Synthese

DOI 10.1007/s11229-015-0751-z

Conceptual analysis and natural kinds: the case

of knowledge
Joachim Horvath1

Received: 5 December 2014 / Accepted: 12 April 2015

Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015

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 Kornbliths
argument from the causalexplanatory 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.
Keywords Conceptual analysis Natural kinds Knowledge
Homeostatic cluster view Natural kind concepts Hilary Kornblith

B
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Joachim Horvath
joachim.horvath@uni-koeln.de
Department of Philosophy, University of Cologne, Richard-Strauss-Str. 2,
50931 Cologne, Germany

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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, p. 335; Kornblith 2007, p. 47;
Kumar 2014, p. 442; Ludwig 2013, p. 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, p. 163; my emphasis)1
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.2 However, the prospects for such an argument are dim,
because knowledge behaves very unlike paradigmatic natural kind concepts.
1 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, p. 442).
2 I follow the usual convention of indicating reference to concepts with small caps.

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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 illuminating3 set of individually necessary and
jointly sufficient conditions for knowledge,4 of the kind that potentially5 reveals the
essence or nature6 of the property or kind knowledge.7 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.
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. Micevic 2000, 2005; Schwitzgebel 2008), I will
simply take premise (3) for granted in the following.
3 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, manuscript). But for our present purposes, this condition should work reasonably well.
4 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, pp. 2728).
5 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, manuscript).
In particular, the nature of this link depends on ones 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 Xwhich can be expressed in at least two different waysis necessarily self-coinstantiated. 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 Xbecause
being the set of all possible Xs might already exhaust the latter.
6 I use the terms essence and nature interchangeably in this paper.
7 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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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,
Chap. 2) argues for this seemingly radical thesis.
Kornbliths 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 ethologiststhat 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,
p. 31). The key 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 Kornbliths preferred account of natural kinds, something
is a natural kind just in case it is a homeostatic cluster of properties,8 i.e., a cluster of
properties that is mutually supporting and reinforcing in the face of external change
(Kornblith 2002, p. 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 H2 O molecules and their causal interactions with other H2 O 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 causalexplanatory 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.
Kornbliths 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
causalexplanatory role to being a natural kind. The main justification for this
move is the assumption, adopted via Boyds (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,
8 The account is mainly developed in Kornblith (1993), and it is basically a version of Richard Boyds

account of natural kinds (cf. Boyd 1988, 1991).

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there will be instances of natural kinds that lack some of the properties in the 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, pp. 141142)
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.9 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 Kornbliths naturalism even more
radical than it already is.
Given Kornbliths 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 H2 O or gold is the element with
atomic number 79, that specify the underlying microstructure of the natural kinds
in question.10 Since a posteriori identities of this sort entail illuminating necessary
9 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 knowledgeit certainly does not reflect how most epistemologists conceive of
their own attempts at analyzing knowledge.
10 In fact, Kornblith explicitly endorses the basic contours of the PutnamKripke conception of natural

kinds and natural kind concepts (Kornblith 2002, pp. 1213, fn. 17 & 18).

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biconditionals such as necessarily, something is water iff it is H2 O, they do allow for

pursuing the traditional goal of conceptual analysis, i.e., to provide illuminating necessary and sufficient conditions, with empirical meansunlike the homeostatic cluster
view. In other words, the PutnamKripke 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 PutnamKripke conception would, however, threaten to undermine
Kornbliths 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 PutnamKripke conception is not
committed to a causal individuation of natural kinds, it does not by itself support the key
inference from having a robust causalexplanatory 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 causalexplanatory profile in the actual
world, like knowledge (if Kornblith is right), might nevertheless fail to be a natural kind.
But maybe Kornbliths argument for the natural kindhood of knowledge does not
require such a tight connection between the causalexplanatory role of knowledge and
the causal individuation of natural kinds. Maybe the fact that a given kind K has a
robust causalexplanatory profile should rather be seen as a fallible criterion for the
natural kindhood of K. Understood in this way, Kornbliths argument would merely
require that the robust causalexplanatory profile of knowledge makes the natural
kindhood of knowledge sufficiently likely, without actually entailing that knowledge
is a natural kind.
Yet given the orthodox PutnamKripke 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 causalexplanatory
profile and being a natural kind. For this would apparently require that most of the
categories that have a robust causalexplanatory profile also happen to be natural kinds.
Since the total number of categories that have a robust causalexplanatory 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 causalexplanatory profile are not happily classified
as natural kinds. Think, for example, about the many causalexplanatory categories
from the social realm, such as money, power, citizenship, or military force, or about
the robust causalexplanatory profile of many artifactual kinds, such as key, hammer,
screwdriver, or lawnmower. In fact, even some mathematical categories, which typically do not figure on anyones 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 causalexplanatory profile to being a natural kind, and this challenges the
claim that most of the categories that have a robust causalexplanatory profile are natural kinds. For this reason, the idea that having a robust causalexplanatory profile is a
valid probabilistic criterion for natural kindhood does not seem very promising either.

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In sum, it is hard to see how Kornbliths 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 causalexplanatory 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
PutnamKripke conception of natural kinds would help to avoid the latter problem,
but this conception fails to provide a metaphysical link between causalexplanatory
indispensability and natural kindhood. Absent such a link, however, it seems difficult
to support the crucial inference from having a robust causalexplanatory profile to
being a natural kind.

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 knowledgein 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.11 According to the
11 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 conceptgiven 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 chemistryjust like the concept mass was

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standard view, natural kind concepts are nondescriptive concepts12 that are not constitutively associated with any descriptive features or inferential relations (cf. Kripke
1980; Putnam 1970, 1975; Soames 2002).13 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, p. 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.

Footnote 11 continued
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).
12 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 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.
13 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 rigiditywhich 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 allfor, 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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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
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 referencefixing description men with that marital status, while demonstratively referring to a
group of bachelors (cf. Kripke 1980, pp. 5758 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 Sosas favorite philosophical subject matter or the main topic
of K NOWLEDGE AND I TS PLACE I N NATURE. Rather, we are concerned with the pretheoretical 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, isnt 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 H2 O 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.14 The various instances of knowledge do not
share this paradigmatic feature of being unified by their underlying microstructure.
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
14 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, Sect. 2.1). In particular, it is not
clear whether the nature of biological species can be understood in terms of their intrinsic, microstructural
propertiesor whether it must instead be understood in extrinsic, relational terms (cf. Okasha 2002; LaPorte
2004).

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(cf. Putnam 1967; Fodor 1974; Bickle 2013).15 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,
Sect. 2.3).
In addition to that, no one has ever made a plausible suggestion concerning the
underlying microstructure of the kind knowledge. Kornbliths own supposedly
empirical identification of knowledge with reliably produced true belief (cf. Kornblith 2002, pp. 6263) 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 kindsin 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 conceptconsiderations 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 causalexplanatory 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 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
15 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 truthwhich 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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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 causalexplanatory 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 causalexplanatory
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 causalexplanatory role, at least no less than knowledge
does, and should thus be regarded as natural kinds according to the causalexplanatory
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.16
Mathematical properties play an indispensable role in many causal explanations as
well.17 For example, primeness plays a crucial role in the explanation of the highly
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 et al. 2001, p. 33).18 As Goles et al. elaborate, a prey with
a 12-year cycle will meetevery time it appearsproperly 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.19 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 causalexplanatory
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.
16 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).
17 Thanks to Brendan Balcerak Jackson for discussion.
18 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).
19 We are only considering a special science explanation here, of course, just as Kornblith does in the case

of knowledge and cognitive ethology.

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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.20 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.

5 Knowledge as a natural kind concept?

What emerges from the preceding discussion is that Kornbliths 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 featurejust as paradigmatic instances
of water, tiger, or gold (cf. Kornblith 2002, pp. 1011; 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 Putnams
(1975) Twin Earth thought experiment, Kripkes (1980) epistemic and modal arguments, and Burges (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
20 Thanks to Kirk Michaelian for pressing this point.

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water or gold did not come anywhere near identifying illuminating necessary and
sufficient conditions.
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 H2 O
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.21
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 H2 O, 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.22
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 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), andmore generallyfrom 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 knowledgeconstituting belief must not be an accident (cf. Unger 1968; Zagzebski 1994; Pritchard
21 A proposed analysis A of K is subject to total error iff none of the analyzing features that figure in A
p
p

also figure in the correct analysis Ac of K.

22 A thinker T is subject to a priori conceptual obliviousness with respect to the correct analysis A of K
c

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.

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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 Kornbliths own allegedly scientific analysis of knowledge on the basis of considerations
from cognitive ethology includes some of these widely accepted necessary features,
since he identifies knowledge with reliably produced true belief (cf. Kornblith 2002,
p. 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 epistemologyincluding naturalized epistemologysuggest 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 Gettiers (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
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 isnt 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--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

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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
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 causalexplanatory 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 causalexplanatory 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 causalexplanatory profile to being a natural kind remains unsupported.
But what if knowledge were indeed a natural kind? Wouldnt 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 causalexplanatory 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.

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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 Kornbliths 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 Kornbliths
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 Hilarys 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 Kornblithfor 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).

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