Morgan, W. orcid.org/0000-0002-3404-4517 (2021) Are organisms substances or processes? Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 100 (3). pp. 605-619. ISSN 0004-8402
Abstract
I argue that attempts in the philosophy of biology to show that organisms are processes, rather than substances, fail. Despite what process ontologists have said, substance ontology is perfectly able to accommodate the dynamic nature of organisms, their ecological dependence, and their vague boundaries, and their criticisms are directed not at substance ontology simpliciter, but only at specific (perhaps untenable) characterisations of substances. The paper ends by considering what a processual philosophy of biology that is radically in conflict with an ontology of substances might look like.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. |
Keywords: | substances; processes; organisms; philosophy of biology; metaphysics |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Arts and Humanities (Sheffield) > Department of Philosophy (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 09 Jul 2021 11:47 |
Last Modified: | 24 Jun 2024 13:37 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Taylor & Francis (Routledge) |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1080/00048402.2021.1931378 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:175840 |
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