Dear all, Just a reminder that the first Moral Sciences Club meeting of the term will be tomorrow at 2.30 in Sidgwick Hall, Newnham College ( http://www.newn.cam.ac.uk/sites/www.newnham.local/uploads/files/About-Newnham/college_map_08.pdf). Our speaker will be Dr Ellen Clarke (Oxford), giving a talk entitled 'On Biological Individuality'.
We look forward to seeing you there. Best wishes, Ali Boyle and Mat Simpson Abstract: On Biological Individuality What could be more obvious than counting organisms? It’s so easy that we count sheep to lull ourselves to sleep. We teach our toddlers their numbers by showing them animals … two ducks, three elephants, and so on. Some philosophers have taken organisms to be *the* foundational individuals, the only natural particulars. To see why, given all this, the ‘problem of biological individuality’ has become a huge topic in philosophy of biology, we need to move beyond everyday examples and venture into the weird biological territory where organisms reproduce by tearing themselves in half (as some starfish do); or by growing daughters from the ends of their limbs (as many plants do); or by collaborating with thousands of fellows (like slime moulds). I’ll argue that it is necessary to replace our intuitive conception of the organism with one that secures the projectibility sought in evolutionary biological theory. The resulting notion is one that can do work in many domains of interest to philosophers and to human beings. -- Ali Boyle and Matthew Simpson Secretaries of the Moral Sciences Club Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge [email protected] http://www.phil.cam.ac.uk/seminars-phil/seminars-msc _____________________________________________________ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
