Day 22: Biological substances (success at last!)

With massive relief I can report that Chapter 7 has been defeated. I slept on it, and conferred with my wonderful ex-student, Dr Will Morgan, and I've found my way to a conclusion I'm happy with. Now I need readers!

The chapter explores the following question: Do concepts of Biological Individuality provide identity conditions for the objects they apply to, or are they defined by 'mere' properties?

If they provide identity conditions then they imply spatial, temporal and/or modal limits to the objects in question. If not, then calling something a biological individual is just a way to say it manifests a certain property, but doesn't tell us anything about the boundaries of the object doing the manifesting.

I'm arguing that it depends. Sometimes biological individuality is understood and used in the richer, substance sense that has identity conditions attached, and sometimes its used in the weaker, property sense. What's more, both uses can be perfectly legitimate, because they can serve alternative pragmatic purposes. One important consequence of using the richer concept is that it can't be applied in cases where biological individuality is intended to be something that can come in degrees. We can coherently ascribe partial degrees of organismality to something - for example, when we want to talk about individuality evolving gradually during evolutionary transitions - but only if we are applying a mere property concept. In other circumstances, such as when we want to track the spatial boundaries of a particular stand of trees, we might usefully apply a substance concept. For example, we might intend to convey that the edges of the stand correspond with the limits of its shared immune response, or instead with the limits of a single genotype.

More generally, I argue that it is a mistake to think that there are overarching metaphysical facts about such limits. Its possible to use biological considerations to generate identity criteria, and there can be good pragmatic reasons for doing so. But given that such pragmatic reasons are context-dependent, we will get confused if  we mix them up, read mere properties as implying identity conditions, or search for underlying facts of the matter. 

Do get in touch if you're willing to be a test-pilot and find out if this flies. I'll recompense you in beer, one day.

Now I can reflect that the numbering system was helpful. 22 days for a chapter isn't awful, considering this is entirely new material. But it's not going to get my book finished by january (sadly i'm not writing them in order, so i haven't finished 7 of 8!) Although some will be less new than this, somehow that seems to make them harder to write, instead of easier (more to leave out!) and thus take longer.

Anyway, now is the time i need a plan. Next week I'm going away for three days (for an awesome field trip as part of the awesome Extinction Studies project, I can't wait - will write all about it next week). I also have lots of non-book tasks to do - final project supervisions, grad student supervision, some personal tutee meetings (yes i have to keep doing all this stuff even though i'm on leave). I have a doctoral thesis to read as external examiner.  

But I don't want to lose momentum on the book completely. So i'm going to set aside two days, between now and the 13th, to focus entirely on research for chapter 6. I still can't seem t face going back to the evolutionary chapter  - which is supposed to be the easiest, cos least new! i've got a feeling i'll end up writing that one last. Instead i'm going to tackle an easy win. Chapter 6 is supposed to be about -'Other kinds of individuals' and it ought to be fairly easy cos its mostly descriptive - summarising accounts that other people have constructed.

I look forward to updating you on all the rabbit holes i've fallen down soon.

But before all that, I'm off for a hard-earned surf!