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Millikan, Ruth Garrett. Historical kinds and the “special sciences”
1999, Philosophical Studies 95 (1-2):45-65.
Topics: Archaeology and History; Economics; Sociology
Keywords: history; metaphysics; natural kinds; realization; reduction
Traditions: Analytic; North American
Languages: English

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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Juan R. Loaiza

Abstract: There are no "special sciences" in Fodor's sense. There is a large group of sciences, "historical sciences," that differ fundamentally from the physical sciences because they quantify over a different kind of natural or real kind, nor are the generalizations supported by these kinds exceptionless. Heterogeneity, however, is not characteristic of these kinds. That there could be an univocal empirical science that ranged over multiple realizations of a functional property is quite problematic. If psychological predicates name multiply realized functionalist properties, then there is no single science dealing with these: human psychology, ape psychology, Martian psychology and robot psychology are necessarily different sciences

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