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A matter of individuality

Philosophy of Science 45 (3):335-360 (1978)

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  1. Community Ecology, Scale, and the Instability of the Stability Concept.E. D. McCoy & Kristin Shrader-Frechette - 1992 - PSA Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1992 (1):184-199.
    In the Preface to his recent philosophy of biology (1988) and in his earlierGrowth of Biological Thought(1982), Ernst Mayr emphasized that recent progress in evolutionary biology is a result of conceptual clarification, not a consequence of improved measurements or better scientific laws. Although complete agreement on the meaning of key concepts is not essential for all communication in science (see Hull 1988, pp. 6-7,513), we likewise believe that conceptual clarification is perhaps the most important key to progress in community ecology. (...)
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  • Sober’s Use of Unanimity in the Units of Selection Problem.Fred Gifford - 1986 - PSA Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1986 (1):473-482.
    The units of selection problem is an issue within evolutionary theory (or the philosophy thereof) and concerns the question of what units or objects are acted upon by natural selection -- for example, whether these are genes, organisms or groups of organisms. One of the central theses of Elliot Sober’s recent book,The Nature of Selection, is that the philosophical problem of what it means for something to be a unit of selection is to be understood by applying the correct account (...)
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  • Mind-Dependent Kinds.Khalidi Muhammad Ali - 2016 - Journal of Social Ontology 2 (2):223-246.
    Many philosophers take mind-independence to be criterial for realism about kinds. This is problematic when it comes to psychological and social kinds, which are unavoidably mind-dependent. But reflection on the case of artificial or synthetic kinds shows that the criterion of mind-independence needs to be qualified in certain ways. However, I argue that none of the usual variants on the criterion of mind-dependence is capable of distinguishing real or natural kinds from non-real kinds. Although there is a way of modifying (...)
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  • Biological Individuals.Robert A. Wilson & Matthew J. Barker - 2024 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    The impressive variation amongst biological individuals generates many complexities in addressing the simple-sounding question what is a biological individual? A distinction between evolutionary and physiological individuals is useful in thinking about biological individuals, as is attention to the kinds of groups, such as superorganisms and species, that have sometimes been thought of as biological individuals. More fully understanding the conceptual space that biological individuals occupy also involves considering a range of other concepts, such as life, reproduction, and agency. There has (...)
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  • Philosophy of immunology.Bartlomiej Swiatczak & Alfred I. Tauber - 2020 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2020.
    Philosophy of immunology is a subfield of philosophy of biology dealing with ontological and epistemological issues related to the studies of the immune system. While speculative investigations and abstract analyses have always been part of immune theorizing, until recently philosophers have largely ignored immunology. Yet the implications for understanding the philosophical basis of organismal functions framed by immunity offer new perspectives on fundamental questions of biology and medicine. Developed in the context of history of medicine, theoretical biology, and medical anthropology, (...)
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  • Nietzsche contra Darwin.John Richardson - 2002 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 65 (3):537-575.
    Nietzsche attributes 'will power' to all living things, but this seems in sharp conflict with other positions important to him-and implausible besides. The doctrine smacks of both metaphysics and anthropomorphizing, which he elsewhere derides. Will to power seems to be an intentional end-directedness, involving cognitive or representational powers he is rightly loath to attribute to all organisms, and tends to downplay even in persons. This paper argues that we find a stronger reading of will to power-both more plausible and more (...)
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  • Nietzsche Contra Darwin.John Richardson - 2002 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 65 (3):537-575.
    Nietzsche attributes ‘will power’ to all living things, but this seems in sharp conflict with other positions important to him‐and implausible besides. The doctrine smacks of both metaphysics and anthropomorphizing, which he elsewhere derides. Will to power seems to be an intentional end‐directedness, involving cognitive or representational powers he is rightly loath to attribute to all organisms, and tends to downplay even in persons. This paper argues that we find a stronger reading of will to power‐both more plausible and more (...)
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  • What is a species?Martin Mahner - 1993 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 24 (1):103 - 126.
    The continuing discussion of the species problem suffers from the lack of a coherent ontological theory as a basis for determining whether species have an ontological status. It has attempted to apply a full-fledged metaphysical theory to the species problem: the ontology of Mario Bunge. In doing so a few ontological fundamentals including system, individual, real and conceptual object, and law are briefly introduced. It is with the help of these fundamentals that an analysis of the species-as-individuals thesis is carried (...)
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  • What Is a Species? A Contribution to the Never Ending Species Debate in Biology.Martin Mahner - 1993 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 24 (1):103 - 126.
    The continuing discussion of the species problem suffers from the lack of a coherent ontological theory as a basis for determining whether species have an ontological status. It has attempted to apply a full-fledged metaphysical theory to the species problem: the ontology of Mario Bunge. In doing so a few ontological fundamentals including system, individual, real and conceptual object, and law are briefly introduced. It is with the help of these fundamentals that an analysis of the species-as-individuals thesis is carried (...)
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  • Species.Philip Kitcher - 1984 - Philosophy of Science 51 (2):308-333.
    I defend a view of the species category, pluralistic realism, which is designed to do justice to the insights of many different groups of systematists. After arguing that species are sets and not individuals, I proceed to outline briefly some defects of the biological species concept. I draw the general moral that similar shortcomings arise for other popular views of the nature of species. These shortcomings arise because the legitimate interests of biology are diverse, and these diverse interests are reflected (...)
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  • Species.Philip Kitcher - 1984 - Philosophy of Science 51 (2):308-333.
    I defend a view of the species category, pluralistic realism, which is designed to do justice to the insights of many different groups of systematists. After arguing that species are sets and not individuals, I proceed to outline briefly some defects of the biological species concept. I draw the general moral that similar shortcomings arise for other popular views of the nature of species. These shortcomings arise because the legitimate interests of biology are diverse, and these diverse interests are reflected (...)
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  • Systematics and the Darwinian revolution.Kevin de Queiroz - 1988 - Philosophy of Science 55 (2):238-259.
    Taxonomies of living things and the methods used to produce them changed little with the institutionalization of evolutionary thinking in biology. Instead, the relationships expressed in existing taxonomies were merely reinterpreted as the result of evolution, and evolutionary concepts were developed to justify existing methods. I argue that the delay of the Darwinian Revolution in biological taxonomy has resulted partly from a failure to distinguish between two fundamentally different ways of ordering identified by Griffiths : classification and systematization. Classification consists (...)
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  • The moral justification for keeping animals in captivity.Stephen St Chad Bostock - 1987 - Dissertation, University of Glasgow
    I attempt a reasoned, qualified defence of zoos, but in full recognition of the moral challenge to them. This challenge is mainly examined in chapters 3 to 7. Animals are indeed free in the wild, and must lose that freedom in some degree in zoos *. However animal captivity need only share with human captivity its being brought about by an external agent, it can and should be captivity in a technical sense only, and at its best can clearly be (...)
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  • Rarity and endangerment: Why do they matter?Simon P. James - 2024 - Environmental Values 33 (3):296-310.
    It is often supposed that valuable organisms are more valuable if they are rare. Likewise if they belong to endangered species. I consider what kinds of value rarity and endangerment can add in such cases. I argue that individual organisms of a valuable species typically have instrumental value as means to the end of preserving their species. This progenitive value, I suggest, tends to increase exponentially with rarity. Endlings, for their part, typically have little progenitive value; however, I argue that (...)
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  • A common structure for concepts of individuals, stuffs, and real kinds: More Mama, more milk, and more mouse.Ruth Garrett Millikan - 1997 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 21 (1):55-65.
    Concepts are highly theoretical entities. One cannot study them empirically without committing oneself to substantial preliminary assumptions. Among the competing theories of concepts and categorization developed by psychologists in the last thirty years, the implicit theoretical assumption that what falls under a concept is determined by description () has never been seriously challenged. I present a nondescriptionist theory of our most basic concepts, which include (1) stuffs (gold, milk), (2) real kinds (cat, chair), and (3) individuals (Mama, Bill Clinton, the (...)
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  • The normal genome in twentieth-century evolutionary thought.Lisa Gannett - 2003 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 34 (1):143-185.
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  • Phylogenetic definitions and taxonomic philosophy.Kevin de Queiroz - 1992 - Biology and Philosophy 7 (3):295-313.
    An examination of the post-Darwinian history of biological taxonomy reveals an implicit assumption that the definitions of taxon names consist of lists of organismal traits. That assumption represents a failure to grant the concept of evolution a central role in taxonomy, and it causes conflicts between traditional methods of defining taxon names and evolutionary concepts of taxa. Phylogenetic definitions of taxon names (de Queiroz and Gauthier 1990) grant the concept of common ancestry a central role in the definitions of taxon (...)
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  • Sutton’s Solution to the Grounding Problem.Ezequiel Zerbudis - 2023 - Manuscrito 46 (1):1-28.
    I critically discuss Sutton’s 2012 attempt to solve the so-called “grounding problem” for coincident objects, namely, the difficulty of explaining how such objects, such as a statue and the lump of clay from which it was made, can have distinct kind and modal properties, even though they share the same proper parts and basic microphysical properties. Sutton bases her solution on an account of the extrinsic composition of the different sorts of objects involved in such cases - in particular, artefacts, (...)
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  • The place of mind, and the limits of amplification.Joachim F. Wohlwill - 1982 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 5 (1):30-31.
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  • The metaphysics of individuality and its consequences for systematic biology.E. O. Wiley - 1981 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 4 (2):302-303.
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  • Species are individuals: Theoretical foundations for the claim.Mary B. Williams - 1985 - Philosophy of Science 52 (4):578-590.
    This paper shows that species are individuals with respect to evolutionary theory in the sense that the laws of the theory deal with species as irreducible wholes rather than as sets of organisms. 'Species X' is an instantiation of a primitive term of the theory. I present a sketch of a proof that it cannot be defined within the theory as a set of organisms; the proof relies not on details of my axiomatization but rather on a generally accepted property (...)
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  • Individualism, causal powers, and explanation.Robert A. Wilson - 1992 - Philosophical Studies 68 (2):103-39.
    This paper examines a recent, influential argument for individualism in psychology defended by Jerry Fodor and others, what I call the argument from causal powers. I argue that this argument equivocates on the crucial notion of "causal powers", and that this equivocation constitutes a deep problem for arguments of this type. Relational and individualistic taxonomies are incompatible, and it does not seem in general to be possible to factor the former into the latter. The distinction between powers and properties plays (...)
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  • 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 (...)
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  • Genes, mind, and culture; A turning point.Thomas Rhys Williams - 1982 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 5 (1):29-30.
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  • Promiscuous Realism.Robert A. Wilson - 1996 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 47 (2):303-316.
    This paper is a critical discussion of John Dupré's recent defence of promiscuous realism in Part 1 of his The Disorder of Things: Metaphysical Foundations of the Disunity of Science. It also discusses some more general issues in the philosophy of biology and science. Dupré's chief strategy of argumentation appeals to debates within the philosophy of biology, all of which concern the nature of species. While the strategy is well motivated, I argue that Dupré's challenge to essentialist and unificationist views (...)
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  • Changing conceptions of species.Bradley E. Wilson - 1996 - Biology and Philosophy 11 (3):405-420.
    Species are thought by many to be important units of evolution. In this paper, I argue against that view. My argument is based on an examination of the role of species in the synthetic theory of evolution. I argue that if one adopts a gradualist view of evolution, one cannot make sense of the claim that species are units in the minimal sense needed to claim that they are units of evolution, namely, that they exist as discrete entities over time. (...)
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  • Are species sets?Bradley E. Wilson - 1991 - Biology and Philosophy 6 (4):413-431.
    I construe the question Are species sets? as a question about whether species can be conceived of as sets, as the term set is understood by contemporary logicians. The question is distinct from the question Are species classes?: The conception of classes invoked by Hull and others differs from the logician's conception of a set. I argue that species can be conceived of as sets, insofar as one could identify a set with any given species and that identification would satisfy (...)
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  • A (not-so-radical) solution to the species problem.Bradley E. Wilson - 1995 - Biology and Philosophy 10 (3):339-356.
    What are species? One popular answer is that species are individuals. Here I develop another approach to thinking about species, an approach based on the notion of a lineage. A lineage is a sequence of reproducing entities, individuated in terms of its components. I argue that one can conceive of species as groups of lineages, either organism lineages or population lineages. Conceiving of species as groups of lineages resolves the problems that the individual conception of species is supposed to resolve. (...)
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  • A Cladist is a systematist who seeks a natural classification: some comments on Quinn.David M. Williams & Malte C. Ebach - 2018 - Biology and Philosophy 33 (1-2):10.
    In response to Quinn we identify cladistics to be about natural classifications and their discovery and thereby propose to add an eighth cladistic definition to Quinn’s list, namely the systematist who seeks to discover natural classifications, regardless of their affiliation, theoretical or methodological justifications.
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  • How we Think About Human Nature: Cognitive Errors and Concrete Remedies.Alexander J. Werth & Douglas Allchin - 2021 - Foundations of Science 26 (4):825-846.
    Appeals to human nature are ubiquitous, yet historically many have proven ill-founded. Why? How might frequent errors be remedied towards building a more robust and reliable scientific study of human nature? Our aim is neither to advance specific scientific or philosophical claims about human nature, nor to proscribe or eliminate such claims. Rather, we articulate through examples the types of errors that frequently arise in this field, towards improving the rigor of the scientific and social studies. We seek to analyze (...)
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  • Natural selection and self-organization.Bruce H. Weber & David J. Depew - 1996 - Biology and Philosophy 11 (1):33-65.
    The Darwinian concept of natural selection was conceived within a set of Newtonian background assumptions about systems dynamics. Mendelian genetics at first did not sit well with the gradualist assumptions of the Darwinian theory. Eventually, however, Mendelism and Darwinism were fused by reformulating natural selection in statistical terms. This reflected a shift to a more probabilistic set of background assumptions based upon Boltzmannian systems dynamics. Recent developments in molecular genetics and paleontology have put pressure on Darwinism once again. Current work (...)
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  • Causes, kinds and forms.Gerry Webster - 1993 - Acta Biotheoretica 41 (4):275-287.
    Realist philosophies of science posit a dialectical relation between theoretical, explanatory knowledge and practical, including taxonomic knowledge. This paper examines the dialectic between the theory of descent and empirical, Linnaean taxonomy which is based on a logic of traditional classes. It considers the arguments of David Hull to the effect that many of the practical problems of empirical classification can be resolved by means of an ontology based upon the theory of descent in which species taxa are regarded as individuals (...)
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  • Evolutionary essentialism.Denis Walsh - 2006 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 57 (2):425-448.
    According to Aristotelian essentialism, the nature of an organism is constituted of a particular goal-directed disposition to produce an organism typical of its kind. This paper argues—against the prevailing orthodoxy—that essentialism of this sort is indispensable to evolutionary biology. The most powerful anti-essentialist arguments purport to show that the natures of organisms play no explanatory role in modern synthesis biology. I argue that recent evolutionary developmental biology provides compelling evidence to the contrary. Developmental biology shows that one must appeal to (...)
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  • No norms and no nature — the moral relevance of evolutionary biology.Bart Voorzanger - 1987 - Biology and Philosophy 2 (3):253-270.
    Many think that evolutionary biology has relevance to ethics, but how far that relevance extends is a matter of debate. It is easy to show that pop sociobiological approaches to ethics all commit some type of naturalistic fallacy. More sophisticated attempts, like Donald Campbell's, or, more recently, Robert Richards', are not so easily refuted, but I will show that they too reason fallaciously from facts to values. What remains is the possibility of an evolutionary search for human nature. Unfortunately, evolutionary (...)
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  • Threads that Guide or Ties that Bind: William Kirby and the Essentialism Story.Charissa S. Varma - 2009 - Journal of the History of Biology 42 (1):119-149.
    Nineteenth-century British entomologist William Kirby is best known for his generic division of bees based on tongues and his vigorous defence of natural theology. Focusing on these aspects of Kirby's work has lead many current scholars to characterise Kirby as an "essentialist." As a result of this characterisation, many important aspects of his work, Monographia Apum Angliœ (1802) have been over-looked or misunderstood. Kirby's religious devotion, for example, have lead some scholars to assume Kirby used the term "type" for connecting (...)
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  • Resistance to biological self-understanding.Pierre L. van den Berghe - 1982 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 5 (1):27-27.
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  • Omnipotence and spatiotemporally restricted entities.Kevin Vandergriff - 2018 - International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 84 (1):3-29.
    Many people who claim that evolution and theism are in tension assume that God, being omnipotent, could create life in different ways. For instance, Paul Draper has argued that the fact that life evolved on earth supports naturalism over theism. However, for there to be a probabilistic tension between naturalism and theism, because of the fact of evolution, a certain background assumption must be true, namely, that God could have made biological organisms and species through an act of Genesis-style special (...)
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  • Methodological problems in evolutionary biology VII. The species plague.Wim J. van der Steen & Bart Voorzanger - 1986 - Acta Biotheoretica 35 (3):205-221.
    Various philosophers and evolutionary biologists have recently defended the thesis that species are individuals rather than sets. A decade of debates, however, did not suffice to settle the matter. Conceptual analysis shows that many of the key terms involved are ambiguous. Current disagreements should dissolve once this is recognized. Explication of the concepts involved leads to new programs for philosophical research. It could also help biology by showing how extant controversies concerning evolution may have conceptual rather than factual roots.
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  • Laws and Natural History in Biology.Wim J. Van Der Steen & Harmke Kamminga - 1991 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 42 (4):445-467.
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  • Information, feedback, and transparency.Robert Van Gulick - 1982 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 5 (1):27-29.
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  • A Conceptual Analysis of Evolutionary Theory for Teacher Education.Esther M. van Dijk & Thomas A. C. Reydon - 2010 - Science & Education 19 (6-8):655-677.
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  • Dealing with the changeable and blurry edges of living things: a modified version of property-cluster kinds.Jon Umerez & María J. Ferreira Ruiz - 2018 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 8 (3):493-518.
    Despite many attempts to achieve an adequate definition of living systems by means of a set of necessary and sufficient conditions, the opinion that such an enterprise is inexorably destined to fail is increasingly gaining support. However, we believe options do not just come down to either having faith in a future success or endorsing skepticism. In this paper, we aim to redirect the discussion of the problem by shifting the focus of attention from strict definitions towards a philosophical framework (...)
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  • Ecological laws of perceiving and acting: In reply to Fodor and Pylyshyn.Michael T. Turvey, R. E. Shaw, Edward S. Reed & William M. Mace - 1981 - Cognition 9 (3):237-304.
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  • The metaphysical equivalence between 3D and 4D theories of species.Vanessa Triviño & María Cerezo - 2015 - Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 71 (4):781-806.
    Resumo Neste artigo, vamos considerar o recente debate na metafísica da evolução, no que diz respeito tanto à persistência como à “mudança” em espécies biológicas, segundo a tese que considera a espécie como o agregado de indivíduos. Centrar-nos-emos na proposta de Thomas Reydon, que argumenta que em biologia, o termo “espécie” refere-se a duas entidades biológicas, por si denominadas evolverons e phylons, que desempenham vários papéis epistemológicos em pelo menos duas disciplinas diferentes, nomeadamente na biologia sistemática e na biologia evolutiva. (...)
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  • Towards a characterization of metaphysics of biology: metaphysics for and metaphysics in biology.Vanesa Triviño - 2022 - Synthese 200 (5):1-21.
    Since the last decades of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century, the use of metaphysics by philosophers when approaching conceptual problems in biology has increased. Some philosophers call this tendency in philosophy of biology ‘Metaphysics of Biology’. In this paper, I aim at characterizing Metaphysics of Biology by paying attention to the diverse ways philosophers use metaphysics when addressing conceptual problems in biology. I will claim that there are two different modes of doing Metaphysics of Biology, namely (...)
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  • On the nature of the species problem and the four meanings of 'species'.Thomas A. C. Reydon - 2005 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 36 (1):135-158.
    Present-day thought on the notion of species is troubled by a mistaken understanding of the nature of the issue: while the species problem is commonly understood as concerning the epistemology and ontology of one single scientific concept, I argue that in fact there are multiple distinct concepts at stake. An approach to the species problem is presented that interprets the term ‘species’ as the placeholder for four distinct scientific concepts, each having its own role in biological theory, and an explanation (...)
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  • Individual differences, uniqueness, and individuality in behavioural ecology.Rose Trappes - 2022 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 96 (C):18-26.
    In this paper I develop a concept of behavioural ecological individuality. Using findings from a case study which employed qualitative methods, I argue that individuality in behavioural ecology should be defined as phenotypic and ecological uniqueness, a concept that is operationalised in terms of individual differences such as animal personality and individual specialisation. This account make sense of how the term “individuality” is used in relation to intrapopulation variation in behavioural ecology. The concept of behavioural ecological individuality can sometimes be (...)
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  • Broadening the problem agenda of biological individuality: individual differences, uniqueness and temporality.Rose Trappes & Marie I. Kaiser - 2021 - Biology and Philosophy 36 (2):1-28.
    Biological individuality is a notoriously thorny topic for biologists and philosophers of biology. In this paper we argue that biological individuality presents multiple, interconnected questions for biologists and philosophers that together form a problem agenda. Using a case study of an interdisciplinary research group in ecology, behavioral and evolutionary biology, we claim that a debate on biological individuality that seeks to account for diverse practices in the biological sciences should be broadened to include and give prominence to questions about uniqueness (...)
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  • Nuevos ensayos de filosofía de la biología.Roberto Torretti - 2008 - Revista de filosofía (Chile) 64:215-229.
    Informe sobre The Cambridge Companion to the Philosophy of Biology, David L. Hull y Michael Ruse, eds. y Philosophy of Biology, Mohan Matthen y Christopher Stephens, eds. . A review essay concerning The Cambridge Companion to the Philosophy of Biology, David L. Hull and Michael Ruse, eds. and Philosophy of Biology, Mohan Matthen and Christopher Stephens, eds.
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  • A Phenomenological and Dynamic View of Homology: Homologs as Persistently Reproducible Modules.Daichi G. Suzuki & Senji Tanaka - 2017 - Biological Theory 12 (3):169-180.
    Homology is a fundamental concept in biology. However, the metaphysical status of homology, especially whether a homolog is a part of an individual or a member of a natural kind, is still a matter of intense debate. The proponents of the individuality view of homology criticize the natural kind view of homology by pointing out that homologs are subject to evolutionary transformation, and natural kinds do not change in the evolutionary process. Conversely, some proponents of the natural kind view of (...)
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