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Drakes, seadevils, and similarity fetishism

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Abstract

Homeostatic property clusters (HPCs) are offered as a way of understanding natural kinds, especially biological species. I review the HPC approach and then discuss an objection by Ereshefsky and Matthen, to the effect that an HPC qua cluster seems ill-fitted as a description of a polymorphic species. The standard response by champions of the HPC approach is to say that all members of a polymorphic species have things in common, namely dispositions or conditional properties. I argue that this response fails. Instances of an HPC kind need not all be similar in their exhibited properties. Instead, HPCs should instead be understood as unified by the underlying causal mechanism that maintains them. The causal mechanism can both produce and explain some systematic differences between a kind’s members. An HPC kind is best understood not as a single cluster of properties maintained in stasis by causal forces, but as a complex of related property clusters kept in relation by an underlying causal process. This approach requires recognizing that taxonomic systems serve both explanatory and inductive purposes.

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Notes

  1. Griffiths (1999) emphasizes the importance of development within species conceived as HPCs.

  2. Perhaps ‘disposition’ here is too metaphysical a term. Regardless, the conditional property requires the truth of the corresponding counterfactual.

  3. They add, “Sexual dimorphism within a mammalian species is due to males and females having different chromosomes and different developmental processes. There is no theoretically meaningful similarity under which the variation between the males and females of such species can be subsumed” (Ereshefsky and Matthen 2005, p. 9).

  4. Ereshefsky (1992) advocates eliminating the species category, but his eliminativism just involves rejecting the idea that there is one correct set of criteria that distinguishes the boundaries of all species. Since he thinks that specific species taxa do exist, it is compatible with his view to say that any specific species is an HPC.

  5. The notion of a property cluster is supposed to be in contrast to a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for kind membership. Yet, as we saw at the end of §2, proponents of the HPC view endorse the dispositional maneuver which replaces non-necessary properties with necessary conditional properties. So one might worry about whether their views are strictly-speaking ‘HPC’ views.

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Correspondence to P. D. Magnus.

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This paper is part of a larger work on natural kinds, written while I was a visiting fellow at the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh. My productivity while there was due in no small part to vigorous interaction with many clever and helpful people; among these were Pierluigi Barrotta, Jonathan Birch (who convinced me to think about anglerfish), Kareem Khalifa, Bert Leuridan, Joseph McCaffrey (who pointed me toward bone worms), Sandy Mitchell, John Norton, Richard Samuels, Samuel Schindler, Peter Vickers, Ioannis Votsis, and James Woodward. An earlier version of this paper was presented at Metaphysics & the Philosophy of Science (Toronto, Ontario; May 2011) and improved in light of feedback at the conference, especially from Juha Saatsi, Matthew Slater, Joel Velasco, and Rob Wilson. Thanks also to Marc Ereshefsky, the editor of this journal, and referees for comments on earlier drafts.

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Magnus, P.D. Drakes, seadevils, and similarity fetishism. Biol Philos 26, 857–870 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-011-9284-0

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