[SydPhil] HPS Research Seminar, Monday 3, April 2023 at 5:30pm

[HPS Admin]

School of History and Philosophy of Science

RESEARCH SEMINAR

[The University of Sydney]

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7 March 2023



"Biological Essentialism Re-interred"

Samir Okasha, University of Bristol

Dates: Monday, 3/4/2023
Time: 5:30pm
Venue: F23, Michael Spence Building, Level 5, Room 501
How to register: Free, no registration required

Zoom Link: https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/85722285732<https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/gd09C71R2NTzmjKqKFWwAMb?domain=t.e2ma.net>



Abstract: In his forthcoming OUP book, which builds on his much-discussed 2008 paper "Biological Essentialism Resurrected", Michael Devitt offers a forthright defence of biological essentialism, the doctrine that biological species (and possibly other taxa too) have partly intrinsic, probably genetic, essences. Devitt's position is striking, since the consensus in the philosophy of biology has long been that intrinsic essentialism of this sort is incompatible with both evolutionary theory and with standard taxonomic practice. However, Devitt argues that this consensus rests on a mistake. He argues that the anti-essentialist consensus stems from a failure to distinguish between the taxon question, which asks what makes an organism a member of one species rather than another, and the category question, which asks what all the different species taxa have in common. Devitt claims that a "relational" answer to the category question is compatible with an "intrinsic essence" answer to the taxon question. I scrutinize this claim and find it to be untenable, on the basis of a logical analysis of the relationship between the taxon and the category questions. I take this to refute Devitt's claim that the anti-essentialist consensus rests on a mistake.

Bio: Dr. Samir Okasha has been a Principal Investigator (2008-2011) on one of the major AHRC-funded research project, titled ‘Evolution, Cooperation and Rationality’ in collaboration with Professor Ken Binmore. The project led to a series of publications and an edited volume Evolution and Rationality (CUP 2012).

Dr. Okasha was the Principal Investigator (2011-2016) on a research project entitled 'Darwinism and the Theory of Rational Choice', funded by a European Research Council Advanced Investigator Award. The project focused on understanding formal and conceptual connections between Darwinian Evolutional Theory and the Theory of Rationality. The project culminated in a book: Agents and Goals in Evolution, published by OUP in 2018.



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