Biological Individuals and Natural Kinds

Biological Theory 7 (2):162-169 (2013)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

This paper takes a hierarchical approach to the question whether species are individuals or natural kinds. The thesis defended here is that species are spatiotemporally located complex wholes (individuals), that are composed of (i.e., include) causally interdependent parts, which collectively also instantiate a homeostatic property cluster (HPC) natural kind. Species may form open or closed genetic systems that are dynamic in nature, that have fuzzy boundaries due to the processual nature of speciation, that may have leaky boundaries as is manifest in lateral gene transfer and introgression, that may be of multiple origins through hybridization, and that may split and merge and split again over time. The identity conditions of species qua individuals will have to be anchored in their history, rather than in their unique evolutionary origin. Species qua historically conditioned HPC natural kinds requires the kind to be mereologically structured, subject to the part-whole relation rather than the membership relation. This implies that there can be more than one kind of natural kinds

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 102,074

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Species as a process.Olivier Rieppel - 2008 - Acta Biotheoretica (1):33-49.
Biological species as natural kinds.David B. Kitts & David J. Kitts - 1979 - Philosophy of Science 46 (4):613-622.
Natural Kinds and Conceptual Change. [REVIEW]Jochen Faseler - 2005 - Review of Metaphysics 59 (2):438-440.
Biological species: Natural kinds, individuals, or what?Michael Ruse - 1987 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 38 (2):225-242.
Biological Species Are Natural Kinds.Crawford L. Elder - 2008 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 46 (3):339-362.

Analytics

Added to PP
2013-11-21

Downloads
72 (#295,923)

6 months
9 (#525,272)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

References found in this work

Naming and Necessity: Lectures Given to the Princeton University Philosophy Colloquium.Saul A. Kripke - 1980 - Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Edited by Darragh Byrne & Max Kölbel.
Naming and necessity.Saul Kripke - 2010 - In Darragh Byrne & Max Kölbel (eds.), Arguing about language. New York: Routledge. pp. 431-433.
On the origin of species.Charles Darwin - 2008 - New York: Oxford University Press. Edited by Gillian Beer.
Naming and Necessity.S. Kripke - 1972 - Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 45 (4):665-666.

View all 63 references / Add more references