How Right Was Kripke About Biological Kind Terms?

ABSTRACT Devitt and Porter tested the hypothesis that a biological term referring to a taxon of scientific but little practical interest, ‘Rio de Janeiro Myrtle’, would be covered by a Causal‐Historical Theory of reference, as Saul Kripke suggested, but that one referring to a kind of significant practical interest, ‘rice’, would not. ‘Rice’ would be covered by a Hybrid Theory, part‐causal, part‐descriptive, and so Kripke would be only half‐right about ‘rice’. Devitt and Porter concluded that their experiments confirmed this hypothesis. The present paper raises concerns that those experiments may have improperly biased participants against the Description Theory. The paper presents the results of follow‐up experiments on ‘Rio de Janeiro Myrtle’ and ‘rice’ designed to remove those concerns. The paper concludes that Kripke was indeed right about ‘scientific’ biological kind terms while being only half‐right about ‘practical’ biological kind terms.