Every animal, even a genetic clone (I imagine) would be subject to different circumstances, at various points in their existence, from others. Some of these might be quite random differences, like the position of a fish within a school, birth order or relative position in the womb, and each of these would impact even in the smallest way on how they relate in the same circumstances as another.

On a large scale, even groups of people are predictable, but individually they’re not at all.

Of course, the further down the evolutionary scale, the less experiences, so the less opportunities for variety in individual circumstances. Lifespan also affects variety of interactions with the world.

I'd go with the literal meaning: Individuality begins where an organism reproduces sexually. Then you get recombined and unique genetic material in the offspring and parent and child each have their own lifespan.
On the other hand, a bacterium that reproduces by dividing itself is clearly "dividual" and not "individual". It's also kind of immortal.

Perhaps I should have stressed the behavioural aspect of my question.
I found Possibilty’s reply quite instructive in pointing out how small factor in the ‘nurture’ aspect of individual early stages of life could make a contribution to the individual's distinctiveness individual. Ants colonies are a classic example of how ‘upbringing’ literary shapes the type of ant.

I found the genetic definition of what is an individual rather restrictive. Asexual reproduction does not imply identical offsprings. Research by the UCAL showed that a bacterium which suffered some environmental damage will pass it to one daughter in order to enhance the survival fitness of the other.

Individuation comes along with emergent behaviour. Emergent behaviour is rooted in interaction. Fields interacting make atoms, atoms arranged thusly make molecules and compounds, which make chemistry as a new frontier and language of expression; the play of electrical forces are like pitches in the notes written in scores of molecular geometry.

The ontological task of thinking individuation acutely corresponds to finding general structures in how reciprocally interdependent event networks (interaction) graduate and congeal into stable objects. Asking how anything stable can come within all this flux.

Your language is very dense. By “dense,” I mean that there is a lot to unpack. I know you’re a busy person, but if you find the time, maybe you could humor me by explaining the premises further? Totally up to you.

What an individual is depends on the scope of the question "What is an individual?"; what an atom is has a much more tame domain of inquiry than what a living being is. So if you consider it in the broadest possible sense, you have to ask it in a way that is informed by the various ways distinct entities come about or emerge from their background. An instructive metaphor might be thinking of 'beaches' as little bubbles around 'land' that distinguishes it; makes it an individual; from 'sea; through the interaction of tectonic plates and global water distribution.

If you take a vulgar materialist view on things, there's an order to stuff. Stuff's ultimately made of fields; which describe how particles come about through fields interacting with themselves; then particles make atoms; interacting with other forces; and atoms form compounds and molecules; and by that point you have chemistry, and a novel domain of phenomena appears. You can begin describing chemicals as 'catalysts' for 'reactions', for example, and 'catalysts' and 'reactions' don't occur between fields or quarks, they occur between chemicals.

This gives extra expressive power to nature over and above a universe where chemicals could have never formed.

This is a very simplified picture, but it is instructive insofar as it provides hints on viewing where this new domain of phenomena; that which is studied by chemistry; came from. When fields interact they make particles, when particles interact they make atoms, when atoms interact they make compounds, when compounds interact they make chemistry. Organisation of one domain (atoms) can generate novel behaviours (chemistry) which have extra causal powers (chemical reactions) than what was organised (particle-particle interactions). The general principle suggested here is that when you get enough and the right sort of interactions between stuff, when interaction can organsie, you get new domains of entities which then stick out from their background.

Ignore issues of personhood, intersubjectivity, social constructions etc since the post is already too long and too imprecise, which I am sorry for.

(@StreetlightX @csalisbury because Deleuze stuff)

I guess I didn't talk about events and objects so well in that context. Bar magnets. Let's go with bar magnets.

From one view, a bar magnet is just a bit of metal (possibly with blue or red plastic covering like in our school days) that has a persistent magnetic field that happens to be shaped like a bar. However, from the perspective of functioning as a magnet, the shape matters little; it's free to vary so long as it doesn't become too big or too small. The material determines the amount of magnetisation, and the shape determines how that magnetic field distributes over space. But in terms of the magnetic field; the thing which makes it a magnet; what matters is how the magnetic field persists in the material. The atoms are moving about, all kinds of quantum shit is happening between them, there's finger grease and dirt and crap on it, but that doesn't matter for its functioning as a magnet; what matters is how the magnetic field persists.

This question of persistence is key for understanding the magnetic field in a bar magnet as an object. The question of persistent patterns of flux is key more generally for individuation. How does a magnetic field become a stable faculty of an arrangement of atoms? How does a magnet emerge as a magnet? These are answered with the question of how magnetic fields persist. But let's keep an eye to the broader context too.

Keeping track of the entities which induce the magnetic field, we're keeping track of the electromagnetic behaviour of the subatomic particles and their relationships of arrangement and proximity as constrained by the atoms. Proximity driven by an organisational principle that produces a persistent pattern if its conditions are right. It is tempting here to impose an arbitrary split between low and high level components, of atoms as a base and a persistent magnetic field as a superstructure, but magnetism is baked into atoms as much as atoms are baked into magnets; these are just different patterns of articulation within the same self differentiating nature that articulates itself through its own interactions.

The resources for unfolding the magnetic field of the atoms in a persistent form are all given by a nature which resists the conceptual imposition of hierarchical organisation because its interactions are simply the origin of all hierarchy. Substance (atoms) and predicate (arrangement), content (atoms) and form (arrangement), lose their antipodal bivalence in the dizzying thought of their co-constitutive reciprocity. Interaction is baked into nature, and the sides of an interaction form poles for each other that need no externalised articulating principle other than the codification of their own internalised resources. These are the events that keep happening, an object is just a durable happening with somewhat uniform character.

Edit: something I under emphasised here is that the flux of the magnetic field doesn't change the atom very much in the bar magnets, it changes how the electron orbitals are shaped, but it doesn't change anything about the atomic nucleuses; whenever something can be in flux, it's always in flux with respect to something else, something has to change sufficiently slowly for pattern of flux to persist with respect to that change.

But I have become too general, so let's get back to the magnet. The atoms on its surface all have electron orbitals, which due to the proximity of the atoms overlap. That overlapping constrains the positions of the electrons on the outside of the material, which provides an immanent definition of how the electromagnetic field can oscillate - wave about. Like a valley provides an immanent definition of water collection, and its river provides an immanent definition of the same valley. Valleys are scored out landmasses of gravitational potential for water, field lines are scored out landmasses of magnetic potential for the electromagnetic field.

Due to the properties of the atoms involved, their numbers of electrons and orbital shapes, their proximity provides different valley shapes through which electromagnetic currents can flow. And they must flow, they always do, rest is motion from an altered perspective. So flow they do, along the paths they feel they must, but they empathise; they feel in unison, constrained by the interactive context of the material's organisation and constitution. They feel out what direction runs down the valley they create together and swim towards it.

So we have a magnet, a little island of dirt emerging from an ocean indifferent to it.

Thank you for that interesting take. It’s going to take me a couple of reads to understand it, though.

This is a very simplified picture, but it is instructive insofar as it provides hints on viewing where this new domain of phenomena; that which is studied by chemistry; came from. When fields interact they make particles, when particles interact they make atoms, when atoms interact they make compounds, when compounds interact they make chemistry. Organisation of one domain (atoms) can generate novel behaviours (chemistry) which have extra causal powers (chemical reactions) than what was organised (particle-particle interactions). The general principle suggested here is that when you get enough and the right sort of interactions between stuff, when interaction can organsie, you get new domains of entities which then stick out from their background. — fdrake

And when chemistry happens, we can end up with biochemistry. When biochemistry happens, we can end up with multicellular organisms, some of which have complex brains. When brains happen we get consciousness and behaviors. When consciousness and behaviors happen, we get all sorts of things, including all of the things of modern society; the areas of study, the technology, the institutions, the societal structures, etc. This is all an oversimplification on my part, but the hard problems of emergence are difficult to solve.

As @alcontali said somewhere else, the difference between a person when they’re alive and when they’re dead IS the individual person.

Not sure how this fits into the discussion, exactly, though; but it’s given me a lot to think about. :wink:

So flow they do, along the paths they feel they must, but they empathise; they feel in unison, constrained by the interactive context of the material's organisation and constitution. — fdrake

Is there a “hard problem” in your view?

Is there a “hard problem” in your view? — Noah Te Stroete

I dunno, I'm apparently a p-zombie.

Where nominalism begins. Right at the start.

Can you remind us what nominalism is in your own words?

Can you remind us what nominalism is in your own words? — Noah Te Stroete

In a nutshell everything is a unique particular--there are no real universals/types (platonic forms, etc.), and there are no real abstracts. ("Real" being extramental or objective here.)

And what was nominalism an answer to? You said “where nominalism begins.” What was the question?

Ah. I see. Never mind. Actually, that doesn’t answer the question of HOW individuality happens. Now I’m not sure what the initial question was supposed to be. Individuality, the why, the how, or the what.

And what was nominalism an answer to? You said “where nominalism begins.” What was the question? — Noah Te Stroete

The thread asks "Where on the evolutionary scale does individuality begin? "

that doesn’t answer the question of HOW individuality happens. — Noah Te Stroete

By virtue of multiple things existing. If we have two existents, they can't be identical.

Right. By definition then if one accepts nominalism.

Right. By definition then if one accepts nominalism. — Noah Te Stroete

Well, it kind of follows from the nonidenticality of discernibles in general. If we can discern two things, they can't be identical.

Well, it kind of follows from the nonidenticality of discernibles in general. If we can discern two things, they can't be identical. — Terrapin Station

Yes. I guess a better question than where is how individuality happens. I think that was the subtext.

Actually, you were right. There was no subtext. I bet there is a champion of the amoebas, though.

Yes. I guess a better question than where is how individuality happens. I think that was the subtext. — Noah Te Stroete

So, if we have two arbitrary things, the only way for them to not be individual(s) is for them to somehow literally be the same thing in some respect. But it's difficult to grasp how that could be the case. So the "how" is kind of "they can't help but be individual(s), because being the same thing would be incoherent." Basically it's a brute ontological fact.

Basically it's a brute ontological fact. — Terrapin Station

But protons must surely be identical apart from inhabiting different locations and having different relative motion, no? But that has nothing to do with evolution.

But I personally don’t know anything about particle decay.

I have not heard whether sardines are individually unique, but researchers have found that honey bees can differ slightly. Some individual bees that forage (look for flowers) are better at it than other forager bees. Individual birds, which are more easily observed than bees, differ individually in various ways -- song, mating success, etc. New Caledonia crows, which have been observed quite a bit, not only exhibit individual differences, but appear to differ in tool making from one part of New Caledonia to another.

My guess is that most creatures differ. Does one C. elegans nematode differ from another? Don't know. One snail from another? Don't know. C. elegans only has 900+ cells in its whole body, so... not much to work with. Bees have far more cells than that in their brains.

In all animals, including our esteemed selves, there is an interplay in the ways we are all alike and the ways we are all different. Humans exhibit a remarkable degree of sameness from person to person, which is appropriate since we are a species, not de novo creatures.