Philosophy of Biology - The Species Problem 2

Species is one of the fundamental units of biological taxonomy. But what exactly is a species? In this video, I examine the cohesion species concept, the phylogenetic species concept, and species pluralism.

[RaieFutee]

What a great video ! Just curious about the paper from Knowles (?) and al. (around 23'00), do you have the reference ?

[nicolasavilalucero]

I think that De Quiroz General metapopulation lineage concept of species (2005) is a good pluralist aporach to this problems. First, this concept of species doesn´t invoke Wittgenstein´s theory of games. Second, is less liberal than Pigliucci aproach. De Quiroz mantains that there are multiple criteria to identify and distinguish species, but also are an implicit general concept that underlies concepts like the BSC and the ESC. De Quiroz states that proposals such as Simpson and Mayr supose that species are "segments of a lineage of population that evolve separately" (Torretti 2013). The point is that other concepts of species adds more criteria for define species. De Quiroz postulates that these criteria are useful tools for identify and distinguish between species, but they aren´t infallible and certanly they do not apply in all cases: This endows scientific practice with great autonomy. Finnaly, i want to say that i agree with you that pluralism is, possibly, the best alternative to follow.