Hostname: page-component-7f64f4797f-6fdxz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-11-04T04:24:46.169Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Essential Membership

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Joseph LaPorte
Joseph LaPorte*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
*
†Send reprint requests to the author, Department of Philosophy, Bartlett Hall, The University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Box 30525, Amherst MA 01003–0525, USA.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this paper I take issue with the doctrine that organisms belong of their very essence to the natural kinds (or biological taxa, if these are not kinds) to which they belong. This view holds that any human essentially belongs to the species Homo sapiens, any feline essentially belongs to the cat family, and so on. I survey the various competing views in biological systematics. These offer different explanations for what it is that makes a member of one species, family, etc. a member of that taxon. Unfortunately, none of them offers an explanation that is compatible with the essentialism in question.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 64 , Issue 1 , March 1997 , pp. 96 - 112
Copyright
Copyright © 1997 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

‡

For helpful comments on previous drafts of this paper and/or profitable discussion of issues in it, I thank Eddie Abrams, Bruce Aune, Phillip Bricker, Fred Feldman, Lucy O'Brien, and audiences at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, the 1996 Mid-South Philosophy Conference at the University of Memphis, and the 1996 Eastern Division Meeting of the APA in Atlanta. Special thanks to the commentators for these talks: Ben Bradley, Timothy Huson, and Marc Lange, respectively. I also thank anonymous referees for this journal.

References

Andersson, L. (1990), “The Driving Force: Species Concepts and Ecology”, Taxon 39: 375–382.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aune, B. (1994), “Determinate Meaning and Analytic Truth,” in G. Debrock and M. Hulswit (ed.), Living Doubt. Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers; pp. 55–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bailie, J. (1990), “Identity, Survival, and Sortal Concepts”, The Philosophical Quarterly 40: 183–194.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beatty, J. (1982), “Classes and Cladists”, Systematic Zoology 31: 25–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carter, W. R. (1986), “Mapping Semantic Paths: Is Essentialism Relevant?”, in French, P., Uehling, T. E., and Wettstein, H. K. (ed.), Midwest Studies in Philosophy XI. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 53–73.Google Scholar
Cocchiarella, N. (1976), “On the Logic of Natural Kinds”, Philosophy of Science 43:202–222.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cook, M. (1980), “If ‘Cat’ is a Rigid Designator, What Does it Designate?”, Philosophical Studies 37: 61–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Doepke, F. (1992), “Identity and Natural Kinds”, The Philosophical Quarterly 42: 89–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dupré, J. (1981), “Natural Kinds and Biological Taxa”, The Philosophical Review 90: 66–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dupré, J. (1989), “Wilkerson on Natural Kinds”, Philosophy 64: 248–251.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eldredge, N. (1985), Unfinished Synthesis: Biological Hierarchies and Modern Evolutionary Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ereshefsky, M. (1991), “Species, Higher Taxa, and the Units of Evolution”, Philosophy of Science 58: 84–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ereshefsky, M. (1992a), “Eliminative Pluralism”, Philosophy of Science 59: 671–690.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ereshefsky, M. (1992b), The Units of Evolution: Essays on the Nature of Species. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Forbes, G. (1985), The Metaphysics of Modality. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ghiselin, M. (1974), “A Radical Solution to the Species Problem”, Systematic Zoology 23: 536–544.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gould, S. J. and Eldredge, N. (1977), “Punctuated Equilibria: the Tempo and Mode of Evolution Reconsidered”, Paleobiology 3: 115–151.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hennig, W. (1966), Phylogenetic Systematics. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Hull, D. (1976), “Are Species Really Individuals?”, Systematic Zoology 25: 174–191.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hull, D. (1978), “A Matter of Individuality”, Philosophy of Science 45: 335–360.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hull, D. (1980), “Individuality and Selection”, Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 11: 311–332.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hull, D. (1987), “Genealogical Actors in Ecological Roles”, Biology and Philosophy 2: 168–184.Google Scholar
Jones, J. S. ([1981] 1982), “An Uncensored Page of Fossil History”, in Smith, J. M. (ed.), Evolution Now: A Century After Darwin. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Co., pp. 167–170.Google Scholar
Khalidi, M. A. (1993), “Carving Nature at the Joints”, Philosophy of Science 60: 100–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kitcher, P. (1984a), “Against the Monism of the Moment: A Reply to Elliott Sober”, Philosophy of Science 51: 616–630.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kitcher, P. (1984b), “Species”, Philosophy of Science 51: 308–333.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kitcher, P. (1987), “Ghostly Whispers: Mayr, Ghiselin and the ‘Philosophers’ on the Ontological Status of Species”, Biology and Philosophy 2: 184–192.Google Scholar
Kitcher, P. (1989), “Some Puzzles About Species”, in Ruse, M. (ed.), What the Philosophy of Biology Is: Essays Dedicated to David Hull. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 183–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kripke, S. (1980), Naming and Necessity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
LaPorte, J. (1996), “Chemical Kind Term Reference and the Discovery of Essence”, Noûs 30: 112–132.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mayr, E. (1969), Principles of Systematic Zoology. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Mayr, E. (1970), Populations, Species, and Evolution: An Abridgment of Animal Species and Evolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Mayr, E. (1976), Evolution and the Diversity of Life: Selected Essays. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Mayr, E., Linsley, E. G., and Usinger, R. L. (1953), Methods and Principles of Systematic Zoology. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Mellor, D. H. (1977), “Natural Kinds”, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 28: 299–312.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mishler, B. and Brandon, R. (1987), “Individuality, Pluralism, and the Phylogenetic Species Concept”, Biology and Philosophy 2: 397–414.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelson, G. and Platnick, N. (1981), Systematics and Biogeography: Cladistics and Vicariance. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Paterson, H. (1985), “The Recognition Concept of Species”, in Vrba, E. (ed.), Species and Speciation. Pretoria: Transvaal Museum, pp. 21–29.Google Scholar
Platnick, N. (1982), “Defining Characters and Evolutionary Groups”, Systematic Zoology 31: 282–284.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ridley, M. (1986), Evolution and Classification: The Reformation of Cladism. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Ridley, M. (1989), “The Cladistic Solution to the Species Problem”, Biology and Philosophy 4: 1–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simpson, G.G. (1961), Principles of Animal Taxonomy. New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sneath, P. and Sokal, R. (1973), Numerical Taxonomy: The Principles and Practice of Numerical Classification. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Co.Google Scholar
Stanford, P. K. (1995), “For Pluralism and Against Realism About Species”, Philosophy of Science 62: 70–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Valen, L. (1976), “Ecological Species, Multispecies, and Oaks”, Taxon 25: 233–239.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wiley, E. O. (1981), Phylogenetics. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Wiggins, D. (1980), Sameness and Substance. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Zemach, E. M. (1976), “Putnam's Theory on the Reference of Substance Terms”, The Journal of Philosophy 73: 116–127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar