Taxonomy and philosophy of names

• Although naming biological clades is a major activity in taxonomy, little attention has been paid to what these names actually refer to. In philosophy, definite descriptions have long been considered equivalent to the meaning of names and biological taxonomy is a scientific application of these ideas. One problem with definite descriptions as the meanings of names is that the name will refer to whatever fits the description rather than the intended individual (clade). Recent proposals for explicit phylogenetic definitions of clade names suffer from similar problems and we argue that clade names cannot be defined since they lack intension. Furthermore we stress the importance of "tree-thinking" for phylogenetic reference to work properly.

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Filosofi, etik och religion -- Filosofi (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Philosophy, Ethics and Religion -- Philosophy (hsv//eng)

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Biologi -- Biologisk systematik (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Biological Sciences -- Biological Systematics (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

reference

meaning

individual

class

definition

clade

evolution

phylogeny

phylogenetic taxonomy

systematics

tree-thinking

cladistics

intention

extension

NATURAL SCIENCES

NATURVETENSKAP

Filosofi

Practical Philosophy

Natural Science

Naturvetenskap

Publikations- och innehållstyp

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