Adrian Stencel

Necessity and Contingency. Two kinds of Common Interest

In evolutionary biology and the philosophy of biology, agential thinking has been a significant topic for investigation for decades. The essence of this thinking involves the treatment of biological units as if they were rational agents with interests and goals that they attempt to achieve through the adoption of various strategies. The main hallmark of agential thinking is the ‘importation’ of concepts into the biological world that are normally supposed to explain human behavior. Discussion about biological individuality is populated with those metaphors. For instance, scholars talk about genes being selfish, altruistic, or that they co-operate, cheat on each, or share a common interest. Initially those were just metaphors that were very loose and unprecise. Some of those concepts, however, got a proper elaboration and became advanced scientific tools. One example is the concept of altruism that due to the implementation of the theory of the kin selection became much more precise and rooted in biological theories. Some other concepts have not got proper development, though. The concept of the common interest is among them. The reference to the common interest is widespread in the evolutionary biology. When scientists study the genetic conflicts, interaction between bees and flower, or evolution of the hierarchy of life, they often refer to the common interest as something that maintains and is behind the evolution of those biological structures. However, the concept has not been analyzed in details. And intuitively seems that the common interest between flowers and bees and cells withing multicellular organism is of a different type, so more careful thinking is necessary. In this talk, I suggest to divide the concept of common interest into two kinds. Common interest by necessity and common interest by contingency. I show how they differ and in which biological units a given kind of common interest is present. Finally, I argue that the framework I develop might become a basis of dualism in thinking about biological individuality, because the majority of concepts of biological individuality at the meta-level assume one of the two types of the common interest I discuss here, so ultimately all concepts of biological individuality could be reduced to them.