Esencialismo, especies y géneros naturales

Abstract

This paper aims at stating the range of the various possible responses regarding the nature of natural kinds, especially considering the cases of biological species. I will put forward the existence of a philosophically significant convergence between two of these responses that initially appear as inconsistent. I will describe this convergence in terms of a cooccurrence of epistemic values (Ruse, 1999), that is, in terms of a coincidence with those theory features that are of interest to us because of their significance to scientific explanation.