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On the very idea of biological individuality

Okasha, Samir (2022) On the very idea of biological individuality. [Preprint]

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Abstract

The burgeoning debate over biological individuality raises deep issues, philosophical and scientific, but suffers from pervasive conceptual unclarity. This paper offers a diagnosis of what has gone wrong. It is argued that the problem of biological individuality, as it is often formulated in the literature, rests on a category mistake. The mistake is to think that the expression “biological individual” is a sortal, when in fact it is not. This diagnosis sheds light on a number of otherwise puzzling aspects of the debate.


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Item Type: Preprint
Creators:
CreatorsEmailORCID
Okasha, SamirSamir.Okasha@bristol.ac.uk
Keywords: biological individuality, organism, metaphysics, philosophy of biology
Subjects: Specific Sciences > Biology
Specific Sciences > Biology > Evolutionary Theory
Depositing User: Dr Samir Okasha
Date Deposited: 09 Jul 2022 12:18
Last Modified: 09 Jul 2022 12:18
Item ID: 20868
Subjects: Specific Sciences > Biology
Specific Sciences > Biology > Evolutionary Theory
Date: 9 July 2022
URI: https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/20868

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