Evolutionary Theory, Anti-Essentialist Consensus and the Roles of Different Notions of Essence
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12697/spe.2023.16.03Keywords:
biological essentialism, evolutionary anti-essentialist consensus, roles of essences, intrinsic biological essentialism, historical biological essentialism, relational essentialism, historical essentialism, teleological essentialismAbstract
According to the consensus among philosophers of biology, essentialism in biology is wrong and inconsistent with evolutionary theory. However, most anti-essentialist arguments only apply to intrinsic shared-nature kind essentialism. There has been a number of attempts to rehabilitate essentialism by proposing "alternative"---relational, historical and teleological---notions of essence. Different authors who have proposed different notions of essentialism have different attitudes towards the anti-essentialist consensus. Relational essentialism was proposed in order to support this consensus, David Walsh's teleological essentialism as a demonstration that the consensus is wrong. Michael Devitt tries to refute the anti-essentialist consensus by arguing why relational essentialism is inadequate and why intrinsic biological essentialism holds after all. By giving my classification of the roles that are traditionally ascribed to essences, roughly distinguished into taxonomic (semantic and definitional) and explanatory (causally executive and causally constitutive) roles, I will analyse which properties, deemed as different sorts of essences, are capable of serving these roles, and why neither Devitt nor Walsh managed to refute the anti-essentialist consensus. Whereas some relational properties are capable of bearing at least some taxonomic and explanatory essence-roles while at the same time not being inconsistent with the anti-essentialist consensus, I will use my role-based analysis to provide the arguments for why we should not promote any kind of essentialist framework in the context of evolutionary theory, and for the explanations of why my biological anti-essentialism does not allow even alternative sorts of essentialism.
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