 Okay, yeah, perfect timing. Thanks everybody. Sure, yes, so for our next session, although the session of the word where we're split into small sessions, our next talk, happy to introduce Altham's Collegiu, who's joining us from the HPST in Paris with a really exciting talk on medicine and diageography, so please. Yes. Hello, and first I would like to thank the organizers for having me, so I'm going to discuss today about the topic that I'm actually working on and it's part of my PhD research. So the title for this presentation is Assassin Metaphysics through Biography, what is the nature of a biographical entity, an ontological and epistemological investigation. So before I start, I would like to explain a little bit what biography is. Biography is, probably speaking, the discipline that aims to explain the species distribution on Earth's surface. And it is a discipline found in the intersection of other disciplines, such as evolutionary biology, ecology, geography, systematics, geology, paleontology. And actually Michel Mahonge referred to biography in his book, A History of Biology, and I'm quoting, biography is an excellent example of the recurrent difficulties that biologists experience in articulating and or prioritizing the multiple causalities of the origin of living phenomenon. Yes, so modern biography has its origins in the 18th and the 19th centuries where the pioneering work of naturalists and explorers on biotech specimens inventories and on the description of the physical geography can be situated. And what particularly interests me is the concept of biographical areas or regions. So, biographical area, also called area of endomism, can be designated by the geographical distribution of species or taxa in present actual prime or in past geological time. Such an area is characterized by a particular group of species or more generally by endomist. I see, for example, the distribution of polar bears in the North Pole or the past land fish that had gonduanian distribution. So it's been to a hundred million years as the present distribution can show. Into the rest. So this concept of particular regions of the globe that are characterized by taxa and began to rise in the 19th century, especially with the work of Augustine Piham de Gondon and other prominent naturalists, such as Alfred Wallace and Philips Clatter who promoted the regionalization of the Earth's surface as they proposed the geographical regions of the world. Now, in modern research, biographical areas constitute a much debated concept within the scientific community. Regarding their definition, their empirical, mostly their empirical discovery and their spatial delimitation as material objects. And more recently, authors, Guyan Crawther and Christopher Murray proposed as they called it an ontological debate on the nature of these entities. They stated that areas of endomism can be considered analogically to species and taxa as historical individuals and not classes in the sense of universals. And moreover, the concept of the geographical area has a special place within a subdiscipline of biography, precisely. It is the fundamental unit of study for cladistic historical biography. The principles of this discipline also imply an analogy between biographical areas and species and taxa in general. And I will say a little bit more on how they are treated as objects of phylogenetic analysis in a while. So my aim today would be to examine these two points regarding the epistemic and ontological status of biographical entities. In particular, I will address the scientific representation of these entities as objects of analytical cladistic method in the sense of Zelligweta and Beko of 2016 and Tram of 2012. I will then introduce how one could seize the nature and realism of such complex entities. To do so, I will begin with a rapid presentation of cladistic theory and its principles. Cladistic theory. So the theory of phylogenetic systematics relies on dissent with modification and homologous traits between organisms so that relationships of property can be inferred. In general, the scope of phylogenetic systematics is to infer the evolutionary relationships of taxa by grouping them on the basis of morphological or molecular traits, also by grouping them based on different criteria and methods. The relationships of propecmenty are then translated into phylogenetic traits or taxa cladograms, as you can see. That's a very simplified vision of them. So cladograms are actually graphs formally represented by decotomous trees and in a cladistic framework, they translate the degree of propecment. Taxa are then considered assets of classes in the mathematical sense of set theory and as Zara Gweta and Beko put it, and I quote them, taxa are treated by a method of analytical abstraction. In the details of the exact procedure, we'll be out of scope today. So species and more inclusive taxa are treated as mathematical absolute objects by this analytical method in a Cartesian sense. So with that assertion in mind, I will now pass on by geographical areas. Cladistic by geography had been founded by systematist Don Rosen, Garrett Nelson and Norman Platnick in the 70s and the 80s and the aim was to discover general patterns of geographical distributions of species and taxa. For that, Rosen in 1978 was the first researcher to derive area cladograms from taxon phylogenies. And the general principle for this was to replace taxa on the taxon phylogeny by the areas in which these taxa are distributed. And the area cladogram is then derived when a particular structure of relationships is repeated. The repetition is an indication of common history. So, by geographical areas are operationally treated as taxa in phylogenetic systematics. So, an interesting philosophical consequence of the formal approach of cladistic by geography is that one can assign to by geographical areas an analogous status as that of species but in a more integrative level. Precisely, by geographical areas will designate units of biodiversity but also evolutionary units. The latter is supported by an explanatory model based on a process called Vicarians. Vicarians is the name for by geographical diversification and is a process very similar to that of allopathic speciation. Allopathic speciation had been proposed by Ernst Mayr in 40s regarding the interruption of the flux of genes of a population by a physical barrier so that new species populations could arise. Now, Vicarians describes an analogous process. An initial by geographical area is fragmented by a physical barrier of large scale. That could be the fragmentation of a continent, for example, or diverse geological events, the formation of a river, something like that, a forest or a mountain. And so, this barrier would affect at the same time the geographic region but also the species that inhabit that area. So, the initial area is differentiated in the course of time to different areas. At the macroscopic level, Vicarians explains the diversification of by geographical areas and their differentiation and shows the causal links between species evolution and their geographical distribution. Even if a scientist could face many difficulties such as migration and dispersion of single species lineages, events of geographical reticulation, et cetera. One of the scopes of cladistic by geography is indeed providing a historical explanation which juxtaposes biological and geological geographic data so that hypothesis of macroevolution can be inferred. Now that they have rapidly so exposed these 10 points, I would like to investigate some epistemic and ontological difficulties that arise and then discuss a little bit on nature of by geographical areas. So, firstly, I would like to address the philosophical attempt of authors, Prof. Henry of 2011 and 2015 who stated that by geographical areas are historical individuals in the same way by geological species are. Likely areas of atomism consists of parts, the species that inhabit the area and the area itself. The combination of these two parts makes up a whole which is thereby an individual, so the area of atomism. Furthermore, such an area cannot be defined by intention, but it is, sorry, it cannot be defined by intention, at least so a list of specific properties found to every area of atomism, but on the contrary, it is defined by extension. So, by different examples, one can find in nature. This kind of entities exist historically in the sense of a unique realization in time and space, and even though they have fuzzy space, even though they have fuzzy spatial temporal boundaries, and they also respond cohesively to change. So, I would like to examine the assertion individual of these authors. So, Croether and Murray implied that the different species is considered an individual, then a by geographical area is two. These two authors applied, in fact, the individual defaces of David Hall and Michael Gislam to areas of atomism. Croether and Murray claimed for an ontological debate on areas between individual and classes and opted for individuality, but they did not take into account the fact that assumptions on biological species are largely based on the observable objects on which a scientist rely on two, which are the organisms. In general, by geographical areas are not, at least in a direct way, the same observable materialistic objects. In the case of by geography, I think it is intuitively demanding to apply a strict ontological analogy between by geographical areas and species based solely on the individuality faces in order to address the nature of by geographical areas. Just some attempts taking into account the individuality of ecosystems, namely their degree of individuality as proposed by in 2014 would probably be a more appropriate solution to invoke from by geographical areas, too. So, moreover, the cases on species individuality had been continuously discussed within the philosophical and scientific communities. For example, Jean Gaillon highlighted the fact that they are not the species that exist in space and time, by birth and death, but organisms are. Indeed, many scientists support that species would rather designate taxonomic rank, so a category, and that would make them human conventions as I said to the work of Guillaume Le Cointe, for example. In addition, the delimitation of species in biological terms is a very demanding task for many examples, because, for example, Tomas Hadoe in his work in a paper of 2016, questions, for example, the fact that the bacterial colonies could be considered as a sort of individual, too, biological individuals. So, I would propose that the debate on whether a by geographical area is an individual or a class would rather rely on epistemic investigation than ontological, and as I have shown, it would probably be more appropriate to extend this kind of debate on the operational level of scientific method and representation models. Moreover, biological classification, largely elaborated by the discipline of allogenetic systematics, is based on species concept and tasks on organisms seen as biological individuals. At the same time, they are methodologically represented as classes, so the debate, namely ontological between individual or class, could bias the scientific endeavor because, in fact, there is a gap between the operational level of representation, the empirical level, and lastly, the ontological level. Indeed, the non-clarification of this gap has led researchers to state that the ontology of areas of endemism, based solely on whether an area of endemism is an individual or a class, in an effort of the by geographical classification, is of no interest for the scientist that was stated by Mante Ibac and Michaud in 2017. And as I have shown, this kind of inquiry would rather concern scientific method and epistemic framework than mere ontology. So the term species as the term taxon designate actually classificatory concepts that are constructions and that are applied most of the time to individuated objects, so single organisms or even groups of organisms that can be observed. So as I said, I rather account for the operational delimitation of areas of endemism. So how to delineate such an area in space-time? Which criteria, which level of endemism, for example? Those are questions that I think are critical for a scientist to endeavor. And so I would propose to distinguish the entity, so the nature of the entity and its representation. So nevertheless, that would be my last proposition. The ontological investigation of a biographical area would be of great interest if related to a historical approach to these entities, which also applies for species. And this kind of approach would imply causal explanations or explanatory models, like the carrions or allopathic speciation, and would take into account contingency. Biographical areas would then be considered as realistic, historical, and natural entities, endowed with an ontological status analogous to that of species in evolutionary biology and systematics. And I think I'm going to finish here. Great. Register on your own. Hey, thanks a lot. Thought this was really great. And I like the idea of just thinking about geographical areas as entities. It's really interesting. But I wanted to ask you about what some of these people have in mind. Like I think it was Crowder and Murray when they talk about areas as individuals. Because you can certainly think of climate science we do this and various other areas. We think about parcels of geographical areas as a parameter in describing a phenomenon that we're interested in. But do they give a reason for thinking about it these things as individuals in the way that we as philosophers would think individuals are distinct from classes, they have different kinds of properties. Do they give a justification for thinking about them in terms of an ontological category the way that we might think? Because even in Gislin and Hull when they talk about species it's, well, they're individuals. And when I hear that as a philosopher I think, well, you know, individuals that are interested in things to be said about them they're part of all relations that distinguish them from other kinds of assemblies of things and so on and so forth. And I'm not sure they thought about these things as carefully as we might like, right? To justify a label of individual. To these guys when they talk about my geographical areas as individuals do they give an account of the necessary insufficient conditions for individuals such that this qualifies as an individual? Oh, thank you very much. Well, firstly, this was one of the first attempts to approach philosophically this kind of entities. So the authors are scientists. That I think in fact their inquiry begins from the fact that in scientific literature it was an effort, it had been an effort to develop a classification for biographical areas in the same sense of species classification. So that effort of classification stems from the 19th century from the first works of naturalists that discovered that there is some regions of the world that are characterized by a particular group of species or a particular species and that there is not only the ecological factors that affect the distribution of species on Earth's surface, but actually as we know nowadays it is the history, so the historical contingency of evolutionary history, actually. Well, so the authors, Brother and Mary, I think they proposed, so as I said, I think they proposed to consider areas of endemism as individuals, well, in biology there is a debate that continues on whether an entity, so a species, is an individual or a class. But what I tried here to do, to rapidly do is to show that this debate is not only an ontological one but it is based on scientific method because actually species are treated, are represented, what I would like to highlight is that are represented as classes by models and algorithms. And I think at this point it's not very clear within the scientific community. So I think the authors, Brother and Mary insisted and wanted to describe areas as individuals and they described actually what they said, it's that we cannot assess areas, we cannot, we don't have properties that are sufficient and actually areas, they don't have instances. So we don't have properties that are not changing, some properties that every area can have this kind of a set of properties but each example of area has its own, it is composed by parts, so these parts are species and the region, the geography, the geographical region and they change through time, so in the manner of evolution. So that's why, and this is a very similar approach that we use in biology for species but I tried to show that firstly it's not simple because species already, we have organisms to species are treated by organisms but for the geographical areas it's not the same, we don't have the same objects that are directly observable and that can be considered as individuated objects There is not time, there is not. Yeah we have another way, another 10 minutes, you're good. I'm not sure about the details of your proposal so you want to distinguish the way philosophers do ontology and this ontology is not of interest to scientists, right? That's what you said, more or less? Yes. And then classifications that are based on scientific method, right? Yes. So as I take it, in general scientists they don't care about what philosophers do, okay? I don't know how hard of you. I mean unfortunately, so in practice scientists they don't care about whether something is an entity or not as long as they can manipulate it and make experiments out of it. So I'm not sure to what extent these can help philosophers and also, so more to the point let's say you want to distinguish between classificatory concepts, right? So you want to distinguish between classificatory concepts which are categories, so linguistics entities to some extent and then individuals, but I think what a lot of people want to say is that classificatory concepts they map onto individuals to some extent so if you can say something about it, how that relates to Europe? Or will it? Thank you. So firstly I, well, yes, already as I mentioned so there's scientists, actually Maltebak is a scientist that is very prominent on, he's working on classification of the biogeographical areas so he has stated that actually a nontological investigation would be of no interest for scientists but I really think and my position is quite similar to that actually Tomap Hadoe and Malinouane have wrote a paper recently that is about doing philosophy in science and I think it is important it is actually very important for scientists to let philosophers investigate the entities and concepts they are working with because a lot of the time there is a scientific stagnation the scientists are debating on things that are not finally are not clarified and I think a philosopher can really help to this point and exactly here for example the debate on spaces in biogeographical areas is that most of the scientists are not interested to consider areas as classes so are rejecting the methods that are using spaces or areas as classes but this is not correct because it's a different thing to talk about the nature of an entity so the nature of an entity in the context of evolutionary biology would be to consider it as a historical entity an evolutionary entity, a product of contingency so for me that would be the ontological investigation and on the contrary the discussion on whether such an entity is an individual or a class would be more of an operational investigation how to delimitate such an object, such a material object and how we represent them how we represent them within scientific methods because all the entities nowadays are represented largely by methods implemented by algorithms and mathematics so thank you very much I'm quite sympathetic to claim about the useless philosophy so that's okay but I was surprised about certain claims that you make and maybe I will say things that you know but your project is very close to David Hull you don't seem to, maybe you because David Hull argues against class and after that he says individuals because that's if it's not a class of individuals but he does not stop there and says what kind of individuals? historical individuals, historical individuals are not metaphysical individuals and after that he's spin in gen-identity stuff and it's exactly what you need because gen-identity is a way to individuate individuals that is very close to practice so you look at how scientists individuate stuff through time and you call that gen-identity and that becomes what you can discuss is it metaphysical or not or is it metaphysical enough so it seems to you you have a very David Hull project and that will be a frame that will bring philosophy back in your project but the philosophy that is not traditional in metaphysical individuals but of these gen-identical individuals that are difficult to define defined by their history so it's very un-gisling and it's clearly not other people defining individuals in biology but it's very close to David Hull maybe it's a superficial reading of what you do probably I'm not really sure about it but I'm very interested on that problem that species are used as categories on classification and at the same time for me that I'm so I have rather a scientific and realist view it's not the species that exists in nature it's the object so organisms but even that question is not a simple one because after that we have to question what is an organism what is a biological individual as I said there is an effort to and there is a work who works on colonies on bacterial colonies and they investigate if such a bacterial colony can be considered as an individual so there are a lot of questions even what is an organism and if a biological individual have to be directly attached to the paradigmatic individual that is an organism or actually a Philippine man had proposed for ecosystems for example that they could have degrees of individuality so probably ecosystems could be considered as weak individuals so in a sense it's a statistical sense and it accounts for environmental factors the interactions are at the same place at the same time of all the abiotic and biotic factors so probably that would be appropriate also for biographical areas but biographical areas have a different characteristic sorry I think we're feeling good there my apologies we have about 5 minutes for the two questions we'll be right back