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  1. The arithmetic mean of what? A Cautionary Tale about the Use of the Geometric Mean as a Measure of Fitness.Peter Takacs & Pierrick Bourrat - 2022 - Biology and Philosophy 37 (2):1-22.
    Showing that the arithmetic mean number of offspring for a trait type often fails to be a predictive measure of fitness was a welcome correction to the philosophical literature on fitness. While the higher mathematical moments of a probability-weighted offspring distribution can influence fitness measurement in distinct ways, the geometric mean number of offspring is commonly singled out as the most appropriate measure. For it is well-suited to a compounding process and is sensitive to variance in offspring number. The geometric (...)
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  • Context Matters: A Response to Autzen and Okasha’s Reply to Takacs and Bourrat.Peter Takacs & Pierrick Bourrat - 2024 - Biological Theory 19 (3):170-176.
    In a recent reply to Takacs and Bourrat’s article (Biol Philos 37:12, 2022), Autzen and Okasha (Biol Philos 37:37, 2022) question our characterization of the relationship between the geometric mean and arithmetic mean measures of fitness. We here take issue with the claim that our characterization falls prey to the mistakes they highlight. Briefly revisiting what Takacs and Bourrat (Biol Philos 37:12, 2022) accomplished reveals that the key issue of difference concerns cases of deterministic but nonconstant growth. Restricting focus to (...)
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  • A New Set of Criteria for Units of Selection.Pierrick Bourrat - 2022 - Biological Theory 17 (4):263-275.
    This article proposes two conditions to assess whether an entity at a level of description is a unit of selection qua interactor. These two conditions make it possible to (1) distinguish biologically relevant entities from arbitrary ones and (2) distinguish units that can _potentially_ enter a selection process from those that have already done so. I show that the classical approaches used in the literature on units and levels of selection do not fare well with respect to either or both (...)
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