Mental Kinds as Human Kinds: The Case from Declarative Memory

While mental disorders like schizophrenia are paradigmatic human kinds, the going view of human mental kinds like declarative memory is that they are not human kinds. This essay challenges the going view by arguing that declarative memory bears the distinguishing marks of a human kind. We propose that a “constructionist-functionalist” metaphysics for mental kinds like declarative memory can be articulated on the model of existing accounts of other constructed kinds. Finally, we argue that such a metaphysics addresses the more pressing objections to our claim that mental kinds like declarative memory may properly be considered human kinds.