This paper aims to offer a new argument in defence bacterial species pluralism. To do so, I shall first present the particular issues derived from the conflict between the non-theoretical understanding of species as units of classification and the theoretical comprehension of them as units of evolution. Secondly, I shall justify the necessity of the concept of species for the bacterial world, and show how medicine and endosymbiotic evolutionary theory make use of different concepts of bacterial species due to their (...) distinctive purposes. Finally, I shall show how my argument provides a new source of defence for bacterial pluralism. (shrink)

I defend a radical interpretation of biological populations—what I call population pluralism—which holds that there are many ways that a particular grouping of individuals can be related such that the grouping satisfies the conditions necessary for those individuals to evolve together. More constraining accounts of biological populations face empirical counter-examples and conceptual difficulties. One of the most intuitive and frequently employed conditions, causal connectivity—itself beset with numerous difficulties—is best construed by considering the relevant causal relations as ‘thick’ causal concepts. I (...) argue that the fine-grained causal relations that could constitute membership in a biological population are huge in number and many are manifested by degree, and thus we can construe population membership as being defined by massively multidimensional constructs, the differences between which are largely arbitrary. I end by showing that positions in two recent debates in theoretical biology depend on a view of biological populations at odds with the pluralism defended here. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to argue that ontological choices in scientific practice undermine common formulations of the value-free ideal in science. First, I argue that the truth values of scientific statements depend on ontological choices. For example, statements about entities such as species, race, memory, intelligence, depression, or obesity are true or false relative to the choice of a biological, psychological, or medical ontology. Second, I show that ontological choices often depend on non-epistemic values. On the basis of (...) these premises, I argue that it is often neither possible nor desirable to evaluate scientific statements independently of non-epistemic values. Finally, I suggest that considerations of ontological choices do not only challenge the value-free ideal but also help to specify positive roles of non-epistemic values in an often neglected area of scientific practice. (shrink)

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 (...) interspecies processes, such as phenotypic plasticity, sexual dimorphism, or ontogenetic diversity, are a worse explanation of the variance between specimens than intraspecies processes. As opposed to operating under a single or plurality of species concepts, then, paleobiologists use abductive inferences, which would be required regardless of any particular species concept. Second, paleobiologists are frequently interested in large-scale, long-term morphological patterns in the fossil record, and resolving the fine-grained differences which result from different species concepts is irrelevant at those scales. I argue that this claim about paleobiological practice supports what I call ‘indifference realism’ about the species category. The indifference realist argues that when legitimate investigation is indifferent to a plurality of concepts, we should be realists about the category those concepts pertain to. (shrink)

A common reaction to functional diversity is to group entities into clusters that are functionally similar. I argue here that people are diverse with respect to reasoning-related processes, and that these processes satisfy the basic requirements for evolving entities: they are heritable, mutable, and subject to selective pressures. I propose a metric to quantify functional difference and show how this can be used to place psychological processes into a structure akin to a phylogenetic or evolutionary tree. Three species concepts are (...) repurposed from biology and used to understand relationships in that tree. (shrink)

The 2006 decision by the International Astronomical Union to strip Pluto of its status as a planet generated considerable uproar not only in scientific circles, but among the lay public as well. After all, how can a vote by 424 scientists in a conference room in Prague undermine what every well-educated second grader knows is a scientific fact? The Pluto controversy provides a new and fertile ground in which to revisit the traditional philosophical problems of natural kinds and scientific change. (...) Before engaging these philosophical problems, however, there are two misguided reactions to the Pluto controversy worth dispelling from the start. The first misguided reaction is that this sort of classificatory .. (shrink)

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 (...) categorical principle, this view sidesteps epistemological difficulties facing realist views. Yet, it nevertheless identifies natural kinds that are fairly, though not completely, stance-independent or objective. (shrink)

This article argues for a different outlook on the concept of extension, especially for the reference of general terms in scientific practice. Scientific realist interpretations of the two predominant theories of meaning, namely Descriptivism and Causal Theory, contend that a stable cluster of descriptions or an initial baptism fixes the extension of a general term such as a natural kind term. This view in which the meaning of general terms is presented as monosemantic and the referents as stable, homogeneous, and (...) unchangeable, however, does not reflect the various practices involved in the investigation of research materials and the related application of general terms in scientific practice. By drawing on the taxonomic diversity, particularly of structure-based classifications in chemical databases, this article illustrates the limited utility of such a concept of extension. Research materials often exhibit a plurality of material dimensions that, within different research contexts, allow for various and often equally significant taxonomic demarcations. In light of this, the extension of a general term cannot be uniquely determined by a supposedly independent nature of the referent but is relative to the model context under which the materials are investigated. This significance and plurality of the model context, I claim, needs to be mirrored in an account of meaning that is supposed to reflect scientific reality. On this account, the aim of this article is to present an alternative perspective on the concept of extension to accommodate the diverse material practices that determine the application of general terms in science. (shrink)

En What Emotions Really Are y en otros artículos, Griffiths afirma que las clases naturales de los organismos vivos en Biología son cladistas. La afirmación está inmersa en una nueva teoría acerca de las clases naturales. En este trabajo examinaré los argumentos esgrimidos por Griffiths para sostener el estatus privilegiado de las clasificaciones cladistas frente a otras clasificaciones. No se discutirá la teoría de las clases naturales ofrecida, de cuyos méritos no dudo, sino su capacidad para ofrecer una solución en (...) la cuestión particular de qué sistema de clasificación de organismos debería utilizarse en Biología. In What emotions really are and in other papers Griffiths states that in Biology, natural classes ofliving organisms are clades. This assertion is made within the bounds of a new theory of natural classes. In this paper I wiIl consider the arguments employed by Griffiths to support the privileged status of the cladistic classification over other classifications. It is not Griffith's theory of natural classes what will be discussed, but his ability to offer a solution to the particular issue ofwhich classification system of organisms should be used in Biology. (shrink)

Among biological kinds, the most important are species. But species, however defined, have vague boundaries, both synchronically owing to hybridization and ongoing speciation, and diachronically owing to genetic drift and genealogical continuity despite speciation. It is argued that the solution to the problems of species and their vague boundaries is to adopt a thoroughgoing nominalism in regard to all biological taxa, from species to domains. The base entities are individual organisms: populations of these compose species and higher taxa. This accommodates (...) all the important biological facts while avoiding the legacy problems of pre-evolutionary typological taxonomy, which saw species and other taxa as prior to their members. Species are however not individuals: they are spatiotemporally bounded collections, which are plural particulars. (shrink)

This paper evaluates the Natural-Kinds Argument for cognitive extension, which purports to show that the kinds presupposed by our best cognitive science have instances external to human organism. Various interpretations of the argument are articulated and evaluated, using the overarching categories of memory and cognition as test cases. Particular emphasis is placed on criteria for the scientific legitimacy of generic kinds, that is, kinds characterized in very broad terms rather than in terms of their fine-grained causal roles. Given the current (...) state of cognitive science, I conclude that we have no reason to think memory or cognition are generic natural kinds that can ground an argument for cognitive extension. (shrink)

This dissertation is a critique of synthetic ethical naturalism (SEN). SEN is a view in metaethics that comprises three key theses: first, there are moral properties and facts that are independent of the beliefs and attitudes of moral appraisers (moral realism); second, moral properties and facts are identical to (or constituted only by) natural properties and facts (ethical naturalism); and third, sentences used to assert identity or constitution relations between moral and natural properties are expressions of synthetic, a posteriori necessities. (...) The last of these theses, which distinguishes SEN from other forms of ethical naturalism, is supported by a fourth: the semantic contents of the central moral predicates such as 'morally right' and 'morally good' are fixed in part by features external to the minds of speakers (moral semantic externalism). Chapter 1 introduces SEN and discusses the most common motivations for accepting it. The next three chapters discuss the influential "Moral Twin Earth" argument against moral semantic externalism. In Chapter 2, I defend this argument from the charge that the thought experiment upon which it depends is defective. In Chapters 3 and 4, I consider two attempts to amend SEN so as to render it immune to the Moral Twin Earth argument. I show that each of these proposed amendments amounts to an abandonment of SEN. Chapter Five explores Richard Boyd's proposal that moral goodness is a "homeostatic property cluster." If true, Boyd's hypothesis could be used to support several metaphysical, epistemological, and semantic claims made on behalf of SEN. I advance three arguments against this account of moral goodness. In the sixth chapter, I argue that moral facts are not needed in the best a posteriori explanations of our moral beliefs and moral sensibility. Because of this, those who accept a metaphysical naturalism ought to deny the existence of such facts or else accept skepticism about moral knowledge. In Chapter 7, I consider a counterargument on behalf of SEN to the effect that moral facts are needed in order to explain the predictive success of our best moral theories. I show that this argument fails. (shrink)

Different concepts define species at the pattern-level grouping of organisms into discrete clusters, the level of the processes operating within and between populations leading to the formation and maintenance of these clusters, or the level of the inner-organismic genetic and molecular mechanisms that contribute to species cohesion or promote speciation. I argue that, unlike single-level approaches, a multi-level framework takes into account the complex sequences of cause-effect reinforcements leading to the formation and maintenance of various patterns, and allows for revisions (...) and refinements of pattern-based characterizations in light of the gradual elucidation of the causes and mechanisms contributing to pattern formation and maintenance. (shrink)

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 (...) about natural kinds is not successful. One conclusion is that an integrative conception of species is a real alternative to Dupré's pluralism. (shrink)

Do the laws of nature supervene on ordinary, non-nomic matters of fact? Lange's criticism of Humean supervenience (HS) plays a key role in his account of natural laws. Though we are sympathetic to his account, we remain unconvinced by his criticism. We focus on his thought experiment involving a world containing nothing but a lone proton and argue that it does not cast sufficient doubt on HS. In addition, we express some concern about locating the lawmakers in an ontology of (...) primitive subjunctive facts and suggest that a 'mixed' metaphysics to the lawmaker question might be attractive. (shrink)

Historians and philosophers of science agree that Darwin had an understanding of species which led to a workable theory of their origins. To Darwin species did not differ essentially from ‘varieties’ within species, but were distinguishable in that they had developed gaps in formerly continuous morphological variation. Similar ideas can be defended today after updating them with modern population genetics. Why then, in the 1930s and 1940s, did Dobzhansky, Mayr and others argue that Darwin failed to understand species and speciation? (...) Mayr and Dobzhansky argued that reproductively isolated species were more distinct and ‘real’ than Darwin had proposed. Believing species to be inherently cohesive, Mayr inferred that speciation normally required geographic isolation, an argument that he believed, incorrectly, Darwin had failed to appreciate. Also, before the sociobiology revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, biologists often argued that traits beneficial to whole populations would spread. Reproductive isolation was thus seen as an adaptive trait to prevent disintegration of species. Finally, molecular genetic markers did not exist, and so a presumed biological function of species, reproductive isolation, seemed to delimit cryptic species better than character-based criteria like Darwin’s. Today, abundant genetic markers are available and widely used to delimit species, for example using assignment tests: genetics has replaced a Darwinian reliance on morphology for detecting gaps between species. In the 150th anniversary of The Origin of Species , we appear to be returning to more Darwinian views on species, and to a fuller appreciation of what Darwin meant. (shrink)

This collection of original essays--by philosophers of biology, biologists, and cognitive scientists--provides a wide range of perspectives on species. Including contributions from David Hull, John Dupre, David Nanney, Kevin de Queiroz, and Kim Sterelny, amongst others, this book has become especially well-known for the three essays it contains on the homeostatic property cluster view of natural kinds, papers by Richard Boyd, Paul Griffiths, and Robert A. Wilson.

Former discussions of biological generalizations have focused on the question of whether there are universal laws of biology. These discussions typically analyzed generalizations out of their investigative and explanatory contexts and concluded that whatever biological generalizations are, they are not universal laws. The aim of this paper is to explain what biological generalizations are by shifting attention towards the contexts in which they are drawn. I argue that within the context of any particular biological explanation or investigation, biologists employ two (...) types of generations. One type identifies causal regularities exhibited by particular kinds of biological entities. The other type identifies how these entities are distributed in the biological world. (shrink)

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 (...) the capacities of organisms to explain what makes adaptive evolution adaptive. Moreover, the specific capacities in question are precisely those that, according to Aristotle, constitute the nature of an organism. Essentialism 1.1 Aristotelian biological kinds Evolutionary anti-essentialism 2.1 Taxonomic anti-essentialism 2.2 Explanatory anti-essentialism Adaptation 3.1 Stability 3.2 Mutability 3.3 Phenotypic plasticity and adaptive evolution The natures of organisms Conclusion. (shrink)

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 (...) of being decomposed into other, smaller units. Because of this, biological species are generally not comparable across different groups of organisms, which implies that the ontological structure of evolutionary theory requires modification. Some biologists, including proponents of the biological species concept, have argued that no species concept is universally applicable across all organisms. Such a view means, however, that the history of life cannot be embraced by a common theory of ancestry and descent if that theory uses species as its entities.These ontological and biological difficulties can be alleviated if species are defined in terms of evolutionary units. The latter are irreducible clusters of reproductively cohesive organisms that are diagnosably distinct from other such clusters. Unlike biological species, which can include two or more evolutionary units, these phylogenetic species are discrete entities in space and time and capable of being compared from one group to the next. (shrink)

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 (...) and critique, it remains underdeveloped and is often misrepresented by its critics (section 8). (shrink)

Philosophical discussions of species have focused on multicellular, sexual animals and have often neglected to consider unicellular organisms like bacteria. This article begins to fill this gap by considering what species concepts, if any, apply neatly to the bacterial world. First, I argue that the biological species concept cannot be applied to bacteria because of the variable rates of genetic transfer between populations, depending in part on which gene type is prioritized. Second, I present a critique of phylogenetic bacterial species, (...) arguing that phylogenetic bacterial classification requires a questionable metaphysical commitment to the existence of essential genes. I conclude by considering how microbiologists have dealt with these biological complexities by using more pragmatic and not exclusively evolutionary accounts of species. I argue that this pragmatism is not borne of laziness but rather of the substantial conceptual problems in classifying bacteria based on any evolutionary standard. (shrink)

This paper offers an overview of "the species problem", arguing for a view of species as homeostatic property cluster kinds, positioning the resulting form of realism about species as an alternative to the claim that species are individuals and pluralistic views of species. It draws on taxonomic practice in the neurosciences, especially of neural crest cells and retinal ganglion cells, to motivate both the rejection of the species-as-individuals thesis and species pluralism.

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. (...) Revisionary Millianism, I argue, offers some important advantages over its predicativist competitor. (shrink)

The kinds of real or natural kinds that support explanation and prediction in the social sciences are difficult to identify and track because they change through time, intersect with one another, and they do not always exhibit their properties when one encounters them. As a result, conceptual practices directed at these kinds will often refer in ways that are partial, equivocal, or redundant. To improve this epistemic situation, it is important to employ open-ended classificatory concepts, to understand when different research (...) programs are tracking the same real kind, and to maintain an ongoing commitment to interact causally with real kinds to focus reference on those kinds. A tempting view of these non-idealized epistemic conditions should be avoided: that they signal an ontological structure of the social world so plentiful that it would permit ameliorated classificatory schemes to achieve their normative aims regardless of whether they defer to real-kind classificatory schemes. To ground these discussions, the essay appeals to an overlooked convergence in the systematic naturalistic frameworks of Richard Boyd and Ruth Millikan. (shrink)

Far from being rigorously defined, the concept of species in a biologicalsense has suffered from imprecision since Charles Darwin. This is mainlydue to the absence of a definition that allows to combine within eachspecies the organisms that are considered part of it. The objective of thiswork is to show, on the one hand, the diversity of characterizations of theconcept of species as well as their respective problems and, on the other,the different sustainable ontological positions. As a consequence of theaforementioned imprecision, (...) the ethical consequences that this entails inthe debate about speciesism are analyzed. (shrink)

Algunos defensores del realismo científico, particularmente Ilkka Niiniluoto y Philip Kitcher, han intentado moderar las tesis ontológicas más fuertes del realismo buscando la integración de la teoría de la verdad como correspondencia con alguna versión matizada del relativismo conceptual propugnado por Putnam, según el cual el mundo carece de una estructura propia y, por tanto, la ontología depende de nuestros esquemas conceptuales. No es claro, sin embargo, que ambas cosas se puedan armonizar fácilmente. Si nuestro conocimiento del mundo está mediado (...) por nuestras categorías y conceptos, y si además la elección de esas categorías y conceptos puede variar en función de nuestros intereses y no obedecen a la existencia de unos supuestos géneros naturales o a una estructura propia del mundo, se torna entonces problemático establecer a qué corresponden nuestros enunciados verdaderos. ¿Corresponden al mundo independiente de nuestra mente o al mundo estructurado por nosotros mediante nuestras categorías y conceptos? En este artículo se presentarán las principales dificultades que encuentra este proyecto de realismo moderado tanto en Niiniluoto como en Kitcher, se analizarán sus propuestas para solventar dichas dificultades, mostrando sus insuficiencias y, finalmente, se propondrá una modalidad de realismo ontológico moderado que, recogiendo algo del espíritu de la relatividad conceptual de Putnam, es lo suficientemente fuerte como para sustentar una teoría de la verdad como correspondencia. Replucación autorizada. Publicado por primera vez en Contrastes vol. XII. (shrink)

What are words and how should we individuate them? There are two main answers on the philosophical market. For some, words are bundles of structural-functional features defining a unique performance profile. For others, words are non-eternal continuants individuated by their causal-historical ancestry. These conceptions offer competing views of the nature of words, and it seems natural to assume that at most one of them can capture the essence of wordhood. This paper makes a case for pluralism about wordhood: the view (...) that there is a plurality of acceptable conceptions of the nature of words, none of which is uniquely entitled to inform us as to what wordhood consists in. (shrink)

Alex Byrne’s article, “Are Women Adult Human Females?”, asks a question that Byrne treats as nearly rhetorical. Byrne’s answer is, ‘clearly, yes’. Moreover, Byrne claims, 'woman' is a biological category that does not admit of any interpretation as (also) a social category. It is important to respond to Byrne’s argument, but mostly because it is paradigmatic of a wider phenomenon. The slogan “women are adult human females” is a political slogan championed by anti-trans activists, appearing on billboards, pamphlets, and anti-trans (...) online forums. In this paper, I respond to Byrne’s argument, revealing significant problems with its background assumptions, content, and methodology. (shrink)

This paper uses two case studies to explore an interest-relative view of taxonomy and how it complements kind pluralism in biology. First, I consider the ABC island bear, which can be correctly classified into more than one species. I argue that this classificatory pluralism can be explained by reference to the range of alternative explanatory interests in biology. In the second half of the paper, I pursue an interest-relative view of classification more generally. I then apply the resultant view to (...) a second case study: whether whales are fish. I argue that this question is not one about scientific vs folk usage, as has been assumed. I also develop a new view: that Fish should be rejected as a category, both from the point of view of biological science, and from the point of view of folk taxonomy. Along the way, I use the interest-relative view to shed light on the circumstances under which higher taxa should be accepted as legitimate categories for biological science. (shrink)

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, (...) while conceptual arguments have been proposed to show that species can be equally treated as individuals and kinds because mereology’s and set-theory’s languages are inter-translatable, we advance instead a causal argument to sustain the claim that each species is both a kind and an individual. (shrink)

Recent challenges to non-traditional theories of natural kinds demand clarifications and revisions to those theories. Highlights: The semantics of natural kind terms is a special case of a general naturalistic conception of signaling in organisms that explains the epistemic reliability of signaling. Natural kinds and reference are two aspects of the same natural phenomenon. Natural kind definitions are phenomena in nature not linguistic or representational entities; their relation to conceptualized definitions is complex. Reference and truth are special cases of a (...) broader phenomenon of accommodation between aspects of signaling and epistemically relevant causal structures. (shrink)

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 (...) the first two of these examples, but their replies drive the view into an unwelcome result when it faces the last example. I conclude that the concept of being human, on which AN crucially depends, is not as straightforward as Foot's advocates presume. (shrink)

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, (...) essence. The arguments appeal to the demands of biological explanation and are analogous to arguments that I have given elsewhere that a taxon has a partly intrinsic, partly historical, essence. These conclusions about the essences of individuals and taxa yield an argument for Essential Membership. Finally, I cast doubt on LaPorte’s objection to that doctrine arising from the view that a species cannot survive having a daughter. (shrink)

A number of influential biologists are currently pursuing efforts to restore previously extinct species. But for decades, philosophers of biology have regarded “de-extinction” as conceptually incoherent. Once a species is gone, it is gone forever. We argue that a range of metaphysical, biological, and ethical grounds for opposing de-extinction are at best inconclusive and that a pragmatic stance that allows for its possibility is more appealing.

Examining previous discussions on how to construe the concepts of gender and race, we advocate what we call strategic conceptual engineering. This is the employment of a (possibly novel) concept for specific epistemic or social aims, concomitant with the openness to use a different concept (e.g., of race) for other purposes. We illustrate this approach by sketching three distinct concepts of gender and arguing that all of them are needed, as they answer to different social aims. The first concept serves (...) the aim of identifying and explaining gender-based discrimination. It is similar to Haslanger’s well-known account, except that rather than offering a definition of ‘woman’ we focus on ‘gender’ as one among several axes of discrimination. The second concept of gender is to assign legal rights and social recognitions, and thus is to be trans-inclusive. We argue that this cannot be achieved by previously suggested concepts that include substantial gender-related psychological features, such as awareness of social expectations. Instead, our concept counts someone as being of a certain gender solely based on the person’s self-identification with this gender. The third concept of gender serves the aim of personal empowerment by means of one’s gender identity. In this context, substantial psychological features and awareness of one’s social situation are involved. While previous accounts of concepts have focused on their role in determining extensions, we point to contexts where a concept’s role in explanation and moral reasoning can be more important. (shrink)

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 (...) eliminative pluralisms about various scientific concepts. The article ends by outlining a novel integrative alternative in defence of species. 1) Introduction 2) The species Concept, the Category ‘Species’, and the ‘Species’ Category Problem 3) What Are Eliminative Pluralism about species, and the Arguments for It? 4) Evaluation of Arguments 4.1 Splitting? 4.2 Lumping? 4.3 The eliminative pluralist’s dilemma 5) More General Lessons6Species Cohesion: An Integrative Alternative7Conclusion. (shrink)

Evolution in its contemporary meaning in biology typically refers to the changes in the proportions of biological types in a population over time (see the entry on the concept of evolution to 1872 for earlier meanings). As evolution is too large of a topic to address thoroughly in one entry, the primary goal of this entry is to serve as a broad overview of contemporary issues in evolution with links to other entries where more in-depth discussion can be found. The (...) entry begins with a brief survey of definitions of evolution, followed by a discussion of the different modes of evolution and related philosophical issues, and ends with a summary of other topics in the philosophy of evolution focusing particularly on topics covered in this encyclopedia. (shrink)

The world contains many different types of ecosystems. This is something of a commonplace in biology and conservation science. But there has been little attention to the question of whether such ecosystem types enjoy a degree of objectivity—whether they might be natural kinds. I argue that traditional accounts of natural kinds that emphasize nomic or causal–mechanistic dimensions of “kindhood” are ill-equipped to accommodate presumptive ecosystemic kinds. In particular, unlike many other kinds, ecosystemic kinds are “anchored” to the contingent character of (...) species and higher taxa and their abiotic environments. Drawing on Slater (Br J Philos Sci 66(2):375–411, 2015a), I show how we can nevertheless make room for such contingent anchoring in an account of natural kinds of ecosystems kinds. (shrink)

It is a truism that humans are social animals. Thus, it is no surprise that we understand the world, each other, and ourselves in terms of social kinds such as money and marriage, war and women, capitalists and cartels, races, recessions, and refugees. Social kinds condition our expectations, inform our preferences, and guide our behavior. Despite the prevalence and importance of social kinds, philosophy has historically devoted relatively little attention to them. With few exceptions, philosophers have given pride of place (...) to the kinds studied by the natural sciences, especially physics. However, philosophical interest in social kinds is growing in recent years. I critically examine answers to a cluster of related questions concerning the metaphysics of social kinds. Are social kinds natural kinds? Do social kinds have essences? Are social kinds mind dependent? Are social kinds real? (shrink)

Foot , Hursthouse , and Thompson , along with other philosophers, have argued for a metaethical position, the natural goodness approach, that claims moral judgments are, or are on a par with, teleological claims made in the biological sciences. Specifically, an organism’s flourishing is characterized by how well they function as specified by the species to which they belong. In this essay, I first sketch the Neo-Aristotelian natural goodness approach. Second, I argue that critics who claim that this sort of (...) approach is inconsistent with evolutionary biology due to its species essentialism are incorrect. Third, I contend that combining the natural goodness account of natural-historical judgments with our best account of natural normativity, the selected effects theory of function, leads to implausible moral judgments. This is so if selected effects function are understood in terms of evolution by natural selection, but also if they are characterized in terms of cultural evolution. Thus, I conclude that proponents of the natural goodness approach must either embrace non-naturalistic vitalism or troubling moral revisionism. (shrink)

Science is now studying biodiversity on a massive scale. These studies are occurring not just at the scale of larger plants and animals, but also at the scale of minute entities such as bacteria and viruses. This expansion has led to the development of a specific sub-field of “microbial diversity”. In this paper, I investigate how microbial diversity faces two of the classical issues encountered by the concept of “ biodiversity ”: the issues of defining the units of biodiversity and (...) of choosing a mathematical measure of diversity. I also show that the extension of the scope of biodiversity to microbial entities such as viruses and many other not-clearly-alive entities raises yet another foundational issue: that of defining a “lower-limit” of biodiversity. (shrink)