Graduate Student Federica Bocchi Publishes Piece in “Extinct”
The Philosophy Department would like to congratulate PhD candidate Federica Bocchi on her article, titled “Are We In a Biodiversity Crisis? Paleocurves, Measurements, and Problematic Inferences”, which was published earlier this month in Extinct: the Philosophy of Palaeontology Blog.
Click here for a link to the article.
Federica writes the following overview of her argument:
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[…] I argue that comparative evaluations of current and past biodiversity are difficult to justify because measurements of current biodiversity and “paleodiversity” are incommensurable. Two things are incommensurable if they have no common measure or otherwise cannot be meaningfully compared. What I suggest is that measures of biodiversity and paleodiversity are incommensurable in this sense. This leads me to conclude that talk of a “biodiversity crisis,” if predicated upon such a comparison alone, needs better arguments.
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Congratulations on your most recent publication, Federica!