The multiple realisability of biological individuals

Journal article

Biological theory demands a clear organism concept, but at present biologists cannot agree on one. They know that counting particular units, and not counting others, allows them to generate explanatory and predictive descriptions of evolutionary processes. Yet they lack a unified theory telling them which units to count. In this paper, I offer a novel account of biological individuality, which reconciles conflicting definitions of ‘organism’ by interpreting them as describing alternative realizers of a common functional role, and then defines individual organisms as essentially possessing some mechanisms that play this role. In the first part, I argue that there is a real problem of biological individuality, and a need to arbitrate over the solutions to it. In part two, I identify two critical functional roles (‘policing’, and then ‘demarcation’), as well as some definitions that name their realizers. In part three, I argue that we should make the possession of mechanisms that play these roles – to greater or lesser effect – definitional of biological individuals.

Authors: Clarke, E

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Journal of Philosophy
• Journal: Journal of Philosophy
• Volume: 110
• Issue: 8
• Pages: 413-435
• Publication date: 2013-01-01
• EISSN: 1939-8549
• ISSN: 0022-362X