Exploring Metaphysical Implications of Organicism: The Grounding of Organisms
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.22370/lv.2024.30.2.4663Keywords:
organicism, organismal philosophy of biology, emergence, downward causation, groundingAbstract
Organicism refers to a stance advocated within the disciplines grouped under the name “philosophy of organismal biology”. It holds that organisms are autonomous entities that are functionally integrated and irreducible to their most basic components (e.g., genes) and the relationships among them. Unlike reductionist approaches, organicism argues that principles of organization and emergence are essential for understanding organisms and capturing their ontological singularity. Recently, notwithstanding, these principles have come under scrutiny. Beyond considering specific issues with each principle individually, it has also been questioned whether they can adequately differentiate between biological and non-biological systems. In this paper, we examine some of the main criticisms that the principles of emergence and organization have received. We argue that the critics are right in considering that these principles do not seem sufficient to capture the specific ontological singularity of organisms. We propose that certain metaphysical concepts within contemporary analytic metaphysics can help to address this deficiency. Specifically, we argue that the notion of grounding or fundamentality can more effectively capture the intuitions organicists hold regarding organisms, adequately accounting for the autonomous and primary nature attributed to them.
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