Being and being called. Paradigm case arguments revisited

Though paradigm case arguments went out of fashion in the Sixties, the reasons on which they were rejected were somewhat less than compelling. In this paper, I try to show why such arguments should be regarded as invalid. However, considerations crucially bearing against paradigm case arguments also appear to threaten the standard account of the semantics of natural kind words. In the paper's second part, I show on what conditions the standard account can be defended against criticism such criticism.