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Kinds, Essentialism, Induction, De-Extinction Mark Lowe University of Connecticut - Storrs, [email protected]

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Kinds, Essentialism, Induction, De-Extinction Mark Lowe University of Connecticut - Storrs, Mark.Lowe@Uconn.Edu University of Connecticut OpenCommons@UConn Doctoral Dissertations University of Connecticut Graduate School 5-9-2014 Implications of Species-as-Individuals: Kinds, Essentialism, Induction, De-Extinction Mark Lowe University of Connecticut - Storrs, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://opencommons.uconn.edu/dissertations Recommended Citation Lowe, Mark, "Implications of Species-as-Individuals: Kinds, Essentialism, Induction, De-Extinction" (2014). Doctoral Dissertations. 411. https://opencommons.uconn.edu/dissertations/411 Implications of Species-as-Individuals: Kinds, Essentialism, Induction, De-Extinction Mark Downing Lowe University of Connecticut, 2014 The individuality thesis, or “species-as-individuals” (SAI), is the dominant view in philosophy of biology. Biological species are not natural kinds, but individuals. This dissertation defends SAI against recent proposals to reconceptualize species as natural kinds. I argue that, despite criticisms, the preponderance of considerations still weighs in favor of SAI. I then defend another consensus view in philosophy of biology, that species have no essential intrinsic qualitative properties (species anti-essentialism), against recent attempts to revive essentialism, and show how SAI is better suited than the view that species are natural kinds to defeat essentialism. I next develop an account of how it is that biologists can make reliable inductive inferences about species – in particular, reliable generalizations – given that species are individuals. One motivation for reconceiving species as natural kinds is to provide a philosophical grounding for these inductive practices, since the traditional view is that natural kinds, with their essential properties, are uniquely suited for grounding inductive inference. My account appeals to the causal processes which produce the degrees of uniformity and homogeneity within species which permit biologists to make reliable generalizations; shows that other sorts of natural kinds are also at work grounding such inferences; and argues that the inferences in question demand only that species have stable, but not essential, properties. Finally, I apply SAI to a controversial prospect in conservation, the resurrection of extinct species by cloning (de-extinction). The received view is that once an individual is lost, it cannot be recreated. I argue that the descent relation which makes offspring part of the same species- individual as their parent(s) holds between clones and their progenitors; thus clones of organisms Mark Downing Lowe – University of Connecticut, 2014 from an extinct species are part of that species. This makes a resurrected species a temporally discontinuous object; I give reasons to think there can be and are such objects. One argument in favor of SAI is that evolutionary theory requires the spatiotemporal continuity of species, which appears to be violated here. I maintain that evolutionary theory requires the historical continuity of species, which is upheld on my account of de-extinction. Implications of Species-as-Individuals: Kinds, Essentialism, Induction, De-Extinction Mark Downing Lowe B.A., University of Southern California, 1985 M.A., Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 2007 A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut 2014 i Copyright by Mark Downing Lowe 2014 ii APPROVAL PAGE Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation Implications of Species-as-Individuals: Kinds, Essentialism, Induction, De-Extinction Presented by Mark Downing Lowe, B.A., M.A. Major Advisor__________________________________________________________________ Crawford Elder Associate Advisor_______________________________________________________________ Thomas Bontly Associate Advisor_______________________________________________________________ Samuel Wheeler III Associate Advisor_______________________________________________________________ Kent Holsinger University of Connecticut 2014 iii iv Acknowledgments Many people deserve thanks for assisting, one way or another, in the production of this dissertation. A great deal of gratitude is owed to my dissertation committee: Crawford Elder, Thomas Bontly, Samuel Wheeler, and Kent Holsinger. In particular, an immeasurable amount of thanks is due to my dissertation chair and major advisor, Tim Elder. Tim shepherded me patiently through the process of researching and writing this dissertation, and his published challenges to the individuality thesis and to species anti-essentialism form much of the substance of the resulting document. Tim took my extensive criticisms of his work with grace, and encouraged me to press ahead with some of my more radical or controversial views regarding natural kinds, induction, and the persistence of objects, during the many periods when they seemed to me to be beyond hope. I owe an extensive debt also to Kent, who donated many hours of his time over a three-year period confirming, correcting, and otherwise guiding my informal education in the disciplines of evolutionary biology which I deal with in the dissertation. Two other members of the faculty of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Connecticut, Elizabeth Jockusch and Andrew Bush, deserve thanks for also giving me hours of their time answering my questions, posing challenging questions of their own, and also sending me in the direction of relevant research. I’d like to thank Carl Schlichting, Nate Jue, and the other members of the Fall 2011 reading group on the Extended Synthesis as well. As a non- biologist, I was honored to be included in this group, and our deliberations added to my understanding of the biological issues I deal with herein. Outside UConn, Carl Zimmer deserves mention for steering me toward research pertinent to de-extinction projects. v I’m also in debt to other members of the philosophy faculty, who as my teachers or interlocutors influenced my thinking, or raised issues and challenges that helped me to refine and, I hope, strengthen a number of my own views: Donald Baxter, Paul Bloomfield, Michael Lynch, Marcus Rossberg, Lionel Shapiro, and in particular, Ruth Millikan, whose own writings on issues involving the individuality thesis make up, like Tim’s, a good deal of the backdrop against which this dissertation was written. Conversations I had with Ruth, her encouragement, and the recognition that I would almost certainly face her questions at my defense, inspired a number of the arguments in the dissertation. Many of my fellow graduate students deserve my gratitude for providing valuable advice, criticisms, suggestions, encouragement, a sounding board for my ideas, or general moral support, including Richard Anderson, Kathy Fazekas, Casey Johnson, Alexis Elder, Michael Hughes, Ross Vandegrift, BJ Strawser, Nathan Lindsey, Toby Napoletano, Benjamin Nelson, Andrew Parisi, Tim Bos, Andrew Ely, David Pruitt, Michael Robillard, Noah Sharpsteen, Nate Sheff, Chelsea Ruxer, Maureen Stringham, Scott Goldstein, Jeremy Wyatt, Sean Dansberger, Micah Newman, Curt VonGunten, Jeff Wisdom, Paul Silva, Matt Clemens, Daniel Massey, Rik Hine, and Nilanjan Bhowmick. Thanks are also due to Shelly Burrelle, our program assistant, for helping me over a five-year period navigate the maze of regulations, requirements, and deadlines to which graduate students are subject. A number of other people, too many to list, are also responsible for giving me friendship and invaluable moral support, and for helping me to keep my sanity during this long process of research, writing, rewriting, and more rewriting, including friends present and past in the Windham Area Games Group, the CardBoard Players Club, Game for Anything!, the UConn Graduate Student Senate, the Bradley Playhouse, and the Windham Theatre Guild. I’m also vi grateful for the love and encouragement I’ve received from my father and mother, Buz and Pat Lowe; my sister, Kathy Knowles; my brother, Tom Lowe; their spouses, Kevin Knowles and Cheri Lowe, and their children, Megan Lowe, Ryan Lowe, Eva Knowles, and Audrey Knowles. Finally, I would like to acknowledge David Hull, who passed away shortly before I began work in earnest on this dissertation, but whose writings in philosophy of biology and in the history and philosophy of science inspired it in nearly every way. vii viii Contents Acknowledgments iv Introduction 1 Chapter One: Biological Species: Still Individuals After All These Years 8 Chapter Two: Why Species Essentialism Should Remain a Dead Issue 72 Chapter Three: Induction and the Individuality Thesis 131 Chapter Four: Is Species De-Extinction Possible If Species Are Individuals? 200 Bibliography 265 ix x Introduction For centuries, philosophers had considered biological species to be paradigm natural kinds. They had also assumed that, like all other natural kinds, every species had an essence, some set of intrinsic properties which all and only members of that kind possessed, which were essential to membership in the kind, and which explained why members of the kind were as they are. As modern genetics developed, philosophers seem to have assumed that these properties would turn out to be genetic: just as physicists and chemists had discovered that subatomic particles, chemical elements, and various molecules were all characterized by a discrete and unique microstructure, so biologists would discover that every species was characterized by a unique set of genes, genetic properties, or genetic
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