{"id":14535,"date":"2026-01-19T15:30:41","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T15:30:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.uned.es\/metis\/?page_id=14535"},"modified":"2026-01-19T16:59:53","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T16:59:53","slug":"14535-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.uned.es\/metis\/14535-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Laura Nu\u00f1o"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Laura Nu\u00f1o de la Rosa (CSIC): From Kinds to Characters: Rethinking the Concept of Sex in Evolutionary Biology<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Tuesday March 3 2026 @11:30 (CET)<br><a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/maps\/place\/UNED+-+Humanidades\/@40.4366067,-3.7379162,17z\/data=!3m2!4b1!5s0xd4228238189d7b7:0x62044c79ae77dfac!4m6!3m5!1s0xd42295f507d8465:0xc8bff2c2c262c868!8m2!3d40.4366067!4d-3.7353359!16s%2Fg%2F11d_d4qny9?entry=ttu\">Sala B, Edificio de Humanidades, UNED<\/a>&nbsp;&amp;&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.uned.es\/metis\/contact\/\">online<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Abstract<\/em><br>Sex is one of the most contested concepts within and beyond biology. I argue that many disagreements over its definition arise from conceiving sex as a kind of individual rather than as a character. After examining the limitations of treating sex as an individual property that defines sexual kinds, I turn to how sexual characters are individuated in evolutionary biology, showing how different criteria of individuation yield distinct groupings of traits and divergent interpretations of sex evolution. First, I analyze the selectionist view, which understands sex as an adaptive reproductive strategy and sexual characters as a nonadaptive domain shaped by sexual selection. Second, I contrast the selectionist criteria for individuating sexual characters with the historical and developmental criteria used in evolutionary developmental biology. Using pregnancy and the female orgasm as examples of female sexual characters, I illustrate the respective strengths and weaknesses of these approaches. I argue that shifting the focus from kinds to characters overcomes the limitations of explanatory inferences from individual traits to binary character complexes. Viewing sex as an attribute of developmentally individuated characters explains why sexual traits are only loosely correlated, enables explanatory generalizations across species, accommodates continuous variation, and provides a coherent framework for intersex and hermaphroditic individuals. I conclude by reflecting on how this conceptual shift informs debates in feminist metaphysics regarding the ontological status of human sex.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Bio<\/em><br>Laura Nu\u00f1o de la Rosa es fil\u00f3sofa de la ciencia especializada en historia y filosof\u00eda de la biolog\u00eda y, junto a Mar\u00eda Cerezo, coordina el grupo BioKoinos en la UCM. Su investigaci\u00f3n combina la historia reciente de la biolog\u00eda evolutiva con debates epistemol\u00f3gicos y ontol\u00f3gicos en biolog\u00eda contempor\u00e1nea y con el an\u00e1lisis de las relaciones ciencia-sociedad (biolog\u00eda sint\u00e9tica, ciencias del covid y teor\u00edas actuales sobre reproducci\u00f3n femenina). Formada en Humanidades (Alicante), con m\u00e1ster en Biof\u00edsica (UAM) y doctorado en Filosof\u00eda (UCM y Paris 1-Sorbona), ha desarrollado una trayectoria internacional (KLI, Viena) y actualmente es Cient\u00edfica Titular de OPIS en el CSIC, con m\u00e1s de 40 publicaciones, amplia actividad editorial y cient\u00edfica, liderazgo y participaci\u00f3n en numerosos proyectos, direcci\u00f3n de tesis y el premio Juli\u00e1n Mar\u00edas (2019) a mejor investigadora en Humanidades menor de 40 a\u00f1os en la Comunidad de Madrid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Laura Nu\u00f1o de la Rosa (CSIC): From Kinds to Characters: Rethinking the Concept of Sex in Evolutionary Biology Tuesday March 3 2026 @11:30 (CET)Sala B, Edificio de Humanidades, UNED&nbsp;&amp;&nbsp;online AbstractSex is one of the most contested concepts within and beyond biology. I argue that many disagreements over its definition arise from conceiving sex as a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7949,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-14535","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uned.es\/metis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/14535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uned.es\/metis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uned.es\/metis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uned.es\/metis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7949"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uned.es\/metis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14535"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uned.es\/metis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/14535\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14655,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uned.es\/metis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/14535\/revisions\/14655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uned.es\/metis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}