Scholar：Alexandre Guay
Department：UCLouvain
Title：A Problem about Pluralist Individuality in Biology
Abstract: 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.
Scholar information：https://uclouvain.be/en/directories/alexandre.guay
Video link: https://youtu.be/FhBDxVieIKQ
Scholar：Charles Pence
Department：UCLouvain
Title：Disagreement and ambiguity in biodiversity: a digital humanities perspective
Abstract：My talk has two aims. First, I will discuss the uncertainty surrounding concepts in biodiversity and taxonomy, along with approaches developed in the philosophy of biology to resolve or eliminate it. It has long been recognized that disagreement is rampant in taxonomy, and that this disagreement over species inventories has a direct (and a potentially damaging) effect on our understanding of biodiversity, with concomitant worries about practice in conservation biology. Philosophers have offered a number of diagnoses of this state of affairs, including various kinds of fatalism, proposals for standardization, and careful analyses of the roles of social and ethical values in conservation. Second, I will present preliminary work from my group using empirical analyses of the literature in taxonomy with the goal of better understanding the factors that shape and modulate taxonomic disagreement – and thus, we hope, better understanding where this disagreement might negatively affect conservation efforts.
Scholar information：https://philpeople.org/profiles/charles-h-pence
Video link: https://youtu.be/WD78rOwdhIk
Date: 2023.11.2 Thur. 14:00~18:00
Place: National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University Zhi Xing Building Room321
Agenda：
14:00-14:50 Talk / Alexandre Guay
14:50-15:20 Q&A
15:20-16:00 Coffee break
16:00-16:50 Talk / Charles Pence
16:50-17:30 Q&A
※This talk will be held both online and in person.
Online Joining information
Thursday, November 2 2023. 2:00 – 6:00pm
Time zone: Asia/Taipei
Google Meet joining info
Video call link: https://meet.google.com/gfz-eyyy-bma
(video recording)