Cats are not necessarily animals

Margarida Hermida

doi:10.1007/s10670-022-00588-w

Cats are not necessarily animals

Margarida Hermida^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

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Abstract

Some plausibly necessary a posteriori theoretical claims include ‘water is H₂O’, ‘gold is the element with atomic number 79’, and ‘cats are animals’. In this paper I challenge the necessity of the third claim. I argue that there are possible worlds in which cats exist, but are not animals. Under any of the species concepts currently accepted in biology, organisms do not belong essentially to their species. This is equally true of their ancestors. In phylogenetic systematics, monophyletic clades such as the animal kingdom are composed of an ancestral stem species and all of its descendants. If the stem species had not existed, neither would the clade. Thus it could have been the case that all the organisms which actually belong to the animal kingdom might have existed yet not have been animals.

Original language	English
Number of pages	20
Journal	Erkenntnis
Early online date	11 Aug 2022
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-022-00588-w
Publication status	E-pub ahead of print - 11 Aug 2022

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
I am grateful to Samir Okasha, Tuomas Tahko, Francesca Bellazzi, Milenko Lasnibat, and three anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on previous versions of this manuscript. This work was supported by the British Society for the Philosophy of Science through a doctoral scholarship.

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© 2022, The Author(s).

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title = "Cats are not necessarily animals",

abstract = "Some plausibly necessary a posteriori theoretical claims include {\textquoteleft}water is H2O{\textquoteright}, {\textquoteleft}gold is the element with atomic number 79{\textquoteright}, and {\textquoteleft}cats are animals{\textquoteright}. In this paper I challenge the necessity of the third claim. I argue that there are possible worlds in which cats exist, but are not animals. Under any of the species concepts currently accepted in biology, organisms do not belong essentially to their species. This is equally true of their ancestors. In phylogenetic systematics, monophyletic clades such as the animal kingdom are composed of an ancestral stem species and all of its descendants. If the stem species had not existed, neither would the clade. Thus it could have been the case that all the organisms which actually belong to the animal kingdom might have existed yet not have been animals.",

author = "Margarida Hermida",

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N2 - Some plausibly necessary a posteriori theoretical claims include ‘water is H2O’, ‘gold is the element with atomic number 79’, and ‘cats are animals’. In this paper I challenge the necessity of the third claim. I argue that there are possible worlds in which cats exist, but are not animals. Under any of the species concepts currently accepted in biology, organisms do not belong essentially to their species. This is equally true of their ancestors. In phylogenetic systematics, monophyletic clades such as the animal kingdom are composed of an ancestral stem species and all of its descendants. If the stem species had not existed, neither would the clade. Thus it could have been the case that all the organisms which actually belong to the animal kingdom might have existed yet not have been animals.

AB - Some plausibly necessary a posteriori theoretical claims include ‘water is H2O’, ‘gold is the element with atomic number 79’, and ‘cats are animals’. In this paper I challenge the necessity of the third claim. I argue that there are possible worlds in which cats exist, but are not animals. Under any of the species concepts currently accepted in biology, organisms do not belong essentially to their species. This is equally true of their ancestors. In phylogenetic systematics, monophyletic clades such as the animal kingdom are composed of an ancestral stem species and all of its descendants. If the stem species had not existed, neither would the clade. Thus it could have been the case that all the organisms which actually belong to the animal kingdom might have existed yet not have been animals.

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M3 - Article (Academic Journal)

SN - 0165-0106

JO - Erkenntnis

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ER -

Cats are not necessarily animals

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