Two apparently distinct ontological distinctions:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/species/#SpeInd vs
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/species/#SpeSet
After the development of set theory, however, a distinction of the
scholastics between intension, of sets that were circumscribed by
Ontological status is always within some model we have created. So one can created models
in which species are defined extenstionally and create different models in which they are
defined intensionally. So what? They are both our creations to help understand the
world. Does one work better?
It seems biologists (and philosophers of biology) think that Kitcher's
motivation for asserting that species are sets is to allow spatiotemporally
unrestricted groups of organisms to form species. That motivation, however,
is not substantiated by biological theory or practice. Species as sets
(see
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