Abstract

In _Realism and Naturalizing Knowledge_ (Keisho Shobo, 2013), Ryo Uehara carefully formulates the homeostatic property cluster theory of natural kinds and expands it by applying this framework to artifacts and knowledge and thereby drawing them in the naturalistic picture of the world. This is a substantial addition to the development of naturalistic philosophy in Japan. In this essay I shall make general comments on his account of natural kinds in the following respects: Uehara's distinction between real and nominal kinds, his objection to the species-as-individual thesis, the relative lack of attention to the distinction between the realism of natural kinds and the scientific realism, and finally, races as possible natural kinds.