Biological Individuality Is Not Necessarily an Intrinsic Property

Abstract

A significant and longstanding debate in philosophy of biology has centered around biological individuality. Although there have been numerous attempts to articulate a plausible and unifying view of what makes something a biological individual, the results are often conflicting and non-coextensive. In spite of these disputes, an open consensus around a few general ideas has surfaced (Pradeu 2016a). One common assumption that has been carried over with the consensus is that biological individuality is an intrinsic property of biological entities (Clarke 2016a). This tendency is reflected in the properties typically selected as criteria: what makes something an individual is quite often a property that biological entities themselves possess. I draw on Ellen Clarke’s (2013) evolutionary account of biological individuality, research about the evolution and maintenance of cooperation in the origins of multicellularity (Brockhurst et al. 2007; Gulli et al. 2019), and important parts of the consensus around biological individuality to argue against this trend. What makes something a biological individual is not always something about the entities in question. I show that there are environmental mechanisms capable of acting as individuation mechanisms in circumstances that resemble early transition stages, or in situations where individuality departs from paradigm cases. Therefore, biological individuality is not necessarily an intrinsic property.