Hannah O'Riain (University of Calgary)
Pregnancy is a neglected but useful case study for investigating biological individuality. Existing accounts of individuality in pregnancy use substance ontology to define the conceptus as a separate individual (as in Smith and Brogaard’s container model, 2003), or as part of its host (Kingma’s part-whole claim, 2018, forthcoming). Substance ontology frames the world in terms of static entities; if the biological world is ever-changing, yet composed of substances, persistent personal and organismal identities are puzzling. I argue these substance-based accounts are unsatisfactory because they must distort physiology and avoid answering important questions to provide a definitive ontology. While Kingma’s part-whole account is built on more correct physiology than Smith and Brogaard’s container model, she still struggles to address whether the foster is part of its gravida before implantation and after birth. She is tentative in proposing the part-whole account because these open questions have bearing on the production of a definitive ontology. Kingma recognizes that the metaphysical account we accept has practical consequences – in this case for the autonomy of pregnant women. She and I both argue that we should investigate our meagre sample of ontological accounts of pregnancy critically, and consider replacing them if they are biologically inaccurate and socially harmful.
Nicholson and Dupré (2018) provide a way out of the persistent identity puzzle, criticizing both substance-based conceptions of organisms, and monist approaches to ontology. I apply these critiques to pregnancy. Using Nicholson and Dupré’s lens (2018), I resolve several difficulties that substance-based views of individuality encounter in the pregnancy case. Process ontologies are populated by individuals that are more like whirlpools or markets than tangible objects: usefully stable entities that are actively sustained (Dupré, 2014). In this vein, I discuss how there are no useful, clear boundaries between the conceptus and pregnant organism: pregnancy is a complex, intertwined relationship of hierarchical biological processes, including metabolic activities and life cycles. Implantation, birth, and breastfeeding are some of the biological processes that complicate our efforts to carve the world into distinct, static individuals according to any monolithic account of biological individuality.
A process account of organismal and personal identity will provide better tools for biologists and philosophers investigating individuation. Dupré’s concept of nested hierarchies of processes allows us to zoom in or concentrate on stabilities that importantly form individual entities, be they framed as parts, wholes or background setting, according to our research question. In the pregnancy case, this clarifies the puzzle of how a foster could be both a part of its gravida and a meaningful individual. Future work to create a satisfactory account of individuality in the context of mammalian ovulation, gestation and lactation would bring up useful themes, empirical grounding and new approaches for understanding biological individuality and organismality in philosophy of biology more broadly; for example, in philosophical conversations about genes, development and species transitions in evolutionary biology. In this presentation, I conclude that individuation in pregnancy deserves careful consideration, and that our ontological investigations of pregnancy ought to include more processual understandings.
