The general aim of my PhD project is to establish associations between Metaphysics and Philosophy of Biology in order to see to what extent the debates developed in each particular field can be useful to clarify the debates developed in the other. In particular, I will try to show in what sense metaphysical concepts such as "emergence" and "dispositions" among others- can be helpful to clarify the concepts of "fitness" and "evolvability" given in the field of Philosophy of Biology; and vice versa, that is, how the study of biological concepts such as fitness and evolvability can shed light on metaphysical debates such as the existence or not of emergent properties.

Project Goals

1. Appeal to the theory of dispositions proposed by Mumford and Anjum (2011) to elaborate a notion of fitness and evolvability as dispositional properties possessed by organisms: fitness and evolvability as causal dispositions.
2. Search biological examples that allow me to show the idea of fitness and evolvability as causal dispositions, such as the fin-limb transition in the case of fitness.
3. Show that fitness and evolvability considered as causal dispositions meet the criteria that metaphysicians have attributed to emergent properties, such as holism, irreducibility, unpredictability and causal powers.
4. Consider the properties of fitness and evolvability as examples of emergent properties that can be taken into account in metaphysical debates with respect to the existence or not of this kind of properties.

Research Goals during my stay in Exeter

During my stay in Exeter I would like to focus on different task:

1. To study how biologists and philosophers of biology think about reductionism and the reductionist-antireductionist debate. The goal of this task consists on seeing whether fitness is irreducible or not and, if reducible, in what sense I can say that.
2. To study in what sense the reductionist-anti-reductionist debate is related to the thesis of determinism or not determinism. The goal of this task is to see whether fitness, in the sense I am proposing, is predictable or unpredictable. This is an important task and, in some sense, it is independent from the first one. The reason is that an emergent property could be unpredictable but reducible, on the one hand; or unpredictable and irreducible on the other. In the first case we are talking about "weak emergentism" whereas in the second we are talking about "strong emergentism". I consider that it is important for my project to clarify whether I am considering fitness as a weak or as a strong emergent property.
3. To study the notion of "law" in biology and whether we can properly talk of biological laws. The goal of this task is to see whether fitness has proper laws that are not applied to the biochemical and physiological components of the organism. I consider that if fitness had proper laws then, it would have a particular causal power that could not be realized by the biochemical and physiological components of the organism.
4. To attend different seminars and reading groups that will take in Exeter during my stay there.
5. To elaborate different drafts on an emergent characterization of fitness based on the previous studies (task 1, 2, and 3), to be presented in different seminars and conferences.
6. To elaborate a final paper on n.5.