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Biological Individuation and the Work of David Wiggins A.M In this book, Adam Ferner frames challenges to my work which I take very seriously – not least with respect to the relation of being a person and being a human being. He seeks also to repair the acknowledged omission on my part to pursue the relation between the issues in logic and metaphysics I do discuss and profound issues in the philosophy of biology which I have neglected. I am sur- prised and gratified by the attention he has paid to my work. David Wiggins, New College, Oxford, UK There is a great deal of contemporary debate about the relation between meta- physics and the philosophy of biology, but it is surprisingly little remarked that no less a metaphysician than David Wiggins has been insisting on the importance of this relationship for half a century. In this book, Adam Ferner not only draws our attention to this fact, but goes on to explore the connection between Wiggins’s ideas, especially on personal identity, and recent thinking in the philosophy of biology, in unprecedented depth. The book will be of great value not only to philosophers interested in personal identity and biological individuality, but also to many others interested in a fresh and important perspective on the work of Wiggins. John Dupré, University of Exeter, UK This page intentionally left blank Organisms and Personal Identity Over his philosophical career, David Wiggins has produced a body of work that, though varied and wide- ranging, stands as a coherent and carefully integrated whole. In this book, Ferner examines Wiggins’s conceptualist-realism, his sortal theory D and his Human Being Theory in order to assess how far these elements of his systematic metaphysics connect. In addition to rectifying misinterpretations and analysing the relations between Wiggins’s works, Ferner reveals the importance of the philosophy of biology to Wiggins’s approach. This book elucidates the biological anti- reductionism present in Wiggins’s work and highlights how this stance stands as a productive alternative to emergentism. With an analysis of Wiggins’s construal of substances, specifically organisms, the book goes on to discuss how Wiggins brings together the concept of a person with the concept of a natural substance, or human being. An extensive introduction to the work of David Wiggins, as well as a contri- bution to the dialogue between personal identity theorists and philosophers of biology, this book will appeal to students and scholars working in the areas of philosophy, biology and the history of Anglophone metaphysics. A.M. Ferner is a research fellow at the SPH centre in Bordeaux and an Officer of the Royal Institute of Philosophy. History and Philosophy of Biology Series editor: Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther | [email protected] | www.rgwinther.com This series explores significant developments in the life sciences from historical and philosophical perspectives. Historical episodes include Aristotelian biology, Greek and Islamic biology and medicine, Renaissance biology, natural history, Darwinian evolution, Nineteenth- century physiology and cell theory, Twentieth- century genetics, ecology, and systematics, and the biological theories and prac- tices of non- Western perspectives. Philosophical topics include individuality, reductionism and holism, fitness, levels of selection, mechanism and teleology, and the nature–nurture debates, as well as explanation, confirmation, inference, experi- ment, scientific practice, and models and theories vis-à-vis the biological sciences. Authors are also invited to inquire into the ‘and’ of this series. How has, does, and will the history of biology impact philosophical understandings of life? How can philosophy help us analyse the historical contingency of, and structural con- straints on, scientific knowledge about biological processes and systems? In probing the interweaving of history and philosophy of biology, scholarly investi- gation could usefully turn to values, power, and potential future uses and abuses of biological knowledge. The scientific scope of the series includes evolutionary theory, environmental sciences, genomics, molecular biology, systems biology, biotechnology, bio- medicine, race and ethnicity, and sex and gender. These areas of the biological sciences are not silos, and tracking their impact on other sciences such as psy- chology, economics, and sociology, and the behavioral and human sciences more generally, is also within the purview of this series. Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Univer- sity of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), and Visiting Scholar of Philosophy at Stanford University (2015–2016). He works in the philosophy of science and philosophy of biology and has strong interests in metaphysics, epistemology, and political philosophy, in addition to cartography and GIS, cosmology and particle physics, psychological and cognitive science, and science in general. Recent publications include ‘The Structure of Scientific Theories’, The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy and ‘Race and Biology’, The Routledge Compan- ion to the Philosophy of Race. His book with University of Chicago Press, When Maps Become the World, is forthcoming. Published: Romantic Biology, 1890–1945 Maurizio Esposito Natural Kinds and Classification in Scientific Practice Edited by Catherine Kendig Organisms and Personal Identity Biological individuation and the work of David Wiggins A.M. Ferner Forthcoming: Darwinism and Pragmatism William James on evolution and self-transformation Lucas McGranahan The Biological Foundations of Action Derek M. Jones This page intentionally left blank Organisms and Personal Identity Biological individuation and the work of David Wiggins A.M. Ferner First published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2016 A.M. Ferner The right of A.M. Ferner to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-848-93573-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-62999-5 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear For Esther This page intentionally left blank Contents Acknowledgements xiii Introduction 1 Personal identity 2 The philosophy of biology 4 Prospectus 5 Overview of texts 7 1 An intellectual microcosm 14 1 Pre- history 14 2 Descriptive metaphysics 18 3 Heritable defects 24 4 Persisting problems 36 2 D 45 1 The bare bones of identity 46 2 The ‘epistemology of the relation’ 47 3 Principles of individuation 50 4 Sortal identity and relative identity 54 5 A metaphysical or a psychological thesis? 56 3 Natural substances and artefacts 69 1 The semantics of natural kind words 70 2 Artefact words and puzzles 71 3 The existence of artefacts? 73 4 The substancehood of artefacts 75 5 Substance 79 4 The Human Being Theory 89 1 Neo- Lockean or animalist? 90 xii Contents 2 Quasi- memory 93 3 Against an ‘animalist’ reading 94 4 Conceptual consilience: three arguments 95 5 A genealogy of the person concept 111 1 The notion of a person 111 2 ‘Person’ as a mask 114 3 ‘Person’ as a legal fact 116 4 ‘Person’ as moral fact and metaphysical entity 118 5 Critique of the semantic analysis 119 6 Biological models 131 1 Limits of living activity 132 2 A simple- minded worry? 142 3 ‘Pluralism’ and essentialism 144 7 Reduction and emergence 153 1 The reduction of the organism 154 2 ‘Reductionism’ and ‘emergence’ 155 3 An emergentist reading? 158 4 Reasons for doubt 161 8 Aristotelian organisms 173 1 Organic unities 173 2 Aristotelian biology 175 3 Teleology 177 4 Ontological dependence 180 5 Persistence conditions of organic substances 183 9 Brain transplantation 192 1 Changing perspectives 193 2 Methodological concerns 199 3 A suppressed assumption 201 4 Organic unity (again) 203 5 A shift in metaphysical focus: ‘human persons as artefacts?’ 204 6 Final worries and a recommendation for Wiggins 207 Conclusion 220 Appendix: a history of the brain transplantation story 223 Index 233 Acknowledgements I have accrued a great many debts over the years it has taken me to write this book. Most prominent, of course, is the debt I owe to David Wiggins. His texts have proved a sure foundation for my own, and his comments have provoked and enriched my thoughts in exactly the right measure. Thanks are due too to the members of the Birkbeck philosophy faculty. This book began life as a PhD thesis and I am grateful to those who assumed super- visory roles at points during my studies: Sarah Patterson, Robert Northcott, Ian Rumfitt, Keith Hossack and Susan James. Paul Snowdon deserves special mention both as a sympathetic extra- mural supervisor and as the BA tutor who first ignited my interest in Wiggins. Most of all, I have been fortunate that Jenni- fer Hornsby was the one to guide me through the latter stages of my PhD; she did so with characteristic insight and wit – and my work has been immeasurably improved by her suggestions. Comments from John Dupré and Rory Madden – my two examiners – have, alongside their other contributions to philosophy, improved the state of the arguments contained herein. During the doctorate, I was helped as well by the humour and forbearance of my fellow students, in particular Robert Craven, Alex Douglas, Karl Egerton, Elianna Fetterolf, Charlotte Knowles, Tom Quinn, Christoph Schuringa and Neil Wilcox.
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