Abstract
A fundamental issue when thinking about the agency of organisms is the question of their identity. How could we talk of a biological being’s ongoing engagement with the environment, its continued maintenance of homeostasis, its ability to collaborate with other beings and the like, if it did not persist over time, if it did not have a stable identity? I use the term ‘biological being’ to refer to life at any level of complexity, any level of organisation, any level of integration, i.e., micro- as well as macroscopic nested structures characterising life like cells, organelles, or genes, as well as beings in symbiotic relationships, colonies, multicellular organisms, or even the biosphere. I use the expression ‘biological being’ instead of ‘biological entity’ to denote the processual character (being as a gerund implies a process, a ‘going on’). Finally, I avoid using the term ‘organism’ to steer clear of any preconceived notions as to how ‘identity’ should be defined and what should be the paradigmatic entity, level of organisation, or level of integration from which we can depart to develop the concept of ‘identity’ in biological beings. The identity of biological beings is important not only in determining their sameness over time (diachronic identity), it is also the basis for distinguishing biological beings from each other at one point in time (synchronic identity).
While some progress has been made in addressing the processual nature of organisms and their diachronic identity, their synchronic identity, or their relational nature, has received less attention. Organisms are not only processual in their existence but also highly relational; they are collaborative, interactive, as well as open and dependent on their environment. This collaborative, open, and relational factor is especially obvious when it comes to beings persisting in mutual holobiotic interdependence, but it applies, to different degrees, to all forms of life. It is this question of how to best conceive of synchronic as well as diachronic identity of biological beings (conceived as processes) that I will address in this contribution. In what follows, I begin by looking at the philosophical concept of identity, then present a critique of the prevalent metaphysical understanding of ‘identity’ in the context of biology, and finally introduce a process-based idea of adequate qualitative identity.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
What Waddington describes in terms of the processual nature of animals holds for most, if not all, biological beings at least to a degree.
- 2.
Just for the sake of completeness, it is also the case that there is no environment without an organism. They are in a co-constitutive relation to each other.
- 3.
While Rosen’s approach is very interesting, it is abstractive. The aim is to model all relational structures constituting an organism as a whole (Rosen, 1984). As will become clear in this paper, this is a problematic set of presuppositions, especially the question of what constitutes one organism as one.
- 4.
While I will introduce a distinction between individuality and identity when I develop my proposal for a processual conception of identity below, for now I will use these terms interchangeably.
- 5.
Strictly speaking numerical identity can only hold between a physical entity and itself at one point in time. Abstract objects, being a-temporal, are not limited by such a temporally localised form of self-identity.
- 6.
To be sure Aristotle uses tode ti to characterise substance in places as separable and a this there (chôriston kai tode ti), but generally it is used to point towards a concrete phenomenon a this there (i.e., the morpho-hyletic compositum).
- 7.
For a detailed discussion of various modes of interpreting the tode ti and its use by Aristotle see Corkum (2019).
- 8.
A similar account can be found in Markoš and Švorcová (2009).
- 9.
As Aristotle already argued in Metaphysics Z, while substances are definable (and thus knowable at least to a degree), it is impossible to define the tode ti, i.e., it is impossible to fully conceptualise it.
- 10.
Consider also: ‘[…] a principle of individuation, we might say, is not so much a criterion of identity as a principle of unity: countable items are singled out from others of their kind in a distinctive way that is determined by the sortal concept under which they fall [...]’ (Lowe, 2001: 33).
References
Austin, C. J. (2020). Organisms, activity, and being: On the substance of process ontology. European Journal for Philosophy of Science, 10, 1–21.
Bapteste, E., & Dupré, J. (2013). Towards a processual microbial ontology. Biology & Philosophy, 28, 379–404.
Bouchard, F. (2009). Understanding colonial traits using symbiosis research and ecosystem ecology. Biological Theory, 4(3), 240–246.
Bouchard, F. (2010). Symbiosis, lateral function transfer and the (many) saplings of life. Biology & Philosophy, 25(4), 623–641.
Bouchard, F. (2018). Symbiosis, transient biological individuality, and evolutionary processes. In D. Nicholson & J. Dupré (Eds.), Everything flows: Towards a processual philosophy of biology (pp. 186–198). Oxford University Press.
Corkum, P. (2019). This. Ancient Philosophy Today, 1(1), 38–63.
DiFrisco, J. (2018). Biological processes. Criteria of identity and persistence. In D. Nicholson & J. Dupré (Eds.), Everything flows. Toward a processual philosophy of biology (pp. 76–95). Oxford University Press.
Dupré, J., & Nicholson, D. (2018). A manifesto for a Processual philosophy of biology. In D. Nicholson & J. Dupré (Eds.), Everything flows: Towards a Processual philosophy of biology (pp. 3–45). Oxford University Press.
Dupré, J. (2021). Metaphysics of biology. Cambridge University Press.
Gilbert, S. F., Sapp, J., & Tauber, A. I. (2012). A symbiotic view of life: We have never been individuals. The Quarterly Review of Biology, 87(4), 325–341.
Huneman, P. (2021). Biological individuals as “weak individuals” and their identity. Exploring a radical hypothesis in the metaphysics of science. In A. S. Meincke & J. Dupré (Eds.), Biological identity. Perspectives from metaphysics and the philosophy of biology (pp. 40–62). Routledge.
Lewontin, R. C. (1978). Adaptation. Scientific American, 239(3), 212–230.
Lowe, E. J. (2001). The possibility of metaphysics. Substance, identity and time. Clarendon Press.
Lowe, E. J. (2003). Identity, individuality, and unity. Philosophy, 78(305), 321–336.
Lowe, E. J. (2009). More kinds of being: A further study of individuation, identity, and the logic of Sortal terms. Wiley-Blackwell.
Markoš, A., & Švorcová, J. (2009). Recorded versus organic memory: Interaction of two worlds as demonstrated by the chromatin dynamics. Biosemiotics, 2, 131–149.
Markoš, A., & Švorcová, J. (2019). Epigenetic processes and the evolution of life. Taylor & Francis.
Maturana, H., & Varela, F. (1980). Autopoiesis and cognition: The realization of the living. D. Reidel Publishing Company.
Meinke, A. S., & Dupré, J. (2020). Biological identity. Why metaphysicians and philosophers of biology should talk to one another. In I. A. S. Meinke & J. Dupré (Eds.), Biological identity: Perspectives from metaphysics and the philosophy of biology (pp. 1–21). Routledge.
Moreno, A., & Mossio, M. (2015). Biological autonomy. A philosophical and theoretical enquiry. Springer.
Niklas, K. J., & Newman, S. A. (2016). Multicellularity. Origins and evolution. The MIT Press.
Niklas, K. J., & Newman, S. A. (2020). The many roads to and from multicellularity. Journal of Experimental Botany, 71(11), 3247–3253.
Noble, D. (2006). The music of life. Biology beyond genes. Oxford University Press.
Noble, D. (2017). Dance to the tune of life: Biological relativity. Cambridge University Press.
Oderberg, D. S. (2020). Siphonophores: A metaphysical case study. In A. S. Meinke & J. Dupré (Eds.), Biological identity. Perspectives from metaphysics and the philosophy of biology (pp. 22–39). Routledge.
Rescher, N. (2006). Process ontological deliberations. Ontos.
Rosen, R. (1984). Relational biology and the origin of life. In K. Matuno, K. Dose, K. Harada, & D. L. Rohlfing (Eds.), Molecular evolution and protobiology (pp. 421–431). Plenum Press.
Rosslenbroich, B. (2014). On the origin of autonomy. A new look at the major transitions in evolution. Springer.
Thompson, E. (2007). Mind in life: Biology, phenomenology, and the sciences of mind. Harvard University Press.
Varela, F. J. (1979). Principles of biological autonomy. North-Holland.
von Uexküll, J. (1909). Umwelt und Innenwelt der Tiere. Springer.
von Uexküll, J. (1926). Theoretical biology. Harcourt, Brace & Co.
Waddington, C. H. (1956). Principles of embryology. George Allen and Unwind.
Walsh, D. M. (2015). Organisms, agency, and evolution. Cambridge University Press.
Walsh, D. M. (2018). Objectcy and agency: Towards a methodological vitalism. In D. Nicholson & J. Dupré (Eds.), Everything flows: Towards a processual philosophy of biology (pp. 167–185). Oxford University Press.
Wilson, D. S., & Sober, E. (1989). Reviving the superorganism. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 136(3), 337–356.
Wisz, M. S., Pottier, J., Kissling, W. D., et al. (2013). The role of biotic interactions in sha** distributions and realised assemblages of species: Implications for species distribution modelling. Biological Reviews, 88(1), 15–30.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2024 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Röck, T. (2024). The Becoming of Identity: A Process-Ontological View on the Relational Co-existence of Biological Beings. In: Švorcová, J. (eds) Organismal Agency. Biosemiotics, vol 28. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53626-7_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53626-7_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-53625-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-53626-7
eBook Packages: Biomedical and Life SciencesBiomedical and Life Sciences (R0)