B9: Complex Biological Dispositions: A Case Study in the Metaphysics of Biological Practice

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Marie I. Kaiser
• Subject Area: Theoretical Philosophy
• Term: from 2020 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 288923097

This project asks what biological dispositions 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 to (underlying) biological mechanisms. We address these metaphysical questions by analyzing four paradigmatic examples of dispositions studied in the biological sciences: the pluripotency of stem cells, the boldness of animals, the evolvability of populations, and the sustainability of human actions or development. The project is a study within Inductive Metaphysics, specifically in “metaphysics of biological practice” (Kaiser 2018, 29). We develop metaphysical claims about biological dispositions by using inductive methods that invoke various kinds of empirical information from and about biological practice, such as information about how biologists investigate biological dispositions and about how disposition ascriptions figure in their explanatory practices. The goal of this project is to develop a practice-oriented metaphysical account of biological dispositions that makes novel contributions to the philosophy of biology and that yields interesting consequences for debates about dispositions within the metaphysics of science.

• DFG Programme: Research Units
• Subproject of: FOR 2495: Inductive Metaphysics