Switch to: References

Add citations

You must login to add citations.
  1. Scientific kinds.Marc Ereshefsky & Thomas A. C. Reydon - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (4):969-986.
    Richard Boyd’s Homeostatic Property Cluster Theory is becoming the received view of natural kinds in the philosophy of science. However, a problem with HPC Theory is that it neglects many kinds highlighted by scientific classifications while at the same time endorsing kinds rejected by science. In other words, there is a mismatch between HPC kinds and the kinds of science. An adequate account of natural kinds should accurately track the classifications of successful science. We offer an alternative account of natural (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   80 citations  
  • When Traditional Essentialism Fails: Biological Natural Kinds.Robert A. Wilson, Matthew J. Barker & Ingo Brigandt - 2007 - Philosophical Topics 35 (1-2):189-215.
    Essentialism is widely regarded as a mistaken view of biological kinds, such as species. After recounting why (sections 2-3), we provide a brief survey of the chief responses to the “death of essentialism” in the philosophy of biology (section 4). We then develop one of these responses, the claim that biological kinds are homeostatic property clusters (sections 5-6) illustrating this view with several novel examples (section 7). Although this view was first expressed 20 years ago, and has received recent discussion (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   109 citations  
  • Resurrecting biological essentialism.Michael Devitt - 2008 - Philosophy of Science 75 (3):344-382.
    The article defends the doctrine that Linnaean taxa, including species, have essences that are, at least partly, underlying intrinsic, mostly genetic, properties. The consensus among philosophers of biology is that such essentialism is deeply wrong, indeed incompatible with Darwinism. I argue that biological generalizations about the morphology, physiology, and behavior of species require structural explanations that must advert to these essential properties. The objection that, according to current “species concepts,” species are relational is rejected. These concepts are primarily concerned with (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   133 citations  
  • Generic Animalism.Andrew M. Bailey & Peter van Elswyk - 2021 - Journal of Philosophy 118 (8):405-429.
    The animalist says we are animals. This thesis is commonly understood as the universal generalization that all human persons are human animals. This article proposes an alternative: the thesis is a generic that admits of exceptions. We defend the resulting view, which we call ‘generic animalism’, and show its aptitude for diagnosing the limits of eight case-based objections to animalism.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • Extended cognition and the explosion of knowledge.David Ludwig - 2014 - Philosophical Psychology (3):1-14.
    The aim of this article is to show that externalist accounts of cognition such as Clark and Chalmers' (1998) “active externalism” lead to an explosion of knowledge that is caused by online resources such as Wikipedia and Google. I argue that externalist accounts of cognition imply that subjects who integrate mobile Internet access in their cognitive routines have millions of standing beliefs on unexpected issues such as the birth dates of Moroccan politicians or the geographical coordinates of villages in southern (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   22 citations  
  • Conceptual fragmentation and the rise of eliminativism.Henry Taylor & Peter Vickers - 2017 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 7 (1):17-40.
    Pluralist and eliminativist positions have proliferated within both science and philosophy of science in recent decades. This paper asks the question why this shift of thinking has occurred, and where it is leading us. We provide an explanation which, if correct, entails that we should expect pluralism and eliminativism to transform other debates currently unaffected, and for good reasons. We then consider the question under what circumstances eliminativism will be appropriate, arguing that it depends not only on the term in (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   32 citations  
  • What's Wrong with the New Biological Essentialism.Marc Ereshefsky - 2010 - Philosophy of Science 77 (5):674-685.
    The received view in the philosophy of biology is that biological taxa (species and higher taxa) do not have essences. Recently, some philosophers (Boyd, Devitt, Griffiths, LaPorte, Okasha, and Wilson) have suggested new forms of biological essentialism. They argue that according to these new forms of essentialism, biological taxa do have essences. This article critically evaluates the new biological essentialism. This article’s thesis is that the costs of adopting the new biological essentialism are many, yet the benefits are none, so (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   51 citations  
  • Etiological Kinds.Muhammad Ali Khalidi - 2021 - Philosophy of Science 88 (1):1-21.
    Kinds that share historical properties are dubbed “historical kinds” or “etiological kinds,” and they have some distinctive features. I will try to characterize etiological kinds in general terms and briefly survey some previous philosophical discussions of these kinds. Then I will take a closer look at a few case studies involving different types of etiological kinds. Finally, I will try to understand the rationale for classifying on the basis of etiology, putting forward reasons for classifying phenomena on the basis of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  • Human Nature: The Very Idea.Tim Lewens - 2012 - Philosophy and Technology 25 (4):459-474.
    Abstract The only biologically respectable notion of human nature is an extremely permissive one that names the reliable dispositions of the human species as a whole. This conception offers no ethical guidance in debates over enhancement, and indeed it has the result that alterations to human nature have been commonplace in the history of our species. Aristotelian conceptions of species natures, which are currently fashionable in meta-ethics and applied ethics, have no basis in biological fact. Moreover, because our folk psychology (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   41 citations  
  • When imprecision is a good thing, or how imprecise concepts facilitate integration in biology.Celso Neto - 2020 - Biology and Philosophy 35 (6):1-21.
    Contrary to the common-sense view and positivist aspirations, scientific concepts are often imprecise. Many of these concepts are ambiguous, vague, or have an under-specified meaning. In this paper, I discuss how imprecise concepts promote integration in biology and thus benefit science. Previous discussions of this issue focus on the concepts of molecular gene and evolutionary novelty. The concept of molecular gene helps biologists integrate explanatory practices, while the notion of evolutionary novelty helps them integrate research questions into an interdisciplinary problem (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   15 citations  
  • How to Philosophically Tackle Kinds without Talking About ‘Natural Kinds’.Ingo Brigandt - 2020 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 52 (3):356-379.
    Recent rival attempts in the philosophy of science to put forward a general theory of the properties that all (and only) natural kinds across the sciences possess may have proven to be futile. Instead, I develop a general methodological framework for how to philosophically study kinds. Any kind has to be investigated and articulated together with the human aims that motivate referring to this kind, where different kinds in the same scientific domain can answer to different concrete aims. My core (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   12 citations  
  • Revamping the Metaphysics of Ethnobiological Classification.David Ludwig - 2018 - Current Anthropology 59 (4):415-438.
    Ethnobiology has a long tradition of metaphysical debates about the “naturalness,” “objectivity”, “reality”, and “universality” of classifications. Especially the work of Brent Berlin has been influential in developing a “convergence metaphysics” that explains cross-cultural similarities of knowledge systems through shared recognition of objective discontinuities in nature. Despite its influence on the development of the field, convergence metaphysics has largely fallen out of favor as contemporary ethnobiologists tend to emphasize the locality and diversity of classificatory practices. The aim of this article (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  • Microbiology and the species problem.Marc Ereshefsky - 2010 - Biology and Philosophy 25 (4):553-568.
    This paper examines the species problem in microbiology and its implications for the species problem more generally. Given the different meanings of ‘species’ in microbiology, the use of ‘species’ in biology is more multifarious and problematic than commonly recognized. So much so, that recent work in microbial systematics casts doubt on the existence of a prokaryote species category in nature. It also casts doubt on the existence of a general species category for all of life (one that includes both prokaryotes (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   47 citations  
  • Unspeakable names.Eliot Michaelson - 2023 - Synthese 201 (2):1-19.
    There are some names which cannot be spoken and others which cannot be written, at least on certain very natural ways of conceiving of them. Interestingly, this observation proves to be in tension with a wide range of views about what names are. Prima facie, this looks like a problem for predicativists. Ultima facie, it turns out to be equally problematic for Millians. For either sort of theorist, resolving this tension requires embracing a revisionary account of the metaphysics of names. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • Non-essentialist methods in pre-Darwinian taxonomy.Mary P. Winsor - 2003 - Biology and Philosophy 18 (3):387-400.
    The current widespread belief that taxonomic methods used before Darwin were essentialist is ill-founded. The essentialist method developed by followers of Plato and Aristotle required definitions to state properties that are always present. Polythetic groups do not obey that requirement, whatever may have been the ontological beliefs of the taxonomist recognizing such groups. Two distinct methods of forming higher taxa, by chaining and by examplar, were widely used in the period between Linnaeus and Darwin, and both generated polythetic groups. Philosopher (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   55 citations  
  • Taxonomy, Polymorphism, and History: An Introduction to Population Structure Theory.Marc Ereshefsky & Mohan Matthen - 2005 - Philosophy of Science 72 (1):1-21.
    Homeostatic Property Cluster (HPC) theory suggests that species and other biological taxa consist of organisms that share certain similarities. HPC theory acknowledges the existence of Darwinian variation within biological taxa. The claim is that “homeostatic mechanisms” acting on the members of such taxa nonetheless ensure a significant cluster of similarities. The HPC theorist’s focus on individual similarities is inadequate to account for stable polymorphism within taxa, and fails properly to capture their historical nature. A better approach is to treat distributions (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   48 citations  
  • Homology thinking.Marc Ereshefsky - 2012 - Biology and Philosophy 27 (3):381-400.
    This paper explores an important type of biological explanation called ‘homology thinking.’ Homology thinking explains the properties of a homologue by citing the history of a homologue. Homology thinking is significant in several ways. First, it offers more detailed explanations of biological phenomena than corresponding analogy explanations. Second, it provides an important explanation of character similarity and difference. Third, homology thinking offers a promising account of multiple realizability in biology.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   32 citations  
  • The importance of homology for biology and philosophy.Ingo Brigandt & Paul Edmund Griffiths - 2007 - Biology and Philosophy 22 (5):633-641.
    Editors' introduction to the special issue on homology (Biology and Philosophy Vol. 22, Issue 5, 2007).
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   33 citations  
  • Ontology and values anchor indigenous and grey nomenclatures: a case study in lichen naming practices among the Samí, Sherpa, Scots, and Okanagan.Catherine Kendig - 2020 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 84:101340.
    Ethnobotanical research provides ample justification for comparing diverse biological nomenclatures and exploring ways that retain alternative naming practices. However, how (and whether) comparison of nomenclatures is possible remains a subject of discussion. The comparison of diverse nomenclatural practices introduces a suite of epistemic and ontological difficulties and considerations. Different nomenclatures may depend on whether the communities using them rely on formalized naming conventions; cultural or spiritual valuations; or worldviews. Because of this, some argue that the different naming practices may not (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  • Art Concept Pluralism.Christy Mag Uidhir & P. D. Magnus - 2011 - Metaphilosophy 42 (1-2):83-97.
    Abstract: There is a long tradition of trying to analyze art either by providing a definition (essentialism) or by tracing its contours as an indefinable, open concept (anti-essentialism). Both art essentialists and art anti-essentialists share an implicit assumption of art concept monism. This article argues that this assumption is a mistake. Species concept pluralism—a well-explored position in philosophy of biology—provides a model for art concept pluralism. The article explores the conditions under which concept pluralism is appropriate, and argues that they (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   18 citations  
  • Natural Kinds (Cambridge Elements in Philosophy of Science).Muhammad Ali Khalidi - 2023 - Cambridge University Press.
    Scientists cannot devise theories, construct models, propose explanations, make predictions, or even carry out observations, without first classifying their subject matter. The goal of scientific taxonomy is to come up with classification schemes that conform to nature's own. Another way of putting this is that science aims to devise categories that correspond to 'natural kinds.' The interest in ascertaining the real kinds of things in nature is as old as philosophy itself, but it takes on a different guise when one (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Naming and contingency: the type method of biological taxonomy.Joeri Witteveen - 2015 - Biology and Philosophy 30 (4):569-586.
    Biological taxonomists rely on the so-called ‘type method’ to regulate taxonomic nomenclature. For each newfound taxon, they lay down a ‘type specimen’ that carries with it the name of the taxon it belongs to. Even if a taxon’s circumscription is unknown and/or subject to change, it remains a necessary truth that the taxon’s type specimen falls within its boundaries. Philosophers have noted some time ago that this naming practice is in line with the causal theory of reference and its central (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   17 citations  
  • Species Have (Partly) Intrinsic Essences.Michael Devitt - 2010 - Philosophy of Science 77 (5):648-661.
    The paper defends the doctrine that Linnaean taxa, including species, have essences that are, at least partly, underlying intrinsic, mostly genetic, properties. The consensus among philosophers of biology is that such essentialism is deeply wrong, indeed incompatible with Darwinism. I argue that biological generalizations about the morphology, physiology, and behavior of species require structural explanations that must advert to these essential properties. The paper concludes by summarizing my responses to the objection that, according to current “species concepts,” species are relational, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   29 citations  
  • Robustness, Diversity of Evidence, and Probabilistic Independence.Jonah N. Schupbach - 2015 - In Uskali Mäki, Stéphanie Ruphy, Gerhard Schurz & Ioannis Votsis (eds.), Recent Developments in the Philosophy of Science. Cham: Springer. pp. 305-316.
    In robustness analysis, hypotheses are supported to the extent that a result proves robust, and a result is robust to the extent that we detect it in diverse ways. But what precise sense of diversity is at work here? In this paper, I show that the formal explications of evidential diversity most often appealed to in work on robustness – which all draw in one way or another on probabilistic independence – fail to shed light on the notion of diversity (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  • No purely epistemic theory can account for the naturalness of kinds.Olivier Lemeire - 2018 - Synthese 198 (Suppl 12):2907-2925.
    Several philosophers have recently tried to define natural kinds in epistemic terms only. Given the persistent problems with finding a successful metaphysical theory, these philosophers argue that we would do better to describe natural kinds solely in terms of their epistemic usefulness, such as their role in supporting inductive inferences. In this paper, I argue against these epistemology-only theories of natural kinds and in favor of, at least partly, metaphysical theories. I do so in three steps. In the first section (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  • Eliminative Pluralism and Integrative Alternatives: The Case of Species.Matthew J. Barker - 2019 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 70 (3):657-681.
    Pluralisms of various sorts are popular in philosophy of science, including those that imply some scientific concept x should be eliminated from science in favour of a plurality of concepts x1, x2, … xn. This article focuses on influential and representative arguments for such eliminative pluralism about the concept species. The main conclusions are that these arguments fail, that all other extant arguments also fail, and that this reveals a quite general dilemma, one that poses a defeasible presumption against many (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  • Organisms, activity, and being: on the substance of process ontology.Christopher J. Austin - 2020 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 10 (2):1-21.
    According to contemporary ‘process ontology’, organisms are best conceptualised as spatio-temporally extended entities whose mereological composition is fundamentally contingent and whose essence consists in changeability. In contrast to the Aristotelian precepts of classical ‘substance ontology’, from the four-dimensional perspective of this framework, the identity of an organism is grounded not in certain collections of privileged properties, or features which it could not fail to possess, but in the succession of diachronic relations by which it persists, or ‘perdures’ as one entity (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • Many Meanings of ‘Heuristic’.Sheldon J. Chow - 2015 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 66 (4):977-1016.
    A survey of contemporary philosophical and scientific literatures reveals that different authors employ the term ‘heuristic’ in ways that deviate from, and are sometimes inconsistent with, one another. Given its widespread use in philosophy and cognitive science generally, it is striking that there appears to be little concern for a clear account of what phenomena heuristics pick out or refer to. In response, I consider several accounts of ‘heuristic’, and I draw a number of distinctions between different sorts of heuristics (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   15 citations  
  • Darwin’s solution to the species problem.Marc Ereshefsky - 2010 - Synthese 175 (3):405 - 425.
    Biologists and philosophers that debate the existence of the species category fall into two camps. Some believe that the species category does not exist and the term 'species' should be eliminated from biology. Others believe that with new biological insights or the application of philosophical ideas, we can be confident that the species category exists. This paper offers a different approach to the species problem. We should be skeptical of the species category, but not skeptical of the existence of those (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   20 citations  
  • (1 other version)Species in the Age of Discordance.Matthew H. Haber - 2019 - Philosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology 11 (21).
    Biological lineages move through time, space, and each other. As they do, they diversify, diverge, and grade away from and into one another. One result of this is genealogical discordance; i.e., the lineages of a biological entity may have different histories. We see this on numerous levels, from microbial networks, to holobionts, to population-level lineages. This paper considers how genealogical discordance impacts our study of species. More specifically, I consider this in the context of three framing questions: (1) How, if (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  • Individual essentialism in biology.Michael Devitt - 2018 - Biology and Philosophy 33 (5-6):39.
    A few philosophers of biology have recently explicitly rejected Essential Membership, the doctrine that if an individual organism belongs to a taxon, particularly a species, it does so essentially. But philosophers of biology have not addressed the broader issue, much discussed by metaphysicians on the basis of modal intuitions, of what is essential to the organism. In this paper, I address that issue from a biological basis, arguing for the Kripkean view that an organism has a partly intrinsic, partly historical, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  • what is a lineage?Celso Neto - 2019 - Philosophy of Science 86 (5):1099-1110.
    This article defends lineage pluralism; the view that biological lineages are not a single, unified type of entity. I analyze aspects of evolutionary theory, phylogenetics, and developmental biology to show that these areas appeal to distinct notions of lineage. I formulate three arguments for lineage pluralism. These arguments undercut the main motivations for lineage monism; the view that biological lineages are a single, unified type of entity. Although this view is rarely made explicit, it is often assumed in philosophy and (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  • Psychological categories as homologies: lessons from ethology.Marc Ereshefsky - 2007 - Biology and Philosophy 22 (5):659-674.
    Biology and Philosophy, forthcoming 2007.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   26 citations  
  • Pluto and the Platypus: An Odd Ball and an Odd Duck — On Classificatory Norms.Matthew H. Slater - 2017 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 61:1-10.
    Some astronomers believe that we have discovered that Pluto is not a planet. I contest this assessment. Recent discoveries of trans-Neptunian Pluto-sized objects do not require that we exclude Pluto from the planets. But the obvious alternative, that classificatory revision is a matter of arbitrary choice, is also unpalatable. I argue that this classificatory controversy — which I compare to the controversy about the classification of the platypus — illustrates how our classificatory practices are laden with normative commitments of a (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  • How to be a chaste species pluralist-realist: The origins of species modes and the synapomorphic species concept.John S. Wilkins - 2003 - Biology and Philosophy 18 (5):621-638.
    The biological species (biospecies) concept applies only to sexually reproducing species, which means that until sexual reproduction evolved, there were no biospecies. On the universal tree of life, biospecies concepts therefore apply only to a relatively small number of clades, notably plants andanimals. I argue that it is useful to treat the various ways of being a species (species modes) as traits of clades. By extension from biospecies to the other concepts intended to capture the natural realities of what keeps (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   23 citations  
  • Specious intrinsicalism.Matthew J. Barker - 2010 - Philosophy of Science 77 (1):73-91.
    Over the last 2,300 years or so, many philosophers have believed that species are individuated by essences that are at least in part intrinsic. Psychologists tell us most folks also believe this view. But most philosophers of biology have abandoned the view, in light of evolutionary conceptions of species. In defiance, Michael Devitt has attempted in this journal to resurrect a version of the view, which he calls Intrinsic Biological Essentialism. I show that his arguments for the resurrection fail, and (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   16 citations  
  • How to misidentify a type specimen.Matthew H. Haber - 2012 - Biology and Philosophy 27 (6):767-784.
    Type specimens are used to designate species. What is the nature of the relation between a type specimen and the species it designates? If species names are rigid designators, and type specimens ostensively define species, then that relation is, at the very least, a close one. Levine :325–338, 2001) argues that the relationship of type specimen to a named species is one of necessity—and that this presents problems for the individuality thesis. Namely, it seems odd that a contingently selected specimen (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   14 citations  
  • From the Method of Division to the Theory of Transformations: Thompson After Aristotle, and Aristotle After Thompson.Laura Nuño de la Rosa & James G. Lennox - 2023 - Biological Theory 1.
    Aristotle’s influence on D’Arcy Thompson was praised by Thompson himself and has been recognized by others in various respects, including the aesthetic and normative dimensions of biology, and the multicausal explanation of living forms. This article focuses on the relatedness of organic forms, one of the core problems addressed by both Aristotle’s History of Animals (HA), and the renowned chapter of Thompson’s On Growth and Form (G&F), “On the Theory of Transformations, or the Comparison of Related Forms.” We contend that, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Reframing the Ethical Issues in Part-Human Animal Research: The Unbearable Ontology of Inexorable Moral Confusion.Matthew H. Haber & Bryan Benham - 2012 - American Journal of Bioethics 12 (9):17-25.
    Research that involves the creation of animals with human-derived parts opens the door to potentially valuable scientific and therapeutic advances, yet invokes unsettling moral questions. Critics and champions alike stand to gain from clear identification and careful consideration of the strongest ethical objections to this research. A prevailing objection argues that crossing the human/nonhuman species boundary introduces inexorable moral confusion (IMC) that warrants a restriction to this research on precautionary grounds. Though this objection may capture the intuitions of many who (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   12 citations  
  • Causal explanation and the periodic table.Lauren N. Ross - 2018 - Synthese 198 (1):79-103.
    The periodic table represents and organizes all known chemical elements on the basis of their properties. While the importance of this table in chemistry is uncontroversial, the role that it plays in scientific reasoning remains heavily disputed. Many philosophers deny the explanatory role of the table and insist that it is “merely” classificatory (Shapere, in F. Suppe (Ed.) The structure of scientific theories, University of Illinois Press, Illinois, 1977; Scerri in Erkenntnis 47:229–243, 1997). In particular, it has been claimed that (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  • Defining vision: What homology thinking contributes.Mohan Matthen - 2007 - Biology and Philosophy 22 (5):675-689.
    The specialization of visual function within biological function is reason for introducing “homology thinking” into explanations of the visual system. It is argued that such specialization arises when organisms evolve by differentiation from their predecessors. Thus, it is essentially historical, and visual function should be regarded as a lineage property. The colour vision of birds and mammals do not function the same way as one another, on this account, because each is an adaptation to special needs of the visual functions (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   13 citations  
  • Taxonomy and conservation science: interdependent and value-laden.Stijn Conix - 2019 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 41 (2):15.
    The relation between conservation science and taxonomy is typically seen as a simple dependency of the former on the latter. This dependency is assumed to be strictly one-way to avoid normative concerns from conservation science inappropriately affecting the descriptive discipline of taxonomy. In this paper, I argue against this widely assumed standard view on the relation between these two disciplines by highlighting two important roles for conservation scientists in scientific decisions that are part of the internal stages of taxonomy. I (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  • Essentialism, history, and biological taxa.Makmiller Pedroso - 2012 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 43 (1):182-190.
    de Queiroz (1995), Griffiths (1999) and LaPorte (2004) offer a new version of essentialism called "historical essentialism". According to this version of essentialism, relations of common ancestry are essential features of biological taxa. The main type of argument for this essentialism proposed by Griffiths (1999) and LaPorte (2004) is that the dominant school of classification, cladism, defines biological taxa in terms of common ancestry. The goal of this paper is to show that this argument for historical essentialism is unsatisfactory: cladism (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  • The Mystery of the Triceratops’s Mother: How to be a Realist About the Species Category.Adrian Mitchell Currie - 2016 - Erkenntnis 81 (4):795-816.
    Can we be realists about a general category but pluralists about concepts relating to that category? I argue that paleobiological methods of delineating species are not affected by differing species concepts, and that this underwrites an argument that species concept pluralists should be species category realists. First, the criteria by which paleobiologists delineate species are ‘indifferent’ to the species category. That is, their method for identifying species applies equally to any species concept. To identify a new species, paleobiologists show that (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • Aristotelian Naturalism vs. Mutants, Aliens and the Great Red Dragon.Scott Woodcock - 2018 - American Philosophical Quarterly 55 (4):313-328.
    In this paper I present a new objection to the Aristotelian Naturalism defended by Philippa Foot. I describe this objection as a membership objection because it reveals the fact that AN invites counterexamples when pressed to identify the individuals bound by its normative claims. I present three examples of agents for whom the norms generated by AN are not obviously authoritative: mutants, aliens, and the Great Red Dragon. Those who continue to advocate for Foot's view can give compelling replies to (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • When is a cladist not a cladist?Aleta Quinn - 2017 - Biology and Philosophy 32 (4):581-598.
    The term “cladist” has distinct meanings in distinct contexts. Communication between philosophers, historians, and biologists has been hindered by different understandings of the term in various contexts. In this paper I trace historical and conceptual connections between several broadly distinct senses of the term “cladist”. I propose seven specific definitions that capture distinct contemporary uses. This serves to disambiguate some cases where the meaning is unclear, and will help resolve apparent disagreements that in fact result from conflicting understandings of the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  • Ameliorating at the joints. A permissive normative framework for conceptual engineering.Iñigo Valero - 2024 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 67 (10):3728-3749.
    In this paper I argue against Simion’s (2018) Epistemic Limiting Procedure for conceptual engineering and put forward a more permissive alternative, according to which epistemic losses do not systematically block amelioration, but merely provide reasons against it. On this less restrictive view, epistemic losses will be permissible, provided that they are compensated by the non-epistemic gains of the amelioration. After fleshing out the details of my proposal, I discuss two case studies in relation to which Simion’s restrictive procedure seems to (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Transhumanism, theological anthropology, and modern biological taxonomy.Travis Dumsday - 2017 - Zygon 52 (3):601-622.
    I examine the ways in which the theological and philosophical debate surrounding transhumanism might profit by a detailed engagement with contemporary biology, in particular with the mainline accounts of species and speciation. After a short introduction, I provide a very brief primer on species concepts and speciation in contemporary biological taxonomy. Then in a third section I draw out some implications for the prospects of our being able intentionally to intervene in human evolution for the production of new species out (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  • Does a type specimen necessarily or contingently belong to its species?Joseph LaPorte - 2003 - Biology and Philosophy 18 (4):583-588.
    In a recent article, Alex Levine raises a paradox. It appears that, given some relatively uncontroversial premises about how a species term comes to refer to its species, a type specimen belongs necessarily and contingently to its species. According to Levine, this problem arises if species are individuals rather than natural kinds. I argue that the problem can be generalized: the problem also arises if species are kinds and type specimens are paradigmatic members used to baptize names for species. Indeed, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   14 citations  
  • Classifying Life, Reconstructing History and Teaching Diversity: Philosophical Issues in the Teaching of Biological Systematics and Biodiversity.Thomas A. C. Reydon - 2013 - Science & Education 22 (2):189-220.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations