Promiscuous Realism: Reply to Wilson

Abstract

This paper presents a brief response to Robert A. Wilson's critical discussion of Promiscuous Realism [1996]. I argue that although convergence on a unique conception of species cannot be ruled out, the evidence against such an outcome is stronger than Wilson allows. In addition, given the failure of biological science to come up with a unique and privileged set of biological kinds, the relevance of the various overlapping kinds of ordinary language to the metaphysics of biological kinds is greater than Wilson admits.