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The field of the philosophy of biology is flourishing in its aim to evaluate and rethink the view inherited from the previous century ---the Modern Synthesis. Different research areas and theories have come to the fore in the last decades in order to account for different biological phenomena that, in the first instance, fall beyond the explanatory scope of the Modern Synthesis. This thesis is anchored and motivated by this revolt in the philosophy of biology. -/- The central target in (...) |
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Humans often behave altruistically towards strangers with no chance of reciprocation. From an evolutionary perspective, this is puzzling. The evolution of altruistic cooperative behavior—in which an organism’s action reduces its fitness and increases the fitness of another organism —only makes sense when it is directed at genetically related organisms or when one can expect the favor to be returned. Therefore, evolutionary theorists such as Sober and Wilson have argued that we should revise Neo-Darwininian evolutionary theory. They argue that human altruism (...) |
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Except for a patina of twenty-first century modernity, in the form of logic and language, philosophy is exactly the same now as it ever was; it has made no progress whatsoever. We philosophers wrestle with the exact same problems the Pre-Socratics wrestled with. Even more outrageous than this claim, though, is the blatant denial of its obvious truth by many practicing philosophers. The No-Progress view is explored and argued for here. Its denial is diagnosed as a form of anosognosia, a (...) |
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According to the received view of evolution, only genes are inherited. From this view it follows that only genetically-caused phenotypic variation is selectable and, thereby, that all selection is at bottom genetic selection. This paper argues that the received view is wrong. In many species, there are intergenerationally-stable phenotypic differences due to environmental differences. Natural selection can act on these nongenetically-caused phenotypic differences in the same way it acts on genetically-caused phenotypic differences. Some selection is at bottom nongenetic selection. The (...) |
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David Hull's analysis of conceptual change in science, as presentedin his book, Science as a Process (1988), provides a useful framework for understanding one of the scientific controversies in which he actively and constructively intervened, the units of selectiondebates in evolutionary biology. What follows is a brief overview ofthose debates and some reflections on them. |
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Phenotype, whether conventional or extended, is defined as a reflectionof an underlying genotype. Adaptation and the natural selection thatfollows from it depends upon a progressively harmonious fit betweenphenotype and environment. There is in Richard Dawkins' notion ofthe extended phenotype a paradox that seems to undercut conventionalviews of adaptation, natural selection and adaptation. In a nutshell, ifthe phenotype includes an organism's environment, how then can theorganism adapt to itself? The paradox is resolvable through aphysiological, as opposed to a genetic, theory of (...) |
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This paper surveys recent philosophy of biology. It aims to introduce outsiders to the field to the recent literature (which is reviewed in the footnotes) and the main recent debates. I concentrate on three of these: recent critiques of the replicator/vehicle distinction and its application to the idea of the gene as the unit of section; the recent defences of group selection and the idea that standard alternatives to group selection are in fact no more than a disguised form of (...) |
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Unto Others (Sober and Wilson 1998) shows how the general principles of Multi-Level Selection (MLS) theory apply to selection at multiple levels of the biological hierarchy. It also argues for the existence of "genuine" evolutionary and psychological altruism. The authors’ views on altruism do not follow logically from principles of MLS, and their failure do disentangle these two themes undermines their otherwise excellent presentation of MLS theory. Rebuttal of the view that human nature is completely selfish depends not on the (...) |
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Although classical evolutionary theory, i.e., population genetics and the Modern Synthesis, was already implicitly ‘gene-centred’, the organism was, in practice, still generally regarded as the individual unit of which a population is composed. The gene-centred approach to evolution only reached a logical conclusion with the advent of the gene-selectionist or gene’s eye view in the 1960s and 1970s. Whereas classical evolutionary theory can only work with fitness differences between individual organisms, gene-selectionism is capable of working with fitness differences among genes (...) |
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Once upon a time in evolutionary theory, everything happened for the best. Predators killed only the old or the sick. Pecking orders and other dominance hierarchies minimized wasteful conflict within the group. Male displays ensured that only the best and the fittest had mates. In the culmination of this tradition, Wynne-Edwards argued that many species have mechanisms that ensure groups do not over-exploit their resource base. The “central function” of territoriality in birds and other higher animals is “of limiting the (...) |
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The standard picture of evolution, is externalist: a causal arrow runs from environment to organism, and that arrow explains why organisms are as they are (Godfrey-Smith 1996). Natural selection allows a lineage to accommodate itself to the specifics of its environment. As the interior of Australia became hotter and drier, phenotypes changed in many lineages of plants and animals, so that those organisms came to suit the new conditions under which they lived. Odling-Smee, Laland and Feldman, building on the work (...) |
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Genic selectionism holds that all selection can be understood as operating on particular genes. Critics (and conventional biological wisdom) insist that this misrepresents the actual causal structure of selective phenomena at higher levels of biological organization, but cannot convincingly defend this intuition. I argue that the real failing of genic selectionism is pragmatic – it prevents us from adopting the most efficient corpus of causal laws for predicting and intervening in the course of affairs – and I offer a Pragmatic (...) |
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