Kendig Interview
Notes to self while talking to philosopher Katie Kendig
ontology how it looks like
lineage focused vs organism focused
unit of selection as not being the genes but interacttion of org and env
if an org in its develpment it uses what is availabale to it to survive
humans build ourselves based on what’s available
what is an org or species what’s homology changes
depends on more than jst genes
not just elemnts like gnes or microbiomes across laterally
makes a differnece for how we classify things, similarity, indexed to something different
homology species, synthetic biology
we see sets in the world, and group things, marshi mackover logician lse king’s college
teams of 1 mathematician & 1 biologist NSF funded
teaching groups for teaching unis
not reductivist
synthetic biology is what makes it work, making the parts
in trad metaphysics “natural kinds” are what exist indep of us
Hasok Chang in chemistry
…..
kinding activities of machines
alan turing in her course
u chicago press likes history of science / philosphy.. degroiters,
John Wilkins book on classification, philsophy of classification
Daniel Dennett’s Real Patterns.
Poundstone
Think about what you don’t want to put into
If you do mention almost everything, it’ll be a bit shallow.
this is what i’m interested in: i’ll signpost this stuff of what i don’t want to talk about.
these thing i find boring and these things i find itneresting
no need to feel like you have to do everyting
write about what interest you…
what do people need to know to say what you want to say
lots of people writing about classification these days gesticulate
mention iung literally everybody isn’t the goal. these are the poeple I need to reference to say what I want
alan turing
john wilkins philosophy of classification
kendig and john gray philosophy journal, counterfactuals, take-home message is broader.
pragmatic approach…then you’re going to be able to get knowledge from them…the assumption that something work gives them knowledge, not separable from metaphysical commitments, then some of the examples of lichens and racial classifications, epistemically justifiable categories of race based on racist assumptions because they’re already smuyggled in assumptions about the way the world works. there are ways of getting it wrong.
would not write about race…. the amount of care is overwhelming, people want to misread. letting other people say things, quamia apaya, lucious outlaw written good work. there’s a need to replicate that. citing people who have worked on these things. it’s like land acknowledgements. not try to do that.