Advancing the Progenerative View

Abstract Chapter 8 introduced a positive view of kinship as a particular type of natural kind—a homeostatic property cluster (HPC) kind—and examined several efforts (by Schneider and by Montague) to provide a contrasting biologically innocent account of kin matters. HPC views have garnered sufficient support to have become widely accepted in the philosophy of science. A HPC account of kinship is decidedly anti-essentialist but is compatible with a reproductively focused view of kin matters. HPC views are especially well-suited to phenomena like kinship that are intrinsically heterogeneous. Kin matters are much murkier, this chapter will suggest, in the putatively biologically innocent proposals about kinship. HPC views also provide a ready way to deliver a view of kin relations that is integrationist, realist, and pluralist, all features highlighted by the Dependentist account of the metaphysics of relations defended in Part I.