Biological Individuals

The impressive variation amongst biological individuals generates many complexities in addressing the simple-sounding question what is a biological individual? A distinction between evolutionary and physiological individuals is useful in thinking about biological individuals, as is attention to the kinds of groups, such as superorganisms and species, that have sometimes been thought of as biological individuals. More fully understanding the conceptual space that biological individuals occupy also involves considering a range of other concepts, such as life, reproduction, and agency. There has been a focus in some recent discussions by both philosophers and biologists on how evolutionary individuals are created and regulated, as well as continuing work on the evolution of individuality

What is Life Worth? A Rough Guide to Valuation

In this speculative article, the aim is to elaborate a definition of life that is not biological, and a valuation of it that is not commodified. This is undertaken by the development of an understanding of death as a process which is embedded in the life of a community. The idea is that we can best understand what life is worth by first understanding what death means

COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS AS A METHODOLOGICAL PARADIGM

A general direction in which cognitive linguistics is heading at the turn of the century is outlined and a revised understanding of cognitive linguistics as a methodological paradigm is suggest. The goal of cognitive linguistics is defined as understanding what language is and what language does to ensure the predominance of homo sapiens as a biological species. This makes cognitive linguistics a biologically oriented empirical science

Internal Perspectivalism: The Solution to Generality Problems About Proper Function and Natural Norms

In this paper, I argue that what counts as the proper function of a trait is a matter of the de facto perspective that the biological system, itself, possesses on what counts as proper functioning for that trait. Unlike non-perspectival accounts, internal perspectivalism does not succumb to generality problems. But unlike external perspectivalism, internal perspectivalism can provide a fully naturalistic, mind-independent grounding of proper function and natural norms. The attribution of perspectives to biological systems is intended to be neither metaphorical nor anthropomorphic: I do not mean to imply that such systems thereby must possess agency, cognition, intentions, concepts, or mental or psychological states. Instead, such systems provide the grounding for norms of performance when they internally enforce their own standard of (i.e., their own perspective on) what constitutes proper functioning or malfunctioning. By operating with a fixed, determinate level of generality, such systems provide the basis for an account of proper function that is immune to generality problems

What is a hologenomic adaptation? Emergent individuality and inter-identity in multispecies systems

Contemporary biological research has suggested that some host–microbiome multispecies systems (referred to as “holobionts”) can in certain circumstances evolve as unique biological individual, thus being a unit of selection in evolution. If this is so, then it is arguably the case that some biological adaptations have evolved at the level of the multispecies system, what we call hologenomic adaptations. However, no research has yet been devoted to investigating their nature, or how these adaptations can be distinguished from adaptations at the species-level (genomic adaptations). In this paper, we cover this gap by investigating the nature of hologenomic adaptations. By drawing on the case of the evolution of sanguivory diet in vampire bats, we argue that a trait constitutes a hologenomic adaptation when its evolution can only be explained if the holobiont is considered the biological individual that manifests this adaptation, while the bacterial taxa that bear the trait are only opportunistic beneficiaries of it. We then use the philosophical notions of emergence and inter-identity to explain the nature of this form of individuality and argue why it is special of holobionts. Overall, our paper illustrates how the use of philosophical concepts can illuminate scientific discussions, in the trend of what has recently been called metaphysics of biology

Teacher interaction networks and system maintenance : a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Education

Theoretical Considerations Since the study of Hoppock in 1935 a great deal of attention has been shown In the analysis of job satisfaction of workers and personnel in a variety of situations within organisations. This concern has important theoretical and pragmatic considerations. Theoretically, satisfaction is linked to the more general problem of explaining social system persistence and existence. The sociologist is interested to address himself to at least two questions: what were the conditions under which the social system emerged; and under what conditions is it maintained as a viable system? It is the latter question which has particularly concerned the functionalist tradition for the last century. The functionalists - from Durkheim to Parsons - applied the analogy of biological organisations to their explanation of social phenomena. They maintained that even as the biological system has a certain degree of functional interdependence and responsiveness to the external environment so too the social system can be seen as generating structure in response to certain functional problems. They argued, at least implicitly, that the social system was more or less functionally analogous to a biological organism. However there are severe limitations to this argument. Nagel (1961) has argued that any functional analysis must satisfy five criteria: system boundaries are to be specified; the embedding environment must be isolated; the system elements must be specified; the necessary conditions or the system requirements must be understood; and finally a goal state or criterion needs to be established. In biological organisms these conditions are relatively easily met. The organism is clearly specifiable. Organisms for tho most part have clearly designated states which either are or are not maintained. In most cases therefore it is possible to specify with a high degree of accuracy certain components of the organism and its various states. "In consequence, since the system and the state can be clearly defined in biology, it is intelligible to ask, and seek an answer by way of experimental enquiry,. whether and by what mechanisms, System S is maintained in State G". [FROM INTRODUCTION

Potentiality in Biology

We take the potentialities that are studied in the biological sciences (e.g., totipotency) to be an important subtype of biological dispositions. The goal of this paper is twofold: first, we want to provide a detailed understanding of what biological dispositions are. We claim that two features are essential for dispositions in biology: the importance of the manifestation process and the diversity of conditions that need to be satisfied for the disposition to be manifest. Second, we demonstrate that the concept of a disposition (or potentiality) is a very useful tool for the analysis of the explanatory practice in the biological sciences. On the one hand it allows an in-depth analysis of the nature and diversity of the conditions under which biological systems display specific behaviors. On the other hand the concept of a disposition may serve a unificatory role in the philosophy of the natural sciences since it captures not only the explanatory practice of biology, but of all natural sciences. Towards the end we will briefly come back to the notion of a potentiality in biology

Plasma-inspired biomaterials

The first questions which arise when one looks at the title of this special issue are what are plasma-inspired biomaterials, and what is this Special Issue of Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics (JPhysD) all about? Peculiar as it may seem, from a philosophical point of view 'inspiration' is something that influences by idea or is a good idea that connects two at first glance opposite things—plasma and biomaterials. On the one hand, plasma as a discharge state of the gas is considered nowadays as a cutting edge tool which can manipulate objects at the atomic or molecular scale (figure 1). On the other hand, biomaterials are substances that are engineered to possess certain properties which can control the interactions with components of living systems, inducing favourable response from the biological entities, and as such can direct the course of a therapy or diagnostic procedure [1]. In this respect, plasmas can be used to initiating even more favourable or selective responses, making the biomaterials even more suitable for their interaction biological entitiesPeer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft