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Essays in Philosophical Biology Essays in Philosophical Biology Philosophical biology, one might venture to assert, is an effort to delve as deeply as possible into the underpinnings of biological structure. Consequently the effort will be, first, to understand how continuity can be maintained in the drastic change from cold- blooded to warm-blooded vertebrates, from the property of cold-bloodedness to the property of warm-bloodedness. The effort will be extended, second, to consider how properties, in the fully explained sense provided by philosophers, can be used to explain winter and summer adaptedness, and to explain adaptedness and non-adaptedness. Finally, the effort will take up, third, what is deeply germane in a distinction between two environments, the ocean and land environment – for the relational supporting and the attributional suited to dictate very different accounts of environment and species in the Pacific Ocean and on the North American continent. The three efforts just mentioned will be presented as: I. Can evolution be philosophically integrated?; II. Properties and adaptation; III. A view of two worlds. 1. 2. I. Can Evolution Be Philosophical Integrated? The present discussion will first show that the cold-blooded to warm-blooded change in land vertebrates is insurmountable philosophically. Thus the issue is quite unlike the physical issue, where it is clear that the change did happen. What could a philosophical account have to offer that would create a difficulty in understanding so clear a change at the physical level? More specifically the difficulty can be presented in the following way. Lewontin (1978) says “the wholesale reconstruction of a reptile to make a bird is considered a process of major adaptation by which birds solved the problem of flight.” What Lewontin does not point out is that the process of adaptation is from being not adapted to flight (reptile) to being adapted to flight (bird). For what else could process of adaptation mean? Process is from an animal having one property, non-adaptedness, to another animal having a different property, adaptedness. But can the change from non- adaptedness to adaptedness be bridged in an evolutionary setting? So a comment on the evolutionary setting would seem appropriate. Land evolution as paleontology is from reptiles to birds on the one hand and to mammals on the other hand. The evolutionary change to birds was primarily in the Cenozoic, mostly in the Ecocene and Oligocene (Romer, 1959; Carrol, 1988). The evolutionary change of reptiles to mammals occurred throughout the Mesozoic and was by small intergrading steps (Carrol, 1988; Hopson, 1987; Jenkins and Parrington, 1975- 1976). These changes are all at the morphological fossil level. It will be assumed here that physiological changes went along with the morphological changes. Thus the 3. amphibian and reptiles will be grouped together because they now have the property of cold bloodedness and birds and mammals will be grouped together because they now have the property of warm-bloodedness.1 And the feature of having the property of cold- bloodedness changing into the property of warm-bloodedness will be thought of as an evolutionary change in which this property change, following a long philosophical tradition (Copi, 1954), will be considered a change in essential properties. Here cold- bloodedness and warm-bloodedness retain their respective essential identities regardless of the environment. These essential properties are pure properties. Impure properties are gotten when properties are dependent on the environment. Impure properties include the properties of being discontinuously active annually in temperate regions, stemming from cold- bloodedness, and being continually active under similar conditions, stemming from warm-bloodedness. These are physical corporeal properties. Incorporeal, abstract properties include being adapted, adaptedness, and being unadapted, unadaptedness. Properties divide philosophers into three factions, extreme nominalists, moderate nominalists, and realists. Extreme nominalists countenance only particulars (Armstrong, 1978, 1989; Loux, 2003). Moderate nominalists accept each particular thing as composed of properties (Stout, 1923, 1936; Williams, 1953; Campbell, 1981, Armstrong, 1989; Loux, 2003). Realists require each particular thing to have a common property _______________ 1Some temperatures of animals are: cattle 100º-102.5ºF, cat 100-103.1ºF, dog 99.5-102.5ºF, ferret 100-102.5ºF, goat 101-104.5ºF, horse 99-101.5ºF, rabbit 100.4- 105ºF, sheep 101.3-104ºF, swine 100-102ºF (Plumb, 1995); rhesus monkey 101º (Ransom, Fisher, Ingram); house sparrows 42ºC (Miles and Heath, 1972); Peking duck 42ºC (108ºF) (Hagan and Heath 1980). 4. property which bridges from particular to particular (Moore, 1900-1; Russell, 1911; Williams, 1930; Bayliss, 1953; Quinton, 1957; Allaire, 1960; Donagan, 1963; Wolterstorff, 1970a, 1970; Jackson, 1977; Armstrong, 1978, 1989; Westphal, 1990; Loux, 2003; Moreland, 2001). So there is this development: if there are ten of the moderate nominalist’s particulars with ten resembling properties, then there are ten instances of one common property in the realist’s ten particulars. Ten roses with ten rednesses equal ten instances of one redness in ten roses. Ten rednesses = ten instances of one redness. The question is: What happens when evolutionary change is seen in terms of moderate nominalism or realism? If evolutionary change is found to be part of one of these views, it will become part of the structure of things, rather than merely a separate scientific consideration. The Moderate Nominalist View and the Realist View The moderate nominalist view will be presented through the logically valid structure of contraposition. Nagel (1977, pp. 55-70) stresses this structure as being one of the basic ingredients of rational understanding of the external world, with no thinkable exceptions of alternates and immune from the contingencies of psychology, language, and culture. Nagel’s presentation of contraposition is in the form of modus tollens and is sentential: if p then q plus Not q” implies “Not p”. Contraposition more specifically is: if p then q implies if not q then not p. The converse is: if not q then not p implies if p then q. But if the subject, and object, of the sentence is separated from the predicate, 5. severe problems emerge whether to treat contraposition (and converse) nominalistically or realistically. The logically valid form contraposition plus the converse provide equivalence. Thus a dyadic (two-part) structure (x is adapted to y) is impressed upon the external world, following Hulburt (1992, 1996, 1998). Thus we can portray aspects of the foregoing discussion in the following way: ( ∃ y)[Ty ⋅ (Bxy ⊃ Axy)] ≡ ( ∃ y)[Ty ⋅ (~Axy ⊃ ~Bxy)]. (1) Which is: There is a y such that y is an annual temperate temperature range and if x is behaviorally active throughout y then x is adapted to y – equivalent to (≡): there is a y such that y is an annual temperate temperature range and if x is not adapted to y then x is not behaviorally active throughout y. Any single bird or mammal (except hibernators) can be put for x, so that x takes this animal as a value; thence the part to the left describes it as it actually and factually is – adapted because active the whole year – and the part to the right describes it as it can be counterfactually imagined to be, as it would be if it were otherwise than it is. Any single amphibian or reptile can be put for x, so that x takes this animal as a value; thence the part to the right describes it as it actually and factually is – unadapted because not active the whole year – and the part to the left describes it as it can be counterfactually imagined to be, as it would be if it were otherwise than it is. It is to be pointed out that when x is behaviorally active throughout y, x has the property of being behaviorally active throughout y, and when x is adapted to y, x has the property of being adapted to y. And likewise when x is not adapted to y, x has the property of not being adapted to y, and when x is not behaviorally active throughout y, x 6. has the property of not being behaviorally active throughout y. These properties are confined to each animal x in the view of the moderate nominalist. But according to the realist each property, each numerically single thing, is exemplified, embodied, instantiated in every particular bird and mammal, in every particular amphibian and reptile. The importance of taking the realist view is that properties make birds and mammals cohere as a group and amphibians and reptiles cohere as a group. Expression (1) portrays the two properties of warm-blooded birds and mammals (hibernators excepted) and the two complementary properties of cold-blooded amphibians and reptiles, without showing any evolutionary coherence between the two groups of animals and between their properties. It is possible that the variable x, if not a mere part of a linguistic logical schematism, could be instead, in some way, a real ingredient in complementation, in the change from unadapted to adapted. The variable x, one might postulate, should remain single throughout in the reality underlying the schematism of expression (1). The variable x should be unaffected by its association with positive or negative properties. It should be part, perhaps, of the bundle of properties that compose each animal (Stout, 1923, 1936; Loux, 1970). But the first interpretation of (1) is in the moderate nominalistic tradition, in the Stoutian sense that properties (universals) exist within the confines of particulars, particular animals, but do not bridge the gap between particulars. And so the variable x cannot bridge the gap either. 7. Thus the moderate nominalist interpretation of (1) makes the use of logical validity seem to need justification. But can interpretation in the realist tradition be achieved and thus make evolution philosophically integrative and cohering? The Realism of Variables Moore (1993, p.
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