ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that there is good reason to employ the notion of grouphood in making well-grounded taxonomic divisions. In taking 'social group' to be a kind term, it is necessary to adopt a theoretical model of kindhood, which is more concessive than an essentialist basis for ordering the world into natural kinds. A systematic ordering of the world in accordance with kinds which people have good reason to recognise can proceed ahead of the empirical discovery of the details of a kind's essence. The chapter outlines the model of groups is not limited in its application to human groups. Many of our groups do possess a different and distinctly human character, setting them apart to a lesser or greater degree from primate colonies, packs of wolves and flocks of birds. To talk of animals in social or group terms is not a metaphorical extension of a concept that has its application centrally to the human world.
