Philippe Huneman (IHPST*) conference January 26 th 2011 at the CRI

Topic "Weak individuality : a formal sketch of organisms, colonies, ecosystems as individuals."

Abstract
This paper distinguishes a strong and a weak concept of individuality likely to be applied to organisms as well as colonies, ecological communities and ecosystems. The former is defined by natural selection, the latter by probabilistic connections between sub-entities, based on their patterns of interactions. I argue that even if ecosystems or communities don't have strong individuality, they still possess a weak individuality, ecological theories providing the values of the variables in the formula for individuality, in the same way as various functional theories allow us to make sense of these variables in the case of organisms. In this sense, concerning bacteria and their colonies or transient associations, the formal criteria for weak individuality may be instantiated by the theoretical models of their dynamics. We would aim at eventually providing tools to enable the identification of individuals in the case of biofilms and other bacterial constructions. This could lead to questions about the ecological and evolutionary conditions of individualization in bacteria.

Speaker
Philippe Huneman is a philosopher of biology, interested in kantism, evolutionary theory, metaphysical issues about natural selection, organism and emergence. Competences in 18-19 century biology and philosophy.
"Much concerned by interdisciplinary and international collaboration, he is also originator and one of the responsibles of the Duke Paris Montreal IHPST Philosophy of biology consortium, extant since 2005. He also organised many international workshops or graduate schools in the philosophy of biology."
Source : http://www-ihpst.univ-paris1.fr/annuaire/webpage.php?id_fiche=5&langue=en

(*) Institute of History and Philosophy of Sciences and Techniques
CNRS - Université Paris I - Ecole Normale Supérieure