Join us at this week's meeting of the Philosophy Club virtually or in-person (Auerbach 320) this Wednesday, Jan. 28 from 1 p.m.–2 p.m. as Brian Skelly discusses individual recognition, species recognition, and personal identity.
To join the meeting online, scan the QR code below or visit here:
TOPIC OVERVIEW
It is as clear to biologists as anything in their science can be, even going back all the way to Aristotle, that all organisms, in order to be organisms, must have some reliable way of distinguishing both between the individuals potentially relevant to their survival as well as the species potentially relevant to their survival. This recognition is not perfect, nor should we expect it to be, for the simple reason that lack of competence in either of these qualities would doom any organism’s chances for survival right from the start.
Of course, acknowledgement of these two indispensable competencies in organisms leaves us wondering how such competencies are possible in every organism. But since with the exception of virions—virus individuals—we now with little controversy robustly attribute both flight and pursuit to all organisms, it seems self-defeating then to deny the competencies that would make those traits relevant to their survival.
Earlier on, biology had been less generous to plants and other non-animal species, only granting them pursuit and not flight. This was enough for many well into the twentieth century to draw a distinction between sentient and non-sentient organisms, considering only sentient organisms as those that demanded our moral appreciation. That distinction was made moot by the progress botany has made since, presenting convincing evidence of non-animal and lower-animal awareness, paving the way for moving more and more int the direction of our notice of flight and pursuit in all organisms.
One might even push for the inclusions of the virions themselves, who, although famously lacking the organismic requirement of continuous activity, do, indeed, in their active states, appear to be making survival decisions. In fact, virologists ascribe the following choices virions must face in their active states: they must choose a suitable host cell; they must choose when to initiate structural changes to trigger their entry into the host cell once chosen; in many cases they must choose whether their mode of infection will be destructive of the cell (the lytic cycle of reproduction or a non-destructive persistence strategy (the lysogenic cycle). Finally, a virion must determine when and how to leave an infected cell, either by exploding the host cell (apoptosis) or budding off in part of the host membrane without the host cell’s destruction.
To this point, communication between virions has not been established, but the efficiency of their actions in victims is suggestive of coordinated strategies.
Defensiveness against this newer way of seeing lower-animal and non-animal organisms has for too long been linked to the argument of chemical or mechanical reductivism, whose main fault lies in its awkward inability to draw the line on the one hand between those organisms all of whose apparent consciousness must be written off as caused by non-living forces chemical, mechanical or physical, and on the other those to which we readily grant consciousness. In both cases, the same dualism is notable: that between apparent organismic intention and chemical and physical processes supporting them and enabling them. Drawing a line anywhere seems to be arbitrary and without cause, unless our cause is to be the denial of the possibility of such duality at all.
The University of Hartford Philosophy Club has an informal, jovial atmosphere. It is a place where students, professors, and people from the community at large meet as peers. Sometimes presentations are given, followed by discussion. Other times, topics are hashed out by the whole group.
Presenters may be students, professors, or people from the community. Anyone can offer to present a topic. The mode of presentation may be as formal or informal as the presenter chooses.
Come and go as you wish. Bring friends. Suggest topics and activities. Take over the club! It belongs to you! Just show up! - Brian Skelly bskelly@hartford.edu , 413.273.2273.