Physiological and evolutionary individuals: a metaphysical perspective

Guay, Alexandre [UCL] Martens, Johannes

Evolutionary approaches have long dominated the theoretical debates on the nature of biological individuality. Most of the time, these approaches rely on the conjunction of two philosophical claims: (i) the category of biological individuals is more inclusive than the category of traditional organisms; (ii) biological individuals are evolutionary individuals. Recently, however, some philosophers have defended an alternative, pluralist conception of biological individuality which envisages the categories of physiological and of evolutionary units as two distinct—though partially overlapping—categories of biological individuals (Godfrey-Smith 2013; Pradeu 2016). In this paper, we propose a critical analysis of this account, and provide a detailed survey of the metaphysical interpretations that can be given to it.