Individuation, process, and scientific practices otavio bueno (editor) - The ebook in PDF/DOCX forma by Education Libraries

https://ebookmass.com/product/individuation-process-andscientific-practices-otavio-bueno-editor/

Instant digital products (PDF, ePub, MOBI) ready for you

Download now and discover formats that fit your needs...

Applying Mathematics: Immersion, Inference, Interpretation

Otavio Bueno

https://ebookmass.com/product/applying-mathematics-immersioninference-interpretation-otavio-bueno/

ebookmass.com

Process Equipment and Plant Design: Principles and Practices Subhabrata Ray

https://ebookmass.com/product/process-equipment-and-plant-designprinciples-and-practices-subhabrata-ray/

ebookmass.com

The Strategist's Handbook: Tools, Templates, and Best Practices Across the Strategy Process Timothy Galpin

https://ebookmass.com/product/the-strategists-handbook-toolstemplates-and-best-practices-across-the-strategy-process-timothygalpin/

ebookmass.com CASTERBERG HILL Judit Fernández

https://ebookmass.com/product/casterberg-hill-judit-fernandez-2/

ebookmass.com

On Wheels (1973) John Jakes

https://ebookmass.com/product/on-wheels-1973-john-jakes/

ebookmass.com

Insects: A Very Short Introduction Simon Leather

https://ebookmass.com/product/insects-a-very-short-introduction-simonleather/

ebookmass.com

Fire Risk Management: Principles and Strategies for Buildings and Industrial Assets Luca Fiorentini

https://ebookmass.com/product/fire-risk-management-principles-andstrategies-for-buildings-and-industrial-assets-luca-fiorentini/

ebookmass.com

Computer Security Fundamentals, Fourth Edition Chuck Easttom

https://ebookmass.com/product/computer-security-fundamentals-fourthedition-chuck-easttom/

ebookmass.com

Impossible Escape Cami Checketts

https://ebookmass.com/product/impossible-escape-cami-checketts/

ebookmass.com

Clash and Burn: An M/M Enemies to Lovers College Romance

(Summerville University Book 2) Catherine Cloverdale

https://ebookmass.com/product/clash-and-burn-an-m-m-enemies-to-loverscollege-romance-summerville-university-book-2-catherine-cloverdale/

ebookmass.com

Individuation, Process, and Scientific Practices

Edited by Otávio Bueno

Ruey-Lin Chen

Melinda Bonnie Fagan

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Bueno, Otávio, editor. | Chen, Ruey-lin, editor. | Fagan, Melinda Bonnie, editor.

Title: Individuation, process, and scientific practices / edited by Otávio Bueno, Ruey-lin Chen, and Melinda Bonnie Fagan.

Description: New York, NY, United States of America : Oxford University Press, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018008358 (print) | LCCN 2018028845 (ebook) | ISBN 978–0–19–063684–5 (online content) | ISBN 978–0–19–063682–1 (updf) | ISBN 978–0–19–063683–8 (epub) | ISBN 978–0–19–063681–4 (cloth : alk. paper)

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018008358

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America

1. Individuation, Process, and Scientific Practices

Otávio Bueno, Ruey-Lin Chen, and Melinda Bonnie Fagan

I Aspects of Individuation: Metaphysical and Processual

2. Processes, Organisms, Kinds, and the Inevitability of Pluralism

John Dupré

3. Individuating Processes

John Pemberton

Marie I. Kaiser

5. Ask Not “What Is an Individual?”

C. Kenneth Waters

6. Individuality, Organisms, and Cell Differentiation

Melinda Bonnie Fagan

7. Individuation of Developmental Systems: A Reproducer Perspective

James Griesemer

8. Individuation, Individuality, and Experimental Practice in Developmental Biology

Alan C. Love

9. Experimental Individuation: Creation and Presentation

10. Emergent Quasiparticles: Or, How to Get a Rich Physics from a Sober

Alexandre Guay and Olivier Sartenaer

11. Can Quantum Objects Be Tracked?

Otávio Bueno

12. Retail Realism, the Individuation of Theoretical Entities, and the Case of the Muriatic Radical

Jonathon Hricko

13. Is Aldo Leopold’s “Land Community” an Individual?

Roberta L. Millstein

{ Acknowledgments }

In the past several decades, philosophers of science have taken a strong interest in metaphysical problems that emerge from the sciences (including physics, biology, and chemistry, among others). Several of these problems have, in the past, particularly in the first half of the twentieth century, been relegated to the class of unsolvable (or, even worse, meaningless) issues. The current situation has changed significantly since the heyday of logical positivism. The authors in this volume are concerned with the issue of individuality in physics, biology, and other sciences, and they share the view that this issue should be explored from the perspective of an analysis of scientific practice. This perspective naturally leads them to consider the notion of individuation and to connect, in many instances, individuation with particular processes. Most contributors presented an earlier draft of their chapters at the “Taiwan Conference on Scientific Individuation in Physical, Biological, and Experimental Sciences,” initiated by Alexandre Guay and Ruey-Lin Chen and held at the Department of Philosophy at National Chung Cheng University in Taiwan on December 8–9, 2014. This conference received financial aid from Taiwan’s Minister of Science and Technology (MOST) and National Chung Cheng University. We hereby thank both organizations for their role in producing this volume.

After the conference in Taiwan, Otávio Bueno, Ruey-Lin Chen, and Melinda Bonnie Fagan took the responsibility of editing the present volume. Each chapter has been reviewed by two anonymous reviewers, and their comments have helped the authors revise their articles accordingly. We express our sincere gratitude to those philosophers who generously accepted our requests and participated in the review process. In addition, we thank our authors for their diligent and impressive work. Without the efforts of authors and reviewers, this volume would not have the features it currently has. We also express our gratitude to the anonymous reviewers (for the entire volume) secured by Oxford University Press for their comments and advice. Finally, our thanks go to the superb team at Oxford University Press: our publishing editor, Lucy Randall, for her encouragement from the start and amazing support throughout; assistant editor Hannah Doyle, for her enormous help; and all of the team who has helped to produce this volume.

Last, but not least, Ruey-Lin Chen would like to thank especially Otávio Bueno and Melinda Bonnie Fagan for their willingness to co-edit this volume. He learned much from the collaboration with them. Many thanks go out to Alexandre Guay who guided him to the topic of individuality and individuation. He would also

like to thank Hsiang-Ke Chao and other colleagues for their private encouragement. Otávio Bueno would similarly like to thank Ruey-Lin Chen and Melinda Bonnie Fagan for their amazing work. It was truly a pleasure to collaborate with them, and a very inspiring and enlightening experience. He would also like to thank his colleagues at the University of Miami’s Philosophy Department for their understanding and support, as well as Patrícia, Julia, and Olivia, for all the ways they make life such a great adventure. Melinda Bonnie Fagan thanks her coeditors, Ruey-Lin Chen and Otávio Bueno, from whom she learned a great deal throughout this, her first foray into editing a collection of papers; her colleagues at the University of Utah, for a wonderful working environment and great advice throughout this project; and Thomas Pradeu and his ImmunoConcEpT team at the University of Bordeaux, for valuable comments and feedback.

{ Contributors }

Otávio Bueno is Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Philosophy Department at the University of Miami. His research concentrates in philosophy of science, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of logic, and epistemology. He has published more than 160 papers in these areas in journals and collections such as Noûs, Mind, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Philosophical Studies, Philosophy of Science, Synthese, Journal of Philosophical Logic, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Analysis, Studies in History of Philosophy of Modern Physics, Erkenntnis, Monist, and Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences. He is the author or editor of several books and the editor in chief of Synthese.

Ruey-Lin Chen is Professor of Philosophy at National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan. His current research interest is in the philosophy of science across physical, biological, and experimental cases. He is the author of five books in history and philosophy of science and has published more than fifty articles and book chapters in Chinese. He has also published a number of journal articles (Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, East Asian Science, Technology, and Society) and book chapters (Mechanism and Causality in Biology and Economics, Individuals Across the Sciences) in English.

John Dupré is Professor of Philosophy of Science at the University of Exeter and Director of Egenis. His publications include The Disorder of Things: Metaphysical Foundations of the Disunity of Science (1993); Human Nature and the Limits of Science (2001); Humans and Other Animals (2002); Darwin’s Legacy: What Evolution Means Today (2003); Genomes and What to Make of Them (with Barry Barnes, 2008); and Processes of Life: Essays on the Philosophy of Biology. He is a former president of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Melinda Bonnie Fagan is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Utah. Her research focuses on experimental practice in biology (particularly stem cell and developmental biology), explanation, and philosophical conceptions of objectivity and evidence. She is the author of Philosophy of Stem Cell Biology (2013) and more than forty articles and book chapters on topics in philosophy of science and biology. She is currently working on a view of explanation focused on concepts of collaboration and mutuality.

James Griesemer is Professor and Chair of the Department of Philosophy at the University of California, Davis, and in the Technology Studies Program, the Center for Science and Innovation Studies, the Cultural Studies Graduate Group, the Population Biology Graduate Group, and the Center for Population Biology. He is a past president of the International Society for History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology and is a member of the KLI in Klosterneuberg, Austria. His primary interests are philosophical, historical, and social understanding of the biological sciences, especially evolutionary biology, genetics, developmental biology, ecology, and systematics. He is writing a book, Reproduction in the Evolutionary Process.

Alexandre Guay is Professor of Philosophy of Natural Sciences and Analytical Philosophy at the Université catholique de Louvain (Belgium), where he is also president of the Institut Supérieur de Philosophie. Most of his research focuses on ontological puzzles in physics. He is the Editor in Chief of Lato Sensu: revue de la Société de Philosophie des Sciences and the President of the Société de philosophie analytique. He edited Autour des Principia Mathematica de Russell et Whitehead and co-edited Individuals Across the Sciences and Science, Philosophie, Société.

Jonathon Hricko is an assistant professor in the Education Center for Humanities and Social Sciences at National Yang-Ming University in Taiwan. His research focuses on the history and philosophy of science. In particular, he is interested in the history of chemistry in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the scientific realism debate, and the semantics of theoretical terms. He received his PhD from Johns Hopkins University, where he wrote his dissertation on hypothetical entities in the sciences.

Marie I. Kaiser is Professor of Philosophy of Science at the University of Bielefeld in Germany. Her main research interests are the philosophy of biology, the general philosophy of science, and the metaphysics of biological practice. In particular, her work focuses on the concept of reductive explanation in biology, mechanisms, part–whole relations, causal modeling, complex systems, biological individuality, and the methodology of philosophy of science. Contact Dr. Kaiser at kaiser.m@uni-bielefeld.de.

Alan C. Love is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota and Director of the Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science. His research focuses on conceptual issues in developmental and evolutionary biology, including conceptual change, explanatory pluralism, the structure of scientific questions and theories, reductionism, the nature of historical science, and interdisciplinary epistemology. He is the editor of Conceptual Change in Biology: Scientific and Philosophical Perspectives on Evolution and Development (2015) and more than forty articles and book chapters on topics in philosophy of science and biology.

Roberta L. Millstein is Professor of Philosophy and Science and Technology Studies at the University of California, Davis. Her research is in the philosophy of science, the history and philosophy of biology, and environmental ethics. Her research interests include the way that general topics in the philosophy of science, such as causation, illuminate and are illuminated by topics in evolutionary biology and ecology; her work also examines particular concepts within those sciences, such as “fitness” and “population.” She is co-editor (with Hsiang-Ke Chao and SzuTing Chen) of Mechanism and Causality in Biology and Economics. She is working on two books, one on the history and philosophy of random genetic drift (with Michael R. Dietrich and Robert A. Skipper) and one that develops and defends a new interpretation of Aldo Leopold’s land ethic. She is an Editor for the online, open-access journal, Philosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology.

John Pemberton is an Associate at the Centre for the Philosophy of the Natural and Social Sciences at the LSE, a Research Associate of the Powers Structuralism project at Corpus Christi College Oxford, and an Associate at the Centre for Humanities Engaging Science and Society at Durham University. The central focus of his research is processes, powers, change, causation, mechanisms (nomological machines), and laws—this work straddles the boundary between philosophy of science and metaphysics. A further strand of his work is focused on the foundations of finance and economics, making use of his extensive experience in these practice areas.

Olivier Sartenaer graduated in physics and in philosophy and defended a PhD dissertation on emergence at the Higher Institute of Philosophy of the Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium) in 2013. He then pursued his research on emergence in physics and in biology as a postdoctoral research fellow at Columbia University (Fulbright/BAEF), the Catholic University of Louvain (FNRS) and, now, the University of Cologne (von Humboldt). He is the author of Qu’est-ce que l’émergence? (2017) and is currently working on a book project about diachronic emergence, an overlooked variety of the notion that allows for revamping the debates on emergence and reduction, both in metaphysics and in philosophy of science.

C. Kenneth Waters is Canada Research Chair in Logic and the Philosophy of Science and is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Calgary. He is the former president of the Philosophy of Science Association (2015–2016), and he has been named AAAS Fellow. His research centers on the epistemology of biological sciences. He has written on reductionism, pluralism, experimentation, conceptual and investigative practices, and causal reasoning.

Individuation, Process, and Scientific Practices

Otávio Bueno, Ruey-Lin Chen, and Melinda Bonnie Fagan

This book is concerned with a classic philosophical question: “What things count as individuals?” Rather than addressing it from the perspective of analytic metaphysics, this volume proposes to reformulate the question and answer it from the perspective of scientific practices. So reformulated, the new question is: “How do scientists individuate the things they investigate and thus count them as individuals?” More precisely, our reformulated approach involves three themes:

1. Experimental practice: Many of this volume’s contributions focus on practices of individuation in the sciences with a pronounced experimental character (e.g., stem cell biology) or consider the conception of individuality from the perspective of experimental practices more generally.

2. Process: Several chapters argue explicitly that individuals as such should be ontologically viewed as processes. Others understand “individuation” in the metaphysical sense as referring to a kind of process (that is, the formation, composition, emergence, and maintenance of a thing). Other chapters emphasize practical or epistemic senses of individuation— the active or cognitive processes by which scientists investigate the metaphysical individuation of their objects of study.

3. Pluralism: Most of the contributing authors allow for the possibility of multiple criteria of scientific individuation, rejecting the monism of traditional metaphysics. A number of authors explicitly defend pluralism about criteria of individuals or individuality within a science and a fortiori across the sciences.

The three themes together comprise a unique approach to the classic problem of individuality and exhibit the strengths of a practice-based philosophy of science. This volume thus examines a core philosophical question from a new angle, building on and consolidating important recent work in the philosophy of science.

To grasp the aims and motivation of this new approach, a review of the background literature and the concept of individuation is helpful. We begin by briefly surveying the approach of analytic metaphysics to questions of individuality and individuation. We then contrast this with approaches taken by recent philosophy of science, highlighting both the continuity and novelty of the approach taken in this volume.

1.1 Individuality and Individuation in Metaphysics

Questions of individuality and individuation have been a concern of metaphysics from ancient Greece to the present. Contemporary analytic metaphysicians aim to discover general criteria of individuality or general principles of individuation in terms of logic, conceptual, and semantic analysis. They construe the concepts of individuality and individuation as closely related. (Russell 1940; Sellars 1952; Strawson 1959; Loux 1978; Adams 1979; Wiggins 1980, 2001; van Cleve 1985; Gracia 1988; van Inwagen 1990; Tooley 1999; Mackie 2006; Lowe 1989, 1998, 2009). For our purpose, we begin by examining their semantic analysis of the term “individuation.”

Metaphysicians distinguish metaphysical and epistemic senses of the term “individuation.” E. J. Lowe (2005) provides a clear definition for each sense. “In the epistemic sense, individuation is a cognitive activity. . . . For someone to individuate an object, in this sense, is for that person to ‘single out’ that object as a distinct object of perception, thought, or linguistic reference” (Lowe 2005: 75). However, “individuation in this epistemic sense presupposes individuation in the metaphysical sense,” which “is an ontological relationship between entities: what ‘individuates’ an object, in this sense, is whatever it is that makes it the single object that it is—whatever it is that makes it one object, distinct from others, and the very object that it is as opposed to any other thing” (Lowe 2005: 75).

What the two definitions reveal is no more than the intensions of “individuation.” A semantic analysis of “individuation” from the perspective of extension is to be considered. According to metaphysician Jorge Gracia, the term “individuation” in the literature refers to two things: “(1) the process by which something becomes individual, and (2) individuality itself, that is, the character of being individual” (Gracia 1988: 4) However, Gracia thinks that “individuation” should be used only in sense (1) because it refers primarily to the process that is expressed by the verb. He interprets it by invoking universals: “‘individuation’ can be taken to refer primarily to the process whereby something universal (say human being) becomes individual (for example, Leticia or Clarisa)” (Gracia 1988: 4). The extension of individuation presupposes the concept of a universal and refers to a process in which universals become particular individuals.

Empirically inclined philosophers may question whether there are such universals and, if so, whether we can have reasonable knowledge of the processes

in which they become individuals. From the scientific perspective of contemporary natural science, the meanings of “process” and “becoming” in this definition are obscure and seem unrelated to real-world processes that we learn about using scientific methods. More sympathetically, one could say that, in the metaphysical definition, the term “individuation” is used in the abstractive sense of principle or theory in which the nature and the criterion of individuals are implied or presupposed, and, according to the criterion, objects are said to be individuated or to be identified as individuals. As a consequence, metaphysical studies in the principle of individuation are no more than a theoretic (in a logic-semantic sense) construction of the nature of individuality and its attendant criterion. This claim can be illustrated by a number of metaphysicians’ works (see Wiggins 1980, 2001; Gracia 1988; Lowe 1989, 2005). For example, commenting on a theory of individuation, Lowe notes that “[s]ortal concepts are characteristically governed by criteria of individuation and identity—semantic principles which determine what are to count as individual instances of the sorts or kinds in question and the conditions for their identity or diversity at a time and (where this is applicable) over time” (Lowe 1989: 1). On this approach, then, the question of individuality is prior to that of individuation, and there is no distinct problem of individuation apart from the problem of individuality.

To solve that problem, metaphysicians have proposed a number of theories of individuation that suggest different kinds of individuals and different criteria for identifying what individuals are. At least six such theories can be identified: hylomorphism (matter-form) theory, bare particular theory, haecceity or primitive thisness theory, bundle (of universals, properties, or tropes) theory, space-time trajectories theory, and sortal concepts theory (Tooley 1999: ix–xi; Lowe 2005: 80–89). Each of these theories may have different versions. Their variation depends on how to interpret the metaphysical concepts such as property, trope, universal, particular, substance, substratum, time, space, sort or kind and their relationships to the concept of individual. These concepts set the terms for mainstream philosophical debates over the issue of individuality and individuation.

For our purpose, the approach of analytic metaphysics has two distinctive features: (1) criteria of individuality and the principles of individuation are supposed to be universally applicable to all entities in the world,1 and (2) the concept of individuation presupposes the concept of individuality, so that the conceptual analysis of individuality and the determination of criteria for an entity being an individual suffice to solve the individuation problem. Recent work in the philosophy of science on questions of individuality challenges (1). However, there has as

1 Also see Gracia’s statement: “anyone who wishes to present a systematic philosophical discussion of individuality must also deal with another important issue, the so called ‘problem of individuation.’ There are two questions which are usually taken up in this context: (1) the identification of the principle or cause of individuation, and (2) the determination of whether this principle, or cause, is the same for all entities” (Gracia 1988: 16).

yet not been sustained challenge to (2). Many of the essays in this volume do so, in diverse ways.

1.2 Individuality and Individuation in the Philosophy of Science

Recently, a number of philosophers of science have taken an interest in this topic of individuality. One motivation for this is that many entities posited by contemporary sciences challenge the accounts proposed by traditional analytic metaphysicians. For example, there are many diverse cases of organismal entities (corals, slime molds, fungi, etc.), supraorganismal entities (colonies, groups, populations, species, etc.), and suborganismal entities (stem cells, genes, gene networks, genomes, etc.) all of which plausibly qualify as living individuals. No set of metaphysical criteria of individuality proposed to date seems to be universally suitable for all these living entities. In physics, there are strange quantum particles that appear, according to prominent analytic accounts, to be either individuals or nonindividuals. Those particles and other physical objects such as waves, fields, forces, and the like, together challenge feature (1): the universal applicability of traditional criteria.

Many philosophers of science think that questions of individuality can be answered only via investigating the outcomes of scientific research. Accordingly, philosophers of physics examine those metaphysical theories of individuality (i.e., criteria of individuals) by referring to classical mechanics, quantum mechanics, and the theory of relativity, which are among our best physical theories now. Naturalistic philosophers tend to exclude those transcendental theories such as hylomorphism theory, haecceity theory, and bare particular theory because their criteria cannot be tested empirically by scientific theories. Some of them adopt bundle theory as the most promising one, argue that quantum particles cannot meet the discernibility criterion, and conclude that quantum particles are nonindividuals in general (French and Krause 2006; Saunders 2006, 2016; Ladyman and Don Ross 2007; Ladyman and Bigaj 2010; Ladyman 2016; French 2014, 2016).2 Some others argue that we cannot but take transcendental concepts of individuality (e.g., “primitive thisness”) to save the individuality of quantum particles (French and Redhead 1988; Morganti 2009, 2013, 2016; Pylkkänen, Hiley, and Pättiniemi 2016). Still other philosophers suggest new conceptions such as “structural individuality” (Glick 2016) or “experimental individuality” (Chen 2016) as alternative answers to the individuality problem of some quantum objects, but it is not clear whether their answers can be applied to all entities in quantum theories. Reviewing this long-term dispute, James Ladyman comments: “On such

2 Saunders (2006) distinguishes between absolute discernibility, relative discernibility, and weak discernibility, which in turn become a baseline for others’ discussion (see Ladyman and Ross 2007; Ladyman 2016).

a naturalistic view, if quantum particles and/or space-time points are individuals, it is not in virtue of weak discernibility or any other general principle of individuation, but because the practice of science treat them as being so in effective descriptions applicable to certain regimes” (Ladyman 2016: 204). This view envisages the direction of our volume. The key idea is to abandon the search for universal principles or criteria of individuality for all entities and instead focus on how scientists individuate their objects of study.

In a sense, the current philosophy of physics is an extensive application of analytic metaphysics to physical theories. Philosophers of physics seldom propose new conceptions of individuality or theories of individuation and tend to follow the logic-semantic techniques of analytic metaphysics. What they have done is test metaphysical theories in terms of physical theories. As a consequence, no consensus on which metaphysical theory, whether bundle theory or space-time theory, can be suitable for all macroscopic objects and microentities in the quantum scale. In the domain of physics, thus, philosophers of physics have argued that the criteria of analytic metaphysics are not universally applicable. Philosophers of biology, in contrast, seldom use metaphysical criteria to treat biological objects such as organisms—one important kind of individual.

As early as the 1970s, philosophers of biology began discussing the problem of individuality by debating whether biological species are individuals (Ghiselin 1974; Hull 1978). Recently, philosophers of biology have published a great number of articles and volumes related to biological individuality (e.g., Dupré and O’Malley 2007, 2009; Folse and Roughgarden 2010; Godfrey-Smith 2009, 2013, 2016; Dupré 2010, 2012; Pradeu 2010, 2012, 2013; Clarke 2010, 2012, 2013; Calcott and Sterelny 2011; Ereshefsky and Pedroso 2013, 2016; Haber 2013, 2016; Bouchard and Huneman 2013; Paternotte 2016; Lidgard and Nyhart 2017). Much of this work focuses on organisms, the paradigmatic biological individuals, and the difficulty of formulating criteria of organismality and, accordingly, biological individuality. In this work, three influential conceptions of individuality and their attendant criteria can be distinguished (Pradeu 2012: 230–231; Wilson and Barker 2013):

(a) Phenomenal individuality: Biological objects count as individuals according to common sense or empirical observation. Proposed criteria for individuality in this sense are: three-dimensional spatial boundaries, enduring for some period of time, bearing properties, and participating in processes and events.

(b) Physiological individuality: Biological objects count as individuals according to physiological investigations. Proposed criteria for this sense of individuality are functional integration, autonomy, and immune responsiveness.

(c) Evolutionary individuality: Biological objects count as individuals just in case they are units of selection according to the terms of evolutionary theory.

The phenomenal conception of individuality has little current support because the criterion of common sense is vague, unreliable, and faces many counterexamples.3 Some philosophers of biology believe that biological theories or models may offer better criteria. The question is which theory or set of theories should be used. The main alternatives are physiological theories and the theory of evolution by natural selection. However, within each group variants have been proposed. For example, some philosophers highlight organisms as units of functional integration (Sober 1991; Wilson 1999; Lewontin 2000), while others argue that immunity offers a better criterion for individuality (Pradeu 2010, 2012). Similarly, the evolutionary theory approach encompasses the replicative reproducer version (Godfrey-Smith 2009), the interactor version (Hull 1980; Ereshefsky and Pedroso 2016), and the developmental reproducer version (Griesemer 2000). Other proposals combine different conditions from different conceptions into a general criterion of individuality, for example, the functional interpretations of policing and demarcation mechanisms (see Clarke 2013).

As this brief survey indicates, philosophers of biology seldom appeal to the criteria of analytic metaphysics. Nonetheless, most current work addresses the problem of formulating criteria of individuality through examination of different biological theories. Some works explore biological individuals in the evolutionary transitions beyond organisms, such as the edited volumes, The Major Transitions in Evolution Revisited (Calcott and Sterelny 2011) and From Groups to Individuals: Evolution and Emerging Individuality (Bouchard and Huneman 2013). Other works contribute to the topic through exploring atypical cases such as bacteria, stem cells, biofilms, populations, and so forth (Dupré and O’Malley 2007, 2009; Millstein 2009; Ereshefsky and Pedroso 2013, 2016; Fagan 2016; Paternotte 2016). But, for most part, organisms remain the conceptual focus (Wilson and Barker 2013). Insofar as organisms are taken to be the paradigmatic individuals, most current philosophy of biology does not challenge the second distinctive feature of analytic metaphysics: the concept of individuality is prior to that of individuation.

This survey of recent literature on individuality and individuation reveals two general trends: first, most philosophers in metaphysics, philosophy of physics, and philosophy of biology tend to invoke a dominant theory, whether metaphysical, physical, or biological, in proposing a criterion to solve the problem of individuality, and, second, most philosophical treatments approach the issue within a single field, say, metaphysics, physics, or biology (or general common sense, with less success). A notable exception to the second trend is Individuals across the sciences (Guay and Pradeu 2016) edited by Alexandre Guay and Thomas Pradeu,

3 Many organisms such as corals, fungi, slime molds, and aspens are difficult to identify. A number of philosophers of biology reject the use of the conception of phenomenal individuality as a single criterion because they think that those relevant conditions based on common sense and observation cannot be trusted (Hull 1992; Lewontin 2000; for a brief discussion, see Pradeu 2012).

which explores the issue across metaphysics, physics, and biology. A few chapters in that volume, such as Fagan (2016) and Chen (2016), are exception to this trend, exploring the issue of individuality in terms of experimental practices rather than theories.

This volume adopts and extends the strategy of crossing disciplinary borders in addressing questions of individuality. The following chapters, taken together, engage not only analytic metaphysics, physics, and biology, but also in chemistry, environmental science, engineering, and ethics. The goal of this expanded treatment is not, however, to compare different accounts of individuality from different sciences and fields of philosophy, reinforcing divisions among those fields. Rather, the idea is to extend the cross-disciplinary approach while moving away from the emphasis on theory. Many chapters in this volume take experimental practices to be primary in resolving questions of individuality. This focus on practice can be expressed as giving priority to concepts and problems of individuation within and across diverse sciences. As noted earlier, “individuation” traditionally has both metaphysical and epistemic senses, which are seen as closely connected. Our approach gives primacy to the latter, focusing on the diverse methods that scientists use in practice to identify individuals as objects of study.4 This approach, reversing the usual philosophical priorities, offers a fresh perspective on the philosophical problems of individuation with and across diverse sciences, indicating new points of contact between scientific practice and philosophical argumentation.

Expanding on Lowe’s distinction between metaphysical and epistemic senses of individuation noted earlier, on the “practice approach,” it is helpful to distinguish three senses of individuation (see also Chen, Chapter 9, this volume):

1. Practical individuation: The practical process in which scientists manipulate, target, track, present, or produce an individual by means of scientific procedures. Most of the chapters in Part II (see later discussion) address this aspect of individuation.

2. Epistemic individuation: The cognitive process by which scientists identify, distinguish, and individuate a thing from its environment and other things. Most of the chapters in this volume deal with this aspect, in different ways and in reference to different scientific contexts.

3. Metaphysical individuation: The process through which an individual comes into being or persists until it perishes. Nearly all the chapters in this volume involve this aspect in some way or other. Most do so by focusing on how individuation in this sense is discovered or produced in the practice of particular sciences.

The metaphysical sense of individuation, as stated here, has an interesting consequence: in order to understand individuation as process, we also have to

4 Love and Brigandt (2017) suggest a similar view and approach to ours.

understand individuals in themselves as processes. This is because the metaphysical process of individuation comprises the formation (or emergence or composition), the persistence, or the maintenance of individuals. This process as a whole is a process of an individual per se. That is, an individual emerges from a process of individuation in the metaphysical sense. Epistemic and practical individuation, then, are processes that aim to uncover stages of that metaphysical process. A number of chapters in this volume engage explicitly with this strong process view.

1.3 Individuation, Individuals, and Process Metaphysics

The significance of our volume, in the light of this background, is that it approaches individuation and individuals in a significantly different way from most existing literature, which focuses primarily on individuals. Our primary approach is to reverse the order of the classical philosophical question, asking “How do researchers (and, in particular, scientists) individuate things and thus count them as individuals?” The new question implies a new perspective: individuals are understood as products or outcomes of individuation as a process, rather than identified by principles or criteria of individuality applied to entities. The basic idea of the new perspective is that, in individuating, individuality is endowed to things in various specific ways, thereby making them be individuals. For example, an egg is fertilized by a sperm, becomes a zygote, develops into an organism, and lives for a period of time. The whole process can be understood as individuation, which consists of a unitary whole of sequential stages. Our knowledge of this process, and its stages, comes from scientific research—crucially, from individuation in the epistemic and practical senses. Since we understand “individuation” as process, the question arises whether individuals, as the products of individuation, themselves are also processes or not. This question involves us in the metaphysics of processes—another important theme of this volume.

Process metaphysics is a view or an approach which treats beings as dynamic and centralizes the concept of process in understanding all entities. The ultimate goal of process metaphysicians is to provide a comprehensive theory of reality.5 However, the topic is as yet relatively unexplored so that there is currently no unitary or paradigmatic analysis. Some works on process metaphysics (Whitehead 1929/1978; Weber and Basile 2007) seem to be overly speculative. To counteract this, some analytic philosophers have tried to develop process metaphysics rigorously in terms of symbolic systems and logic techniques (Rescher 1996; Seibt 2003; Heller and Herre 2003). Others have applied analytic process metaphysics to some special sciences (Needham 1999, 2003; Christiaens 2003). In a nutshell, current analytic process metaphysics uses a logical-semantic analysis of key terms as a means

5 For a detailed introduction, see Rescher (2008) or Seibt (2012).

to explore general everyday cases and special scientific cases. Does the concept of process relate to the concepts of individuals and individuation?

According to Rescher (2008: 1), the term “process” refers to “a sequentially structured sequence of successive stages or phases.” He tries to define “process” in terms of the following three statements:

1. A process is a complex—a unity of distinct stages or phases. A process is always a matter of now this, now that.

2. This complex has a certain temporal coherence and unity, and processes accordingly have an ineliminably temporal dimension.

3. A process has a structure, a formal generic format in virtue of which every concrete process is equipped with a shape or format (Rescher 2008: 1).

One can obviously find that these characterizations harbor the problem of the individuation of processes (i.e., how to individuate a process?), and they seem to provide a criterion for the individuation of processes in general. For philosophical naturalists, the next step is to examine this metaphysical theory in terms of scientific cases. Pemberton (Chapter 3 in this volume) uses cases across different sciences to explore the individuation of processes.

Process philosopher Johanna Seibt also connects individuals and processes in developing her concept of free process, claiming that: “ . . . anything which is conceived of as occurring in the activity mode is a concrete, dynamic, nonparticular individual. Such individuals, which I call ‘free processes,’ may be used for the interpretation of much more than just common sense activities”6 (Seibt 2003: 23). However, she does not address these questions of what individuals are, what individuation is, and what is the relation between individual and individuation. In contrast, Dupré (Chapter 2 in this volume) defends the claim that organisms are processes. A number of other chapters in this volume understand individuation as a process as well and explore the close relation between individual and individuation in terms of cases in diverse sciences.

Although noting the relation between process and individuation, current process metaphysics offers few resources to explore those central issues in this volume. Instead, our main focus of prioritizing questions of individuation and scientific practice offers materials and support for empirically based, naturalistic process philosophy.

6 Seibt (2003) uses a semantic analysis of activities and a classification of verb types as a starting point to develop her theory of free process. She first identifies processes with activities, and then analyzes entities referred by nouns in terms of activity as she talks of an occurrence as activity and as an entity that fulfills conditions such as completeness, resumability, recurrence, and dynamicity. In a nutshell, Seibt tries to reduce entities to activities, which are fundamental processes.

1.4 The Problem of Individuation Based on Scientific Practices

Foregrounding the individuation process in effect reformulates the classical question of individuality: How do we individuate things in scientific practice and thus count them as individuals? Rather than seek a general, universal answer, our main approach is to focus on different aspects of this problem, which can be formulated as different, but related, subproblems and subquestions. Taken together, this plurality of formulations offers a distinctive characterization of the problem of individuation, which accommodates the diversity of scientific practices and their individuated results. Across the chapters comprising this volume, eight subproblems can be distinguished:

1. The conception-of-individuality problem: Is the conception of individuality one or many? Existing literature shows that many conceptions of individuality have been proposed. Still, many philosophers hold a monistic perspective to this issue, hoping to find a unified theory. However, is a pluralistic stance justified? Dupré (Chapter 2), Kaiser (Chapter 4), Waters (Chapter 5), and Love (Chapter 8) examine this issue.

2. The identification-of-individuals problem: According to what criteria in scientific practices do we identify entities as individuals? This problem looks like a traditional one, but, rather, asks what criteria for identifying entities as individuals are revealed by considering scientific practices rather than theories only. Waters (Chapter 5), Fagan (Chapter 6), Griesemer (Chapter 7), Love (Chapter 8), and Chen (Chapter 9) address this problem.

3. The nature-of-individuals problem: Are individuals substances with a set of essential properties, or processes depending causally on a range of activities? This problem asks which—substance ontology or process ontology—is better supported by scientific practices. Dupré (Chapter 2) and Pemberton (Chapter 3) explicitly address this problem, arguing for process ontology. Many of the other chapters implicitly commit to the position as well.

4. The emergence-of-individuality problem: Under what conditions do entities become or emerge as individuals? Answers to this problem propose criteria for emerging individuality (individuation as a process), which in turn presuppose some theory of emergence. Guay and Sartenaer (Chapter 10) deal with this problem.

5. The composition-of-individuals problem: What conditions make all components compose a whole individual? Or, what is the compositional relation that holds between a (complex) individual and all of its components? Pemberton’s, Kaiser’s, and Chen’s chapters address this problem.

6. The demarcation-of-individuals problem: What criteria demarcate the boundary of an individual from its environment (including other

individuals)? In other words, what conditions demarcate all parts of an individual from the surrounding environment? This problem is the other face of the composition problem of individuals. Pemberton’s and Kaiser’s chapters deal with this problem as well.

7. The individuation-of-parthood problem: Under what conditions is something a part of the other thing? In addition to the composition problem of individuals, Pemberton’s and Kaiser’s chapters also attempt to find the condition that can identify something as a part of an individual.

8. The maintenance-of-individuality (or the continuity-of-individuals) problem: How does an individual maintain its identity through changes? Understanding individuals as processes logically implies this problem. Dupré and Pemberton’s chapters attend to this question. In addition, Chen’s chapter explores the maintenance conditions for some experimental individuals.

In addition to the eight subproblems of individuation, related problems of individuation and reality are explored in this volume. They are formulated by a composite question: How do individuation and individuals relate to reality, to their environment, and to our actions? Bueno (Chapter 11) and Hricko (Chapter 12) connect the issue of individuation with the realism/anti-realism debates. Millstein (Chapter 13) argues that the issue of individuality matters for environmental science and land ethics. All ground their answers on scientific practices.

On the approach taken in this volume, insights about criteria of individuality emerge from piecemeal investigation of these problems and questions. For the most part, results of these investigations are based on individuation as that process is discovered in scientific practice, rather than on a single dominant theory or more abstract metaphysical speculations. Collectively, the investigations of various contributors to this volume tend to support the metaphysical view of individuals as processes. We conclude this introductory chapter with a more detailed summary of the authors’ contributions.

1.5 Overview of Chapters

The eleven contributed chapters examine the individuation of scientific entities, explore different aspects of individuation, highlight individuation in experimental practices, and extend the issue of individuation to wider contexts. Two chapters (Guay and Sartenaer, Millstein) do not engage as directly with individuation, focusing instead on emergence and individuality, respectively. Although departing from the volume’s main approach, these chapters enrich the collection by connecting individuality issues across different domains of inquiry: particle physics and general metaphysics; philosophy of biology, ecology, and environmental