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12

Philosophy and Species

Introduction

Having covered as best we can the history of the notion of species, one may wonder
what this has to do either with the philosophy or the science of species. My justification
for such a long prelude is that the essentialism story has impeded both philosophical
reflection on the matter, through a lack of correctly understood examples, and scientific
consideration of pre-Darwinian ideas and solutions. Moreover, philosophy of science
must be based on actual histories, rather than any kind of armchair intuition or scientific
mythology. In this Section I will do what Marjorie Grene and David Depew did for the
philosophy of biology in general, and use the historical context to arrange and discuss
the philosophical ideas that are posed and debated by philosophers and biologists alike.^1
There are many ways that a philosophical topic can be divided, but the three
basic questions of philosophy are—What exists? (Ontology), What can be known?
(Epistemology), and What is it worth? (Axiology). When considering the problem of
species in biology, all three have been approached in detail. The ontology of species
has been the subject of metaphysical questions such as those we have seen devel-
oped both within and without natural science—are they classes, sets, individuals?
The epistemology of species has covered such matters as how they are individuated,
explained, or what role they play in theory. The axiology of species is central to
issues of environmental ethics and policy, and so on.
We will not cover the axiological issues here, as the ethical and metaethical issues
are too vast, especially in ethics and conservation biology.^2 This leaves us with the
ontology and epistemology of species. The distinction has been made many times,
especially by Cracraft,^3 but as we have seen, similar issues have appeared in the
pre-Darwinian literature and often since. Hence I give here a short historical (of
course) introduction to the philosophy of species, followed by my interpretations of
the issues, and then my own dissolution to it.

Literature on the Philosophy of Species

This is not intended to be a full discussion of the philosophical issues. For that, there

are many books in recent years that have introductions to the problem of species. The

most significant are Richard Richard’s^4 and David Stamos’,^5 and several collections on

(^1) Grene and Depew 2004; however, I do not thereby announce my unqualified agreement with their
conclusions or arguments. Hull 1989 also argued in favor of the use of actual evidence in philosophy
of science.
(^2) See, for example, Maclaurin and Sterelny 2008.
(^3) Cracraft 1987, 1989.
(^4) Richards 2010.
(^5) Stamos 2003.