Dispositions in the Life Sciences
This project addresses metaphysical questions about dispositions by analyzing how dispositions are studied in the biological sciences.
Project overview
The research project “Complex Biological Dispositions: A Case Study in the Metaphysics of Biological Practice” (2020-2023) is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) . It is a subproject in the research group “Inductive Metaphysics” (FOR 2495). The Principal Investigator of this project is Prof. Dr. Marie I. Kaiser.
This project is about what dispositions in the life sciences are, how they are individuated, what makes them complex, whether they are extrinsic and come in degrees, and how they relate to their causal basis and underlying mechanisms. We address these metaphysical questions by analyzing paradigmatic examples of dispositions in the life sciences. The project is a study within the framework of inductive metaphysics, specifically the "metaphysics of biological practice" (Kaiser 2018, 29). We develop metaphysical claims about dispositions in the life sciences using inductive methods that draw on various kinds of empirical information from and about scientific practice. The goal of this project is to develop a practice-based metaphysical account of dispositions in the life sciences that makes new contributions to the philosophy of the life sciences and has interesting consequences for debates about dispositions within the metaphysics of science.
Staff and subprojects
Dr. María Ferreira Ruiz
María’s subproject focuses on dispositions in evolutionary biology and ecology. She examines two alleged dispositional concepts related to the generation of variation: evolvability and phenotypic plasticity. These cases raise crucial issues, such as whether the environment can be characterized as a trigger of the disposition, whether biological dispositions are extrinsic or intrinsic, and what the nature of their causal bases is. She puts these findings to work in a more general account of biological dispositions.
Fabian's subproject consists of three parts. First, he addresses questions related to non-fundamental modal properties, such as what is a causal basis and what distinguishes non-fundamental multitrack dispositions from coinstantiated single-track dispositions. Second, he develops a theory of biological functions as selected dispositions. Unlike competing theories, this theory explains the gradability of dysfunctions, the productivity of biological functions, and the difference between dysfunctions and defects. Third, he develops a comprehensive theory of mental disorders based on the assumption that they are dispositions to think, feel, or act.
Javier’s subproject looks at how the dispositions of stem cells and of the microbiome can be metaphysically characterized. He looks at scientific practice to understand how biologists attribute dispositions to stem cells and to the microbiome. The aim of this part of the subproject is to grasp the conditions of instantiation of these biological dispositions. In a second step, his goal is to derive general consequences for the metaphysical debate about dispositions.
