Departmental Research Seminar with Professor Tuomas Tahko

Our departmental research seminar talks will take place on Wednesdays during term time from 15:00 to 16:30, in room 005, 48 Old Elvet, Durham, DH1 3HN.

This week's speaker is Professor Tuomas Tahko from the University of Bristol.

Tuomas is a Professor of Metaphysics of Science at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Bristol and Head of the School of Arts.

Title: Natural Kind Fundamentalism

Abstract: This talk defends Natural Kind Fundamentalism (NKF), the view that the ontological category of natural kind is fundamental. I develop a primitivist account of categorial fundamentality based on the Complete Categorial Basis (CCB) criterion, which requires that fundamental categories form a complete and minimal system irreducible to other categories through ontological dependence relations. Against bundle-theoretic reductions, I argue that natural kinds are substantial universals serving as principles of unity for property clusters. This neo-Aristotelian framework distinguishes between the metaphysical ‘why’ question (answered by substantial universals as unifiers) and the empirical ‘how’ question (concerning specific unification mechanisms). I demonstrate that natural kinds and properties exhibit mutual but asymmetric dependence: properties depend generically on kinds for instantiation, while kinds depend rigidly on their essential properties. This formal ontological structure satisfies the CCB criterion and explains why certain property clusters are non-arbitrary without reducing kinds to properties or vice versa.