Grose Jonathan (University of Southampton)
Elselijn Kingma argues that philosophical literature typically adopts a biologically suspect "container" model of pregnancy. She suggests that the maternal-foetal relation is part-whole rather than container-contents. I examine whether support for the part-whole claim can come from philosophical literature on biological individuality. I argue that under an evolutionary approach, mother and foetus are two individuals and hence the part-whole claim is undermined. I then argue that, from a physiological-immunological perspective, the mother-foetus is one individual; hence there is support here for the part-whole thesis. I conclude that pregnancy illustrates that different accounts of individuality can throw up conflicting answers.
