Switch to: References

Citations of:

A matter of individuality

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

Add citations

You must login to add citations.
  1. The biological reification of race.Lisa Gannett - 2004 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 55 (2):323-345.
    A consensus view appears to prevail among academics from diverse disciplines that biological races do not exist, at least in humans, and that race -concepts and race -objects are socially constructed. The consensus view has been challenged recently by Robin O. Andreasen's cladistic account of biological race. This paper argues that from a scientific viewpoint there are methodological, empirical, and conceptual problems with Andreasen's position, and that from a philosophical perspective Andreasen's adherence to rigid dichotomies between science and society, facts (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   27 citations  
  • Does the Claim that there are no Theories Imply that there is no History of Theories to be Written?(!).Steven French - forthcoming - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie:1-20.
    InThere Are No Such Things As Theories(French 2020), the reification of theories is critically analysed and rejected. My aim here is to tease out some of the implications of this approach first of all, for how we, philosophers of science, should view the history of science; secondly, for how we should understand the devices that we use in our own philosophical practices; and thirdly, for how we might think about the relationship between the history of science and the philosophy of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • What do Biologists Make of the Species Problem?Damjan Franjević, Pavel Gregorić & Bruno Pušić - 2017 - Acta Biotheoretica 65 (3):179-209.
    The concept of species is one of the core concepts in biology and one of the cornerstones of evolutionary biology, yet it is rife with conceptual problems. Philosophers of biology have been discussing the concept of species for decades, and in doing so they sometimes appeal to the views of biologists. However, their statements as to what biologists think are seldom supported by empirical data. In order to investigate what biologists actually think about the key issues related to the problem (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Natural kinds as categorical bottlenecks.Laura Franklin-Hall - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (4):925-948.
    Both realist and anti-realist accounts of natural kinds possess prima facie virtues: realists can straightforwardly make sense of the apparent objectivity of the natural kinds, and anti-realists, their knowability. This paper formulates a properly anti-realist account designed to capture both merits. In particular, it recommends understanding natural kinds as ‘categorical bottlenecks,’ those categories that not only best serve us, with our idiosyncratic aims and cognitive capacities, but also those of a wide range of alternative agents. By endorsing an ultimately subjective (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   45 citations  
  • Species as Explanatory Hypotheses: Refinements and Implications.Kirk Fitzhugh - 2009 - Acta Biotheoretica 57 (1-2):201-248.
    The formal definition of species as explanatory hypotheses presented by Fitzhugh is emended. A species is an explanatory account of the occurrences of the same character among gonochoristic or cross-fertilizing hermaphroditic individuals by way of character origin and subsequent fixation during tokogeny. In addition to species, biological systematics also employs hypotheses that are ontogenetic, tokogenetic, intraspecific, and phylogenetic, each of which provides explanatory hypotheses for distinctly different classes of causal questions. It is suggested that species hypotheses can not be applied (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • Individuality and comparative biology.William L. Fink - 1981 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 4 (2):288-289.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • De-extinction and the conception of species.Leonard Finkelman - 2018 - Biology and Philosophy 33 (5-6):32.
    Developments in genetic engineering may soon allow biologists to clone organisms from extinct species. The process, dubbed “de-extinction,” has been publicized as a means to bring extinct species back to life. For theorists and philosophers of biology, the process also suggests a thought experiment for the ongoing “species problem”: given a species concept, would a clone be classified in the extinct species? Previous analyses have answered this question in the context of specific de-extinction technologies or particular species concepts. The thought (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Quaderns de filosofia VI, 1.Quad Fia - 2019 - Quaderns de Filosofia 6 (1).
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Evolution and atheism: Has Griffin reconciled science and religion?James H. Fetzer - 2011 - Synthese 178 (2):381 - 396.
    The distinguished theologian, David Ray Griffin, has advanced a set of thirteen theses intended to characterize (what he calls) "Neo-Darwinism" and which he contrasts with "Intelligent Design". Griffin maintains that Neo-Darwinism is "atheistic" in forgoing a creator but suggests that, by adopting a more modest scientific naturalism and embracing a more naturalistic theology, it is possible to find "a third way" that reconciles religion and science. The considerations adduced here suggest that Griffin has promised more than he can deliver. On (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Evolution and atheism: Has Griffin reconciled science and religion?James H. Fetzer - 2011 - Synthese 178 (2):381-396.
    The distinguished theologian, David Ray Griffin, has advanced a set of thirteen theses intended to characterize (what he calls) “Neo-Darwinism” and which he contrasts with “Intelligent Design”. Griffin maintains that Neo-Darwinism is “atheistic” in forgoing a creator but suggests that, by adopting a more modest scientific naturalism and embracing a more naturalistic theology, it is possible to find “a third way” that reconciles religion and science. The considerations adduced here suggest that Griffin has promised more than he can deliver. On (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • How not to Resist the Natural Kind Talk in Biology.María J. Ferreira Ruiz - 2019 - Quaderns de Filosofia 6 (1):47.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • The Baby and the Bathwater: Hans Jonas's Recovery of Aristotelian Biological Concepts.Joseph M. Farrell - 2014 - Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 45 (3):187-202.
    The idiom referred to in the title, “don't throw out the baby with the bath water,” instructs us to keep what is essential and to only throw away what is inessential. Bathing babies has the well-being of the child in mind, the end result of which is cleanliness. Efficiency in the task of cleaning is secondary. No one would throw away a baby when draining the baby's bathwater. Somewhat analogously, science and philosophy each have the goal of the attainment of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Natural kinds and freaks of nature.Evan Fales - 1982 - Philosophy of Science 49 (1):67-90.
    Essentialism--understood as the doctrine that there are natural kinds--can be sustained with respect to the most fundamental physical entities of the world, as I elsewhere argue. In this paper I take up the question of the existence of natural kinds among complex structures built out of these elementary ones. I consider a number of objections to essentialism, in particular Locke's puzzle about the existence of borderline cases. A number of recent attempts to justify biological taxonomy are critically examined. I conclude (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  • Epigenesis and culture.Robert Fagen - 1982 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 5 (1):10-10.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • The semantic approach to evolutionary theory.Marc Ereshefsky - 1991 - Biology and Philosophy 6 (1):59-80.
    Paul Thompson, John Beatty, and Elisabeth Lloyd argue that attempts to resolve certain conceptual issues within evolutionary biology have failed because of a general adherence to the received view of scientific theories. They maintain that such issues can be clarified and resolved when one adopts a semantic approach to theories. In this paper, I argue that such conceptual issues are just as problematic on a semantic approach. Such issues arise from the complexity involved in providing formal accounts of theoretical laws (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   19 citations  
  • The Disorder of Things. [REVIEW]Marc Ereshefsky - 1995 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 25 (1):143-158.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Species, Historicity, and Path Dependency.Marc Ereshefsky - 2014 - Philosophy of Science 81 (5):714-726.
    This paper clarifies the historical nature of species by showing that species are path-dependent entities. A species’ identity is not determined by its intrinsic properties or its origin, but by its unique evolutionary path. Seeing that species are path-dependent entities has three implications: it shows that origin essentialism is mistaken, it rebuts two challenges to the species-are-historical-entities thesis, and it demonstrates that the identity of a species during speciation depends on future events.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  • Species, higher taxa, and the units of evolution.Marc Ereshefsky - 1991 - Philosophy of Science 58 (1):84-101.
    A number of authors argue that while species are evolutionary units, individuals and real entities, higher taxa are not. I argue that drawing the divide between species and higher taxa along such lines has not been successful. Common conceptions of evolutionary units either include or exclude both types of taxa. Most species, like all higher taxa, are not individuals, but historical entities. Furthermore, higher taxa are neither more nor less real than species. None of this implies that there is no (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   46 citations  
  • 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   76 citations  
  • Species pluralism and anti-realism.Marc Ereshefsky - 1998 - Philosophy of Science 65 (1):103-120.
    Species pluralism gives us reason to doubt the existence of the species category. The problem is not that species concepts are chosen according to our interests or that pluralism and the desire for hierarchical classifications are incompatible. The problem is that the various taxa we call 'species' lack a common unifying feature.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   81 citations  
  • The evolution of the linnaean hierarchy.Marc Ereshefsky - 1997 - Biology and Philosophy 12 (4):493-519.
    The Linnaean system of classification is a threefold system of theoretical assumptions, sorting rules, and rules of nomenclature. Over time, that system has lost its theoretical assumptions as well as its sorting rules. Cladistic revisions have left it less and less Linnaean. And what remains of the system is flawed on pragmatic grounds. Taking all of this into account, it is time to consider alternative systems of classification.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  • The Disorder of Things. [REVIEW]Marc Ereshefsky - 1995 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 25 (1):143-158.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • Defining 'health' and 'disease'.Marc Ereshefsky - 2009 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 40 (3):221-227.
    How should we define ‘health’ and ‘disease’? There are three main positions in the literature. Naturalists desire value-free definitions based on scientific theories. Normativists believe that our uses of ‘health’ and ‘disease’ reflect value judgments. Hybrid theorists offer definitions containing both normativist and naturalist elements. This paper discusses the problems with these views and offers an alternative approach to the debate over ‘health’ and ‘disease’. Instead of trying to find the correct definitions of ‘health’ and ‘disease’ we should explicitly talk (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   78 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  
  • Eliminative pluralism.Marc Ereshefsky - 1992 - Philosophy of Science 59 (4):671-690.
    This paper takes up the cause of species pluralism. An argument for species pluralism is provided and standard monist objections to pluralism are answered. A new form of species pluralism is developed and shown to be an improvement over previous forms. This paper also offers a general foundation on which to base a pluralistic approach to biological classification.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   99 citations  
  • Biological individuality: the case of biofilms.Marc Ereshefsky & Makmiller Pedroso - 2013 - Biology and Philosophy 28 (2):331-349.
    This paper examines David Hull’s and Peter Godfrey-Smith’s accounts of biological individuality using the case of biofilms. Biofilms fail standard criteria for individuality, such as having reproductive bottlenecks and forming parent-offspring lineages. Nevertheless, biofilms are good candidates for individuals. The nature of biofilms shows that Godfrey-Smith’s account of individuality, with its reliance on reproduction, is too restrictive. Hull’s interactor notion of individuality better captures biofilms, and we argue that it offers a better account of biological individuality. However, Hull’s notion of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   39 citations  
  • Biological Species Are Natural Kinds.Crawford L. Elder - 2008 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 46 (3):339-362.
    This paper argues that typical biological species are natural kinds, on a familiar realist understanding of natural kinds—classes of individuals across which certain properties cluster together, in virtue of the causal workings of the world. But the clustering is far from exceptionless. Virtually no properties, or property-combinations, characterize every last member of a typical species—unless they can also appear outside the species. This motivates some to hold that what ties together the members of a species is the ability to interbreed, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  • 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  
  • Untangling the Conceptual Issues Raised in Reydon and Scholz’s Critique of Organizational Ecology and Darwinian Populations.Denise E. Dollimore - 2014 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 44 (3):282-315.
    Reydon and Scholz raise doubts about the Darwinian status of organizational ecology by arguing that Darwinian principles are not applicable to organizational populations. Although their critique of organizational ecology’s typological essentialism is correct, they go on to reject the Darwinian status of organizational populations. This paper claims that the replicator-interactor distinction raised in modern philosophy of biology but overlooked for discussion by Reydon and Scholz provides a way forward. It is possible to conceptualize evolving Darwinian populations providing that the inheritance (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  • ¿Estrategia reductiva? De la Ecología de Sistemas a la Fisiología.Federico di Pasquo, Christian Francese & Guillermo Folguera - 2017 - Principia: An International Journal of Epistemology 21 (1):99-123.
    The main objective of this work is to analyze the intention to reduce some areas of Ecology to Physiology. The origin of this research of reduction was done through consolidation of metabolic ecological theory in first years of XXIst century. Considering this objective, general framework was based on the proposal of Sahotra Sarkar.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Life as a Homeostatic Property Cluster.Antonio Diéguez - 2013 - Biological Theory 7 (2):180-186.
    All of the attempts to date to find a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for life, in order to provide an essential definition of life, have failed. We only have at our disposal series of lists that contain diverse characteristics usually found in living beings. Some authors have drawn from this fact the conclusion that life is not a natural kind. It will be argued here that this conclusion is too hasty and that if life is understood as a (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   23 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   26 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   130 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  
  • The Fate of Darwinism: Evolution After the Modern Synthesis.David J. Depew & Bruce H. Weber - 2011 - Biological Theory 6 (1):89-102.
    We trace the history of the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis, and of genetic Darwinism generally, with a view to showing why, even in its current versions, it can no longer serve as a general framework for evolutionary theory. The main reason is empirical. Genetical Darwinism cannot accommodate the role of development (and of genes in development) in many evolutionary processes. We go on to discuss two conceptual issues: whether natural selection can be the “creative factor” in a new, more general framework (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  • The Systemist Emergentist View of Mahner and Bunge on ‘Species as Individuals’: What Use for Science and Education?Pierre Deleporte - 2012 - Science & Education 21 (10):1535-1544.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • The nature of extinction.Julien Delord - 2007 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 38 (3):656-667.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  • Species concepts and the ontology of evolution.Joel Cracraft - 1987 - Biology and Philosophy 2 (3):329-346.
    Biologists and philosophers have long recognized the importance of species, yet species concepts serve two masters, evolutionary theory on the one hand and taxonomy on the other. Much of present-day evolutionary and systematic biology has confounded these two roles primarily through use of the biological species concept. Theories require entities that are real, discrete, irreducible, and comparable. Within the neo-Darwinian synthesis, however, biological species have been treated as real or subjectively delimited entities, discrete or nondiscrete, and they are often capable (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   17 citations  
  • On the metaphysics of species.Judith K. Crane - 2004 - Philosophy of Science 71 (2):156-173.
    This paper explains the metaphysical implications of the view that species are individuals (SAI). I first clarify SAI in light of the separate distinctions between individuals and classes, particulars and universals, and abstract and concrete things. I then show why the standard arguments given in defense of SAI are not compelling. Nonetheless, the ontological status of species is linked to the traditional "species problem," in that certain species concepts do entail that species are individuals. I develop the idea that species (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   19 citations  
  • An Ontology of Ideas.Wesley D. Cray & Timothy Schroeder - 2015 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 1 (4):757-775.
    Philosophers often talk about and engage with ideas. Scientists, artists, and historians do, too. But what is an idea? In this paper, we first motivate the desire for an ontology of ideas before discussing what conditions a candidate ontology would have to satisfy to be minimally adequate. We then offer our own account of the ontology of ideas, and consider various strategies for specifying the underlying metaphysics of the account. We conclude with a discussion of potential future work to be (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  • Rethinking categories and life.Peter A. Corning - 1981 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 4 (2):286-288.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Taxa, individuals, clusters and a few other things.Donald H. Colless - 2006 - Biology and Philosophy 21 (3):353-367.
    The recognition of species proceeds by two fairly distinct phases: (1) the sorting of individuals into groups or basic taxa (‘discovery’) (2) the checking of those taxa as candidates for species-hood (‘justification’). The target here is a rational reconstruction of phase 1, beginning with a discussion of key terms. The transmission of ‘meaning’ is regarded as bimodal: definition states the intension of the term, and diagnosis provides a disjunction of criteria for recognition of its extension. The two are connected by (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Supervenience and Reduction in Biological Hierarchies.John Collier - 1988 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary Volume 14:209-234.
    Supervenience is a relationship which has been used recently to explain the physical determination of biological phenomena despite resistance to reduction. Supervenience, however, is plagued by ambiguities which weaken its explanatory value and obscure some interesting aspects of reduction in biology. Although I suspect that similar considerations affect the use of supervenience in ethics and the philosophy of mind, I don’t intend anything I have to say here to apply outside of the physical and biological cases I consider.The main point (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   27 citations  
  • Color properties and color ascriptions: A relationalist manifesto.Jonathan Cohen - 2004 - Philosophical Review 113 (4):451-506.
    Are colors relational or non-relational properties of their bearers? Is red a property that is instantiated by all and only the objects with a certain intrinsic (/non-relational) nature? Or does an object with a particular intrinsic (/non-relational) nature count as red only in virtue of standing in certain relations - for example, only when it looks a certain way to a certain perceiver, or only in certain circumstances of observation? In this paper I shall argue for the view that color (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   121 citations  
  • The Problem of Biological Individuality.Ellen Clarke - 2010 - Biological Theory 5 (4):312-325.
    Darwin’s classic ‘Origin of Species’ (Darwin 1859) described forces of selection acting upon individuals, but there remains a great deal of controversy about what exactly the status and definition of a biological individual is. Recently some authors have argued that the individual is dispensable – that an inability to pin it down is not problematic because little rests on it anyway. The aim of this paper is to show that there is a real problem of biological individuality, and an urgent (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   89 citations  
  • Plant individuality: a solution to the demographer’s dilemma.Ellen Clarke - 2012 - Biology and Philosophy 27 (3):321-361.
    The problem of plant individuality is something which has vexed botanists throughout the ages, with fashion swinging back and forth from treating plants as communities of individuals (Darwin 1800 ; Braun and Stone 1853 ; Münch 1938 ) to treating them as organisms in their own right, and although the latter view has dominated mainstream thought most recently (Harper 1977 ; Cook 1985 ; Ariew and Lewontin 2004 ), a lively debate conducted mostly in Scandinavian journals proves that the issues (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   26 citations  
  • A levels-of-selection approach to evolutionary individuality.Ellen Clarke - 2016 - Biology and Philosophy 31 (6):893-911.
    What changes when an evolutionary transition in individuality takes place? Many different answers have been given, in respect of different cases of actual transition, but some have suggested a general answer: that a major transition is a change in the extent to which selection acts at one hierarchical level rather than another. The current paper evaluates some different ways to develop this general answer as a way to characterise the property ‘evolutionary individuality’; and offers a justification of the option taken (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   12 citations  
  • The epigenetic connection between genes and culture: Environment to the rescue.William R. Charlesworth - 1982 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 5 (1):9-10.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Individuality and Aggregativity.Stéphane Chauvier - 2017 - Philosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology 9 (11).
    Why is there a specific problem with biological individuality? Because the living realm contains a wide range of exotic particular concrete entities that do not easily match our ordinary concept of an individual. Slime moulds, dandelions, siphonophores are among the Odd Entities that excite the ontological zeal of the philosophers of biology. Most of these philosophers, however, seem to believe that these Odd Cases oblige us to refine or revise our common concept of an individual. They think, explicitly or tacitly, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • Species are, at the same time, kinds and individuals: a causal argument based on an empirical approach to species identity.Elena Casetta & Davide Vecchi - 2019 - Synthese 198 (Suppl 12):3007-3025.
    After having reconstructed a minimal biological characterisation of species, we endorse an “empirical approach” based on the idea that it is the peculiar evolutionary history of the species at issue—its peculiar origination process, its peculiar metapopulation structure and the peculiar mixture and strength of homeostatic processes vis à vis heterostatic ones—that determines species’ identity at a time and through time. We then explore the consequences of the acceptance of the empirical approach in settling the individuals versus kinds dispute. In particular, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations