posteriori identities of this sort entail illuminating necessary

biconditionals such as ‘necessarily, something is water iff it is H2O’, they do allow for

pursuing the traditional goal of conceptual analysis, i.e., to provide illuminating

necessary and sufficient conditions, with empirical means—unlike the homeostatic

cluster view. In other words, the Putnam-‐Kripke conception of natural kinds would

enable Kornblith to only reject conceptual analysis as an appropriate method for

theorizing about knowledge, while holding on to the standard goal of providing

illuminating necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge (although on a scientific

basis and not through some form of armchair analysis).

Adopting the Putnam-‐Kripke conception would, however, threaten to undermine

Kornblith’s argument for the claim that knowledge is a natural kind, because this

argument crucially depends on the inference from ‘playing an indispensable causal-‐

explanatory role’ to ‘being a natural kind’. Since the Putnam-‐Kripke conception is not

committed to a causal individuation of natural kinds, it does not by itself support the key

inference from ‘having a robust causal-‐explanatory profile’ to ‘being a natural kind’. On

this conception, something that clearly is a natural kind, like water or gold, might be

causally inert in some other possible world, e.g., in a world with very different laws of

nature, while something that has a robust causal-‐explanatory profile in the actual world,

like knowledge (if Kornblith is right), might nevertheless fail to be a natural kind.

But maybe Kornblith’s argument for the natural kindhood of knowledge does not

require such a tight connection between the causal-‐explanatory role of knowledge and

the causal individuation of natural kinds. Maybe the fact that a given kind K has a robust

causal-‐explanatory profile should rather be seen as a fallible criterion for the natural

kindhood of K. Understood in this way, Kornblith’s argument would merely require that

the robust causal-‐explanatory profile of knowledge makes the natural kindhood of

knowledge sufficiently likely, without actually entailing that knowledge is a natural kind.

11 In fact, Kornblith explicitly endorses the basic contours of the Putnam-Kripke conception of natural kinds and natural kind concepts (Kornblith 2002, 12–13, fn. 17 & 18).

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Yet given the orthodox Putnam-‐Kripke conception, which does not claim any

constitutive link between causal efficacy and natural kindhood, it seems difficult to

motivate even a merely probabilistic relation between ‘having a robust causal-‐

explanatory profile’ and ‘being a natural kind’. For this would apparently require that

most of the categories that have a robust causal-‐explanatory profile also happen to be

natural kinds. Since the total number of categories that have a robust causal-‐explanatory

profile is vast, maybe even infinite, such a claim is difficult to evaluate. But on the face of

it, many categories that have a robust causal-‐explanatory profile are not happily

classified as natural kinds. Think, for example, about the many causal-‐explanatory

categories from the social realm, such as money, power, citizenship, or military force, or

about the robust causal-‐explanatory profile of many artifactual kinds, such as key,

hammer, screwdriver, or lawnmower. In fact, even some mathematical categories, which

typically do not figure on anyone’s list of natural kinds, have a robust-‐causal explanatory

profile, as I will argue in the following section for the case of primeness. So arguably,

there is a large number of prima facie counterexamples to the inference from ‘having a

robust causal-‐explanatory profile’ to ‘being a natural kind’, and this challenges the claim

that most of the categories that have a robust causal-‐explanatory profile are natural

kinds. For this reason, the idea that having a robust causal-‐explanatory profile is a valid

probabilistic criterion for natural kindhood does not seem very promising either.

In sum, it is hard to see how Kornblith’s argument from the indispensable causal-‐

explanatory role of knowledge in cognitive ethology to the natural kindhood of

knowledge can be supported in the intended way. On the one hand, the argument from

the causal-‐explanatory role of knowledge to the natural kindhood of knowledge crucially

relies on the homeostatic cluster view of natural kinds. Yet this view undermines the

standard goal of analyzing knowledge in terms of illuminating necessary and sufficient

conditions, and so the argument aims too broadly. Opting for the orthodox Putnam-‐

Kripke conception of natural kinds would help to avoid the latter problem, but this

conception fails to provide a metaphysical link between causal-‐explanatory

indispensability and natural kindhood. Absent such a link, however, it seems difficult to

support the crucial inference from ‘having a robust causal-‐explanatory profile’ to ‘being

a natural kind’.

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4. Natural Kindhood and Conceptual Analysis

How should we assess premise (2) of the argument from natural kindhood? That is, how

should we assess the conditional ‘if knowledge is a natural kind, then illuminating

necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge can only be figured out with empirical

methods’?

Here is an initial reason to be skeptical about premise (2). The claim that

knowledge is a natural kind is a metaphysical claim about knowledge, and not a claim

about our epistemic relation to knowledge, and also not a claim about our concept of

knowledge. And why should a particular view about the metaphysics of knowledge have

any specific implications for the epistemology or semantics of knowledge—in this case:

negative implications for conceptual analysis? The metaphysical status of individual

objects, for example, does not have any specific implications for the analysis of proper

names, and the metaphysics of spacetime does not suggest any particular view about the

meaning of indexicals like ‘here’ or ‘now’. Why should this be otherwise in case of the

metaphysics of knowledge and the meaning of the word ‘knowledge’, or the content of

the concept KNOWLEDGE?

One suggestive answer might be: if knowledge is a natural kind, then KNOWLEDGE

must be a natural kind concept, and natural kind concepts are not a priori analyzable in

terms of illuminating necessary and sufficient conditions.12 According to the standard

view, natural kind concepts are nondescriptive concepts13 that are not constitutively

12 Note that the converse argument from ‘KNOWLEDGE is a natural kind concept’ to ‘knowledge is a natural kind’ clearly fails, because a natural kind concept may fail to pick out any kind at all, as in the case of PHLOGISTON, or it may pick out a disjunctive, non-natural kind, as in the case of JADE. One might object that it is not clear what exactly makes PHLOGISTON or JADE a natural kind concept in the first place, given that they actually fail to pick out a natural kind (thanks to an anonymous reviewer for raising this issue). First, of course, what makes them natural kind concepts is the fact that they are equally nondescriptive as paradigmatic natural kind concepts, such as MASS or GOLD. But since nondescriptiveness is not sufficient for being a natural kind concept—given that one can even refer to a non-natural kind like bachelorhood with a nondescriptive concept (see below in the main text)—there must be some further reason why it is legitimate to regard PHLOGISTON and JADE as natural kind concepts. A plausible suggestion would be that the way the concepts PHLOGISTON and JADE were introduced is completely analogous to the way certain paradigmatic natural kind concepts were introduced, and this, together with their nondescriptiveness, suffices to regard them as natural kind concepts. With some amount of idealization, we can say that, for example, the concept PHLOGISTON was introduced to refer to a certain natural phenomenon that was (incorrectly) thought to play a particular theoretical role in chemistry – just like the concept MASS was introduced to refer to a certain natural phenomenon that was (correctly) thought to play a particular theoretical role in physics. And again with some amount of idealization, we can say that the concept JADE was introduced by ostension to particular instances of jade, with the (unsuccessful) intention of referring to that kind of stuff or natural kind (depending on the conceptual sophistication of those who introduced the concept)—just like the concept GOLD was introduced by ostension to particular instances of gold, with the (successful) intention of referring to that kind of stuff or natural kind (see also Soames 2007). 13 According to some accounts of natural kind concepts, they must at least have a minimal descriptive core in order to solve the so-called ‘qua-problem’ (see, e.g., Devitt and Sterelny 1999). For example, one might try to fix

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associated with any descriptive features or inferential relations (cf. Kripke 1980;

Putnam 1970, 1975; Soames 2002).14 Therefore, we need not have any explicit or

implicit representations of illuminating necessary and sufficient conditions in order to

possess a natural kind concept. And the representations that we have can be highly

misleading with respect to necessary and sufficient conditions for kind membership.

Even subjects who competently possess a natural kind concept, such as WATER or GOLD,

are therefore prone to all kinds of ignorance and error concerning necessary and

sufficient conditions for membership in the relevant kind. Apparently, this is what

Kornblith has in mind when he suggests that “our concept of knowledge […] may be

importantly incomplete or importantly mistaken or both” (see quote above).

However, it does not follow from the fact that a kind K is a natural kind that any

concept of K must be a natural kind concept. Gold is a natural kind, but THE ELEMENT WITH

ATOMIC NUMBER 79 is a descriptive concept of gold (see also Ludwig 2013, 233). Of course,

analyzing the concept THE ELEMENT WITH ATOMIC NUMBER 79 only provides us with the

rather trivial necessary biconditional ‘something is the element with atomic number 79

iff it is the only thing that is an element and has atomic number 79’.

But the apparent difference between a concept like THE ELEMENT WITH ATOMIC

NUMBER 79 and the concept KNOWLEDGE can be understood in purely epistemic terms.

While the descriptive content of the concept THE ELEMENT WITH ATOMIC NUMBER 79 is

cognitively transparent, such that coming to know that content requires only minimal

reflection, the descriptive content of the concept KNOWLEDGE is not cognitively

the reference of the concept TIGER to the natural kind tiger by ostension to actual tigers, which is one important way to fix the reference of natural kind concepts. But then it may still be indeterminate whether TIGER refers to tigers, animals, living beings, or material objects. For this reason, natural kind concepts may need a certain minimum of descriptive features in their content, such as being an animal. As a consequence, one may come to know certain trivial facts about tigers merely on the basis of analyzing the concept TIGER, e.g., that tigers are animals. This is still a far cry from illuminating necessary and sufficient conditions for being a tiger, however. 14 Natural kind concepts are also standardly regarded as rigid designators (cf. Kripke 1980), i.e., as concepts that have the same referent in all possible worlds (where they have a referent at all). However, it is an open question whether the notion of rigidity—which was primarily developed for singular terms—can also be extended to general terms or general concepts, like WATER, GOLD, or BACHELOR (cf. Besson 2010; Schwartz 1980, 2002; Soames 2002, chap. 9). For example, if one identifies the reference of general concepts with their extension, then the reference of most natural kind concepts will clearly not be the same in all relevant possible worlds. There surely could have been, e.g., more or less water or gold than there actually is, so the extension of WATER and GOLD changes across possible worlds. What if one identifies the reference of general concepts with the relevant property or kind instead, e.g., with the property of being gold in case of the concept GOLD? This assigns a reference to GOLD that does indeed remain constant across all relevant possible worlds. But the same holds for general concepts that are clearly not natural kind concepts. For example, if the concept BACHELOR has the property of being a bachelor as its referent, then it surely refers to that property in all possible worlds where it has a referent at all—for, which other property should it refer to if not to the property being a bachelor? For these reasons, I put the issue of rigidity aside in this paper. The whole work in an argument against conceptual analysis is done by the nondescriptiveness of natural kind concepts anyway.

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transparent in this way, and coming to know it apparently requires a substantial amount

of a priori reflection.

The dissociation between the epistemic properties of a concept and the

metaphysical status of its referent is further substantiated by the fact that we can also

use nondescriptive concepts in order to refer to paradigmatic non-‐natural kinds. For

example, we could introduce a nondescriptive concept of bachelorhood by using the

merely reference-‐fixing description ‘men with that marital status’, while

demonstratively referring to a group of bachelors (cf. Kripke 1980, 57–58 on merely

reference-‐fixing descriptions).

Therefore, even if knowledge is indeed a natural kind, it does not follow that

every concept of knowledge is also a natural kind concept. One might object that we are

not considering arbitrary concepts of knowledge here, such as ERNEST SOSA’S FAVORITE

PHILOSOPHICAL SUBJECT MATTER or THE MAIN TOPIC OF KNOWLEDGE AND ITS PLACE IN NATURE.

Rather, we are concerned with the pre-‐theoretical lexicalized concept KNOWLEDGE that

we standardly express with the ordinary English word ‘knowledge’. Even if it does not

strictly follow from the natural kindhood of K that our lexicalized concept of K is a

natural kind concept, one might nevertheless argue that this inference enjoys strong

inductive support. For, in case of paradigmatic natural kinds, such as water, gold, tiger,

or aluminum, the relevant lexicalized concepts are indeed natural kind concepts. So

given the assumption that knowledge is a natural kind, isn’t it at least highly probable

that KNOWLEDGE is a natural kind concept?

The answer is: only if the characteristic features of paradigmatic natural kinds

are projectible to the case of knowledge, and this seems highly questionable. For on the

face of it, the kind knowledge is very unlike paradigmatic natural kinds. In case of

paradigmatic natural kinds, like water or gold, illuminating necessary and sufficient

conditions for kind membership are identified at the level of underlying microstructure.

For example, the underlying microstructure of water is identified at the molecular level,

as being composed of H2O molecules, the underlying microstructure of gold is identified

at the atomic level, as being the element with atomic number 79, and the underlying

microstructure of tiger is presumably identified at the biochemical level, as being a

species with a certain genetic make-‐up.15 The various instances of knowledge do not

share this paradigmatic feature of being unified by their underlying microstructure.

15 It should be noted, however, that the natural kindhood of biological species is a highly controversial issue in contemporary philosophy of biology (cf. Bird and Tobin 2015, sec. 2.1). In particular, it is not clear whether the

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One reason for this important dissimilarity might be that cognitive kinds, like

knowledge, belief or intention, are multiply realizable at the underlying neurological or

biochemical level, which is a widely held view in the metaphysics of mind (cf. Putnam

1967; Fodor 1974; Bickle 2013).16 Accordingly, it makes sense, at least in principle, to

ascribe such cognitive states to a wide range of different creatures—from humans to

ravens, chimpanzees, octopuses, or even aliens. For this reason, we cannot expect that

the instances of these cognitive states have anything interesting in common in terms of

their underlying microstructure (see also Bird and Tobin 2015, sec. 2.3).

In addition to that, no one has ever made a plausible suggestion concerning the

“underlying microstructure” of the kind knowledge. Kornblith’s own supposedly

empirical identification of knowledge with reliably produced true belief (cf. Kornblith

2002, 62–63) is clearly not a proposal in terms of microstructure, nor does it have the

flavor of a new or surprising scientific discovery that one finds in the case of

paradigmatic natural kinds—in fact, the very same proposal was already made many

years before on the basis of armchair conceptual analysis (cf. Goldman 1986).

So if knowledge is a natural kind, then it is at best a rather atypical natural kind,

one whose nature is not “hidden” at some underlying micro-‐level that calls for sustained

empirical investigation. For this reason, one should be wary of projecting features of

paradigmatic natural kinds, such as the existence of lexicalized natural kind concepts,

onto atypical cases like knowledge. Moreover, as I will argue in the following section,

there are strong direct considerations against the claim that KNOWLEDGE is a natural kind

concept—considerations that would trump any inductive considerations of the sort just

considered. In sum, there is no good reason for accepting the inference from ‘knowledge

is a natural kind’ to ‘KNOWLEDGE is a natural kind concept’.

What is more, premise (2) of the argument from natural kindhood derives its

prima facie plausibility from the more general claim that if some category K is a natural

kind, then illuminating necessary and sufficient conditions for K can only be figured out

with empirical methods. However, if we accept causal-‐explanatory indispensability as a

good criterion of natural kindhood, as Kornblith suggests, then this more general claim

becomes subject to a number of counterexamples. For there are cases where a kind nature of biological species can be understood in terms of their intrinsic, microstructural properties—or whether it must instead be understood in extrinsic, relational terms (cf. Okasha 2002; LaPorte 2004). 16 For the multiple realizability of knowledge it does not matter whether knowledge is a composite state that consists of a belief that satisfies various further conditions, such as justification or truth—which is the orthodox view in epistemology (cf. Nagel 2013)—, or whether knowledge is a distinctive mental state in its own right (cf. Williamson 1995, 2000; Nagel 2013).

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figures indispensably in causal explanations, and should thus be regarded as a natural

kind according to the present criterion, but where an a priori analysis of the relevant

lexicalized concept might still yield illuminating necessary and sufficient conditions.

These cases undermine the crucial transition from ‘K is a natural kind’ to ‘illuminating

necessary and sufficient conditions for K can only be figured out with empirical

methods’. Let us consider some of these cases.

A first case might be analytic functionalism in the philosophy of mind (cf.

Armstrong 1968; Lewis 1972; Shoemaker 1981; Braddon-‐Mitchell and Jackson 2007),

which is a live theoretical option for at least some mental states. The basic idea is that a

mental state M is individuated by its functional role, that is, by its typical causes and

effects, and that this functional role is a priori accessible on the basis of reflection on our

concept of M. For illustration, let us assume that analytic functionalism is true of pain.

The mental state of pain would then be individuated by the typical causes and effects of

being in pain, such as grimacing-‐, wincing-‐ and moaning-‐behavior. This complex cluster

of typical causes and effects, which is considered to be a priori accessible on the basis of

analyzing our concept PAIN, would then provide the materials for a functional analysis of

pain. Since the case for the causal-‐explanatory indispensability of mental kinds like pain

is at least as strong as the corresponding case for knowledge, such mental kinds would

qualify as natural kinds in light of the causal-‐explanatory criterion. But in that case, the

relevant mental kinds would be natural kinds that are amenable to a priori analysis.

Analytic functionalism is a controversial view, of course, but there are also less

controversial cases. Consider dispositional kinds like poison or fragility. These kinds

often play an indispensable causal-‐explanatory role, at least no less than knowledge

does, and should thus be regarded as natural kinds according to the causal-‐explanatory

criterion. The fragility of glass explains, for example, why glass cannot be handled and

transported like other materials, such as metal or wood. It seems plausible, however,

that we can figure out illuminating necessary and sufficient conditions for fragility solely

on the basis of our grasp of the concept FRAGILITY, e.g., as a rough approximation, that

fragile objects tend to break when they collide with hard objects.17

Mathematical properties play an indispensable role in many causal explanations

as well.18 For example, primeness plays a crucial role in the explanation of the highly

17 The apparent analyzability of fragility should not be confused with the seemingly more problematic idea of providing illuminating necessary and sufficient conditions for the dispositionality of fragility (cf. Bird 2007; Ellis 2001; Mumford 2004). 18 Thanks to Brendan Balcerak Jackson for discussion.

14

unusual 13-‐year and 17-‐year life cycles of the cicada genus Magicicada. According to one

of the leading hypotheses, “the cycle length is a prime number in order to optimally

escape predators” (Goles, Schulz, and Markus 2001, 33).19 As Goles et al. elaborate, “a

prey with a 12-‐year cycle will meet—every time it appears—properly synchronized

predators appearing every 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 or 12 years, whereas a mutant with a 13-‐year

period has the advantage of being subject to fewer predators.” In other words,

Magicicada have their unusual 13-‐year and 17-‐year life cycles because the primeness of

these life cycles increases their survival rate and thus enhances their evolutionary

fitness. Therefore, the primeness of the Magicicada life cycles is an indispensable part of

the causal explanation of these life cycles in evolutionary terms.20 In light of the causal-‐

explanatory criterion for natural kindhood, primeness should thus be considered as a

natural kind. However, an a priori analysis of the concept PRIMENESS clearly yields

illuminating necessary and sufficient conditions for primeness, i.e., that something is

prime if and only if it is only divisible by one and itself. The fact that even certain

mathematical properties qualify as natural kinds according to the causal-‐explanatory

criterion of natural kindhood further undermines the crucial transition from ‘K is a

natural kind’ to ‘illuminating necessary and sufficient conditions for K can only be

figured out with empirical methods’.

One might object that if it were indeed established that knowledge is a natural

kind, then there would be no reason to be interested in the concept of knowledge

anymore. Instead, one should investigate the natural kind knowledge itself, just as

Kornblith urges on the first page of Knowledge and Its Place in Nature.21 However, if it

were also established that the concept KNOWLEDGE is a descriptive concept, and not a

nondescriptive natural kind concept, then we might actually learn something about

knowledge itself by means of conceptual analysis, just as we learn something about

primeness itself by doing conceptual analysis. For in that case, conceptual analysis would

arguably have the power to reveal illuminating necessary and sufficient conditions for

knowledge, and it seems hard to deny that this would be of philosophical interest.

19 According to a competing hypothesis, the prime life cycles of Magicicada are adaptations that prevent hybridization in small and isolated populations (cf. Cox and Carlton 1988; Yoshimura 1997). 20 We are only considering a special science explanation here, of course, just as Kornblith does in the case of knowledge and cognitive ethology. 21 Thanks to Kirk Michaelian for pressing this point.

15

5. KNOWLEDGE as a Natural Kind Concept?

What emerges from the preceding discussion is that Kornblith’s rejection of conceptual

analysis with respect to knowledge hinges primarily on the semantic claim that

KNOWLEDGE is a natural kind concept, and only secondarily on the metaphysical claim

that knowledge is a natural kind. Therefore, concluding that conceptual analysis fails to

yield illuminating necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge on the basis of the

metaphysical claim that knowledge is a natural kind actually turns things upside down.

A more straightforward way to argue for this conclusion would be to employ familiar

considerations from the discussion about natural kind terms and semantic externalism

(cf. Kripke 1980; Putnam 1970, 1975). If one had shown, in this way, that KNOWLEDGE is a

natural kind concept, then one could follow the standard procedure for establishing that

knowledge is a natural kind, namely, by investigating whether paradigmatic instances of

knowledge share some underlying feature—just as paradigmatic instances of water,

tiger, or gold (cf. Kornblith 2002, 10–11; Kripke 1980; Putnam 1975). A systematic

discussion of the claim that KNOWLEDGE is a natural kind concept would thus need to

examine the standard arguments that semantic externalists have advanced for this sort

of conclusion. At a minimum, this would involve a discussion of Putnam’s (1975) Twin

Earth thought experiment, Kripke’s (1980) epistemic and modal arguments, and Burge’s

(1979) related arguments for social externalism. In my view, these arguments do not

apply very well to the concept of knowledge (pace, e.g., Cappelen and Winblad 1999;

Kumar 2014). Since a defense of this claim would require another paper or chapter (cf.

Horvath 2011), my aim in this section will be more limited, namely, to highlight two

epistemic features of the concept of knowledge that make for a striking disanalogy

between this concept and paradigmatic natural kind concepts.

It is characteristic of natural kind concepts, like WATER or GOLD, that a priori

conceptual analysis does not reveal illuminating necessary and sufficient conditions for

membership in the relevant kinds. On the one hand, this comes down to the familiar

observation that we are subject to all kinds of ignorance and error when we try to

determine illuminating necessary and sufficient conditions for, e.g., water or gold on the

basis of a priori conceptual analysis (cf. Kripke 1980; Putnam 1975). On the other hand,

there is the less familiar observation that the proposed conceptual analyses of water or

gold did not come anywhere near identifying illuminating necessary and sufficient

conditions.

16

First, a priori analyses of gold as, e.g., being a yellow metal (cf. Kant 1977, 10:

267), or of water as, e.g., being a clear drinkable liquid, did not hit upon any of the

conditions that figure in the correct scientific analysis of these kinds, which is being the

element with atomic number 79 in case of gold, and being composed of H2O molecules in

case of water (cf. Kripke 1980; Putnam 1975). Therefore, these a priori analyses are not

just partly wrong, or subject to some degree of ignorance, but they are defective in the

more radical sense of being affected by total error.22

Second, prior to empirical research in modern chemistry nobody even had the

concepts that are required for grasping the correct scientific analysis of, e.g., water in

terms of H2O, such as HYDROGEN or OXYGEN. And this is anything but an isolated case. Just

consider concepts like PROTON, ELECTROMAGNETISM, or CHROMOSOME that are required for

grasping the correct scientific analysis of various other natural kinds. However,

proponents of a priori analyses of natural kinds did not only fail to possess the concepts

that are needed for grasping their correct scientific analysis, but there was also no

recognizable way of acquiring these concepts solely through further a priori theorizing.

Thus, a priori analyses of natural kinds were not only affected by total error, but the

proponents of these analyses were also subject to a priori conceptual obliviousness with

respect to the correct scientific analysis of the natural kinds in question.23

We can summarize these two observations as follows:

(O1) A priori analyses of natural kinds are affected by total error.

(O2) Proponents of a priori analyses of natural kinds are subject to a priori

conceptual obliviousness.

I will now argue that neither (O1) nor (O2) applies to a priori conceptual analyses of

knowledge, which is a powerful reason to conclude that KNOWLEDGE is not a natural kind

concept.

Why does (O1) not apply to a priori conceptual analyses of knowledge? There is

no indication that conceptual analyses of knowledge are subject to anything like the

22 A proposed analysis Ap of K is subject to total error iff none of the analyzing features that figure in Ap also figure in the correct analysis Ac of K. 23 A thinker T is subject to a priori conceptual obliviousness with respect to the correct analysis Ac of K iff T possesses none (or almost none) of the concepts C1, …, Cn that are needed for grasping the analyzing features that figure in Ac, and there is no realistic way for T to acquire C1, …, Cn solely through further a priori theorizing.

17

total error that affects a priori analyses of, e.g., water or gold. It is true, of course, that

many a priori analyses of knowledge are subject to partial ignorance or error. This can

be seen, for example, from the failure of the standard analysis of knowledge as justified

true belief (cf. Gettier 1963), and—more generally—from the failure of most suggested

analyses of knowledge, and also from the fact that epistemologists endorse a variety of

different analyses of knowledge that are mutually incompatible (cf. Shope 1983, 2002).

The majority of contemporary epistemologists agree, however, that knowledge implies

true belief (cf. Ichikawa and Steup 2012), or that the truth of a knowledge-‐constituting

belief must not be an accident (cf. Unger 1968; Zagzebski 1994; Pritchard 2005). So

these largely uncontroversial necessary features of knowledge do not seem to be

affected by any ignorance or error, as far as we can tell from our present perspective

(and this is the only perspective that we can reasonably take on this issue). Even

Kornblith’s own allegedly scientific analysis of knowledge on the basis of considerations

from cognitive ethology includes these widely accepted necessary features, since he

identifies knowledge with reliably produced true belief (cf. Kornblith 2002, 58). In fact,

this is the same result that Goldman, according to his methodological self-‐understanding

(cf. Goldman 2007), had obtained many years before on the basis of a priori conceptual

analysis (cf. Goldman 1986). These observations about contemporary epistemology—

including naturalized epistemology—suggest that (O1) does not apply to a priori

conceptual analyses of knowledge, for there is presently no indication that they are

affected by total error.

Why does (O2) not apply to a priori analyses of knowledge? Since some of the

necessary features of knowledge that are widely accepted on the basis of conceptual

analysis are apparently not subject to ignorance or error, it follows that philosophers

possess at least some of the concepts that are required for grasping the correct analysis

of knowledge, such as TRUTH or BELIEF. Moreover, since TRUTH and BELIEF are

pretheoretical concepts, it follows that even lay people possess some of the concepts

that are required for grasping some of the necessary features of knowledge. And even if

EPISTEMIC JUSTIFICATION should be a pretheoretical concept as well, which seems doubtful

(cf. Senor 2013), there is still reason to think that philosophers did not always possess

all of the concepts that are required for grasping the analyzing features of knowledge.

For as a result of Gettier’s (1963) refutation of the standard analysis of knowledge as

justified true belief, the justification condition will either have to be supplemented or

replaced by some additional or alternative condition X. Some of the candidate features

18

for X that epistemologists have suggested are: indefeasibility (cf. Lehrer and Paxson

1969), reliability (cf. Goldman 1979), sensitivity (cf. Nozick 1981), safety (cf. Sosa 1999),

or aptness (cf. Sosa 2007). It seems clear that the relevant concepts of indefeasibility,

reliability, sensitivity, etc. are not pretheoretical concepts, and that even most

epistemologists only acquired them post-‐Gettier. So before Gettier, even most

philosophers failed to possess some of the concepts that are needed for grasping some

of the analyzing features of knowledge. Yet isn’t this simply a form of a priori conceptual

obliviousness with respect to the analyzing features of knowledge, and thus evidence

that KNOWLEDGE might be a natural kind concept after all?

It seems plausible that, pre-‐Gettier, even most epistemologists were subject to a

limited, partial from of conceptual obliviousness vis-‐à-‐vis the correct analysis of

knowledge (whatever exactly it may be). But given that epistemologists did already

possess crucial concepts like TRUTH or BELIEF, this was very different from the complete

conceptual obliviousness that is characteristic of proponents of a priori analyses of

natural kinds. More importantly, however, there is no indication that philosophers were

ever subject to a priori conceptual obliviousness concerning the analyzing features of

knowledge. Unlike concepts like HYDROGEN or ATOMIC NUMBER that were only shaped and

acquired through a sustained process of empirical theorizing, the acquisition of technical

concepts in the theory of knowledge, like INDEEFEASIBILITY, SENSITIVITY, or APTNESS, does

not seem to depend on empirical information or theorizing in any substantial sense.

Rather, these concepts were shaped and acquired within the very process of a priori

reflection on the analyzing features of knowledge that is so characteristic of the method

of conceptual analysis. Therefore, proponents of conceptual analyses of knowledge were

never subject to anything like the a priori conceptual obliviousness that we find in

proponents of a priori analyses of natural kinds. At most, epistemologists were (and

probably still are) subject to a limited form of conceptual obliviousness that can be

cured by further a priori theorizing. These considerations suggest that (O2) does not

apply to proponents of a priori conceptual analyses of knowledge, which is another

disanalogy between the concept KNOWLEDGE and paradigmatic natural kind concepts.

To conclude, the concept of knowledge lacks two epistemic features that are

characteristic of paradigmatic natural kind concepts. The first of these features is that a

priori analyses of paradigmatic natural kinds are affected by total error. The second

feature is that proponents of a priori analyses of natural kinds are subject to a priori

conceptual obliviousness. These two features constitute a striking disanalogy between

19

KNOWLEDGE and paradigmatic natural kind concepts, like WATER or GOLD, that makes it

quite unlikely that they all belong to the same semantic category.

6. Conclusion

The metaepistemological temptation that I described at the beginning of this paper

should be resisted: there is no convincing argument against conceptual analysis in the

theory of knowledge from the claim that knowledge is a natural kind.

First, the argument from the indispensable causal-‐explanatory role of knowledge

to the natural kindhood of knowledge is problematic in several ways. The argument

either proves too much by ruling out illuminating necessary and sufficient conditions for

knowledge on metaphysical grounds alone (insofar as it relies on the homeostatic

cluster account of natural kinds), or the argument loses the metaphysical connection

between causal-‐explanatory indispensability and natural kindhood (when it resorts to a

non-‐causal theory of natural kinds). Absent such a connection, the inference from

‘having a robust causal-‐explanatory profile’ to ‘being a natural kind’ remains

unsupported.

But what if knowledge were indeed a natural kind? Wouldn’t this tell strongly

against conceptual analysis in the theory of knowledge? To support this worry, one

might appeal to the following seemingly plausible principle: if K is a natural kind, then

the concept of K is a natural kind concept. And as we learnt from Putnam and Kripke,

natural kind concepts like WATER or GOLD are not amenable to a priori conceptual

analysis. This principle fails, however, because one can even refer to paradigmatic

natural kinds with purely descriptive concepts, such as THE ELEMENT WITH ATOMIC NUMBER

79 in the case of gold. It is true that lexicalized concepts of paradigmatic natural kinds

are typically natural kind concepts, but one cannot simply draw any inductive

conclusions about the concept of knowledge from that fact, because even if knowledge is

indeed a natural kind, it is a rather atypical natural kind. Moreover, the criterion of

causal-‐explanatory indispensability allows for various counterexamples to the transition

from ‘K is a natural kind’ to ‘K is not amenable to conceptual analysis’, e.g., in the case of

dispositional or mathematical categories. In order to assess the viability of conceptual

analysis in the theory of knowledge, one should therefore focus directly on the semantic

question whether KNOWLEDGE is a natural kind concept or not.

20

However, there are two striking epistemic disanalogies between the concept

KNOWLEDGE and paradigmatic natural kind concepts that make it quite unlikely that

KNOWLEDGE belongs to the same semantic category. First, in contrast to proposed a priori

analyses of natural kinds, a priori conceptual analyses of knowledge are not affected by

total error. And second, proponents of conceptual analyses of knowledge are not subject

to a priori conceptual obliviousness with respect to the analyzing features of knowledge.

We should thus resist the temptation to draw negative conclusions about

conceptual analysis from the natural kindhood of knowledge, for this kind of inference is

fraught with difficulties and problems. This point presumably applies to other important

philosophical categories as well, such as free will, justice, action or truth. At any rate, one

should expect that at least some of the considerations that are relevant to the case of

knowledge also apply to those other cases. With respect to the case of knowledge, I

conclude that conceptual analysis remains unshaken by Kornblith’s argument from the

natural kindhood of knowledge. Conceptual analysis continues to be a viable method in

the theory of knowledge, irrespective of the largely orthogonal question of whether

knowledge is a natural kind or not.

Acknowledgments: I would like to thank Brendan Balcerak Jackson, Thomas Grundmann, Frank

Hofmann, Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa, Stan Husi, Jens Kipper, Hilary Kornblith, Kirk Michaelian, Wolfgang

Schwarz, Anand Vaidya, and various anonymous reviewers for numerous helpful comments on this paper

and its non-‐identical predecessors. The paper originated from a critical comment on Hilary Kornblith’s

work at the 2nd Cologne Summer School in Philosophy in August 2007 at the University of Cologne. Special

thanks to Hilary for extensive discussion and plenty of encouragement. I also want to thank the

participants of Hilary’s doctoral colloquium at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in March 2008—

Kristoffer Ahlstrom-‐Vij, Jeremy Cushing, Jeff Dunn, Meghan Masto, Alex Sarch, Kirk Michaelian, Indrani

Bhattacharjee, and Hilary Kornblith—for their generous engagement with my paper and very valuable

comments. Thanks also to Brendan Balcerak Jackson, Magdalena Balcerak Jackson, Alma Barner and

Wolfgang Schwarz for their very helpful comments in a reading group session of the Emmy Noether

Independent Junior Research Group Understanding and the A Priori in June 2009, which was kindly hosted

by the University of Cologne and generously supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG

(German Research Foundation). Additional thanks to the DFG for supporting my research on this paper as

part of the project Eine Verteidigung der Begriffsanalyse gegen die Herausforderungen des Naturalismus (A

Defense of Conceptual Analysis against the Challenges from Naturalism), which was kindly hosted by the

University of Cologne from 2007 to 2010 (under the auspices of Thomas Grundmann).

21

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Conceptual analysis and natural kinds: The case of knowledge