Is Life a Natural Kind?
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18270/rcfc.v23i46.4029Keywords:
Life, Definition of Life, Natural Kinds, Real Definition, EssenceAbstract
In a series of works, Carol Cleland has argued for the last twenty years that the search for a definition of life is not only worthless, but counterproductive. A definition in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions could now blind us for the much more important task of developing a universal theory of life. The main justification for this contention is that life is a natural kind. Terms for natural kinds have no ideal definitions, because they purport to make reference to objective features of the world, not to make explicit the content of our thought or language. It is argued here that life is, in effect, a natural kind and, thus, the semantics for the term life cannot be given by an ideal definition with necessary and sufficient conditions. Nevertheless, the semantics of the term life does not exclude the possibility of finding an adequate ‘real definition’ of the essence of life, i. e., of what is life. A real definition is not the enunciation of the meaning of a term, but of an essence.
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