Hostname: page-component-5d84bcc8dc-zczlx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-09-09T18:03:31.000Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Biological Individuality, Pregnancy, and (Mammalian) Reproduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Elselijn Kingma
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Mammals are usually considered unproblematic as biological individuals. This article contends the opposite. Once we consider pregnancy, criteria for biological individuality are not easily applicable in mammals and give conflicting results: mammalian pregnancy poses a problem for biological individuality. This may open fruitful new approaches to biological individuality and is of relevance to metaphysicians interested in (human) organisms.

Information

Type
Biological Sciences and Medicine
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 87 , Issue 5: PSA 2018 - Proceedings of the 2018 biennial meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part II Symposia Papers , December 2020 , pp. 1037 - 1048
Copyright
Copyright © 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

†

I am grateful to Ellen Clarke, all members of the BUMP project group—Teresa Baron, Suki Finn, Alex Geddes, Anne Sophie Meincke, Ziggy Schilpzand, and especially Jonathan Grose—and organizers, participants, and audiences at the following occasions for helpful discussion and advice on the ideas expressed in this article: Symbiosis Workshop, Exeter, November 2015; Philosophy of Biology in the UK Conference, Bristol, June 2016; Visiting Speaker Talk, Department of Philosophy, Leeds, February 2018; Metaphysics of Pregnancy Symposium at the BSPS conference, Oxford, June 2018; Metaphysics of Mammalian Reproduction Symposium, PSA conference, Seattle, November 2019. This article is part of a project, Better Understanding the Metaphysics of Pregnancy, that has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program, under grant 679586.

References

Chan, William F. N., Gurnot, Cécile, Montine, Thomas J., Sonnen, Joshua A., Guthrie, Katherine A., and Nelson, J. Lee. 2012. “Male Microchimerism in the Human Female Brain.” PLoS One 7 (9): e45592. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0045592.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Clarke, Ellen. 2010. “The Problem of Biological Individuality.” Biological Theory 5:312–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clarke, Ellen. 2012. “Plant Individuality: A Solution to the Demographer’s Dilemma.” Biology and Philosophy 27:321–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clarke, Ellen. 2013. “The Multiple Realizability of Biological Individuals.” Journal of Philosophy 110:413–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dupré, John, and O’Malley, Maureen. 2009. “Varieties of Living Things: Life at the Intersection of Lineage and Metabolism.” Philosophy and Theory in Biology 1:1–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garrat, Michael, Gaillard, Jean-Michel, Brooks, Robert C., and Letmaître, Jean-François. 2013. “Diversification of the Eutherian Placenta Is Associated with Changes in the Pace of Life.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110:7760–65.Google Scholar
Haig, David. 1993. “Genetic Conflicts in Human Pregnancy.” Quarterly Review of Biology 68:495–532.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Howes, Moira. 2007. “Maternal Agency and the Immunological Paradox of Pregnancy.” In Establishing Medical Reality: Essays in the Metaphysics and Epistemology of Biomedical Science, ed. Kincaid, Harold and McKitrick, Jennifer, 179–98. Dordrecht: Springer.Google Scholar
Hutter, Thiago, Gimbert, Carine, Bouchard, Frédéric, and Lapointe, François-Joseph. 2015. “Being Human Is a Gut Feeling.” Microbiome 3:9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Janzen, Daniel H. 1977. “What Are Dandelions and Aphids?” American Naturalist 111:586–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kingma, Elselijn. 2018. “Lady Parts: The Metaphysics of Pregnancy.” Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 82:165–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kingma, Elselijn. 2019. “Were You a Part of Your Mother? The Metaphysics of Pregnancy.” Mind 128:609–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kingma, Elselijn. 2020. “Nine Months.” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 45 (3): 371–86.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
O’Donoghue, Keelin. 2008. “Fetal Microchimerism and Maternal Health during and after Pregnancy.” Obstetrical Medicine 1:56–64.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Olson, Eric T. 1997. The Human Animal: Personal Identity without Psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pradeu, Thomas. 2010. “What Is an Organism? An Immunological Answer.” History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 32:247–67.Google ScholarPubMed
Pradeu, Thomas. 2012. The Limits of the Self: Immunology and Biological Identity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pradeu, Thomas. 2016a. “The Many Faces of Biological Individuality.” Biology and Philosophy 31:761–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pradeu, Thomas. 2016b. “Organisms or Biological Individuals? Combining Physiological and Evolutionary Individuality.” Biology and Philosophy 31:797–817.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Queller, David C., and Strassmann, Joan E.. 2016. “Problems of Multi-Species Organisms: Endosymbionts to Holobionts.” Biology and Philosophy 31 (6): 855–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skillings, Derek. 2016. “Holobionts and the Ecology of Organisms: Multi-Species Communities or Integrated Individuals?” Biology and Philosophy 31:875–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Barry, and Brogaard, Berit. 2003. “Sixteen Days.” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 28:45–78.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Snowdon, Paul F. 2014. Persons, Animals, Ourselves. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar