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Why Water May Not Be a Natural Kind After All: Enriching the Discussion around Chemical Kinds

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  • Vanessa A. Seifert
Vanessa A. Seifert
University of Athens, Athens, Greece / University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36446/af.e1164

Publicado 2025-12-17

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Este trabalho está licenciado sob uma licença Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Resumo

I present an argument that undermines the standardly held view that chemical substances are natural kinds. This argument is based on examining the properties required to pick out members of these purported kinds. In particular, for a sample to be identified as —say— a member of the kind-water, it has to be stable in the chemical sense of stability. However, the property of stability is artificially determined within chemical practice. This undermines the kindhood of substances as they fail to satisfy one of two key requirements: namely that they are picked out by (some) natural properties and that they are categorically distinct. This is a problem specifically for the natural realist interpretation of kinds. I discuss whether there are other ways to conceive of kinds in order to overcome it.

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