Results for 'Natural Selection'

956 found
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  1. Natural selection, plasticity, and the rationale for largest-scale trends.Hugh Desmond - 2018 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 68:25-33.
    Many have argued that there is no reason why natural selection should cause directional increases in measures such as body size or complexity across evolutionary history as a whole. In this paper I argue that this conclusion does not hold for selection for adaptations to environmental variability, and that, given the inevitability of environmental variability, trends in adaptations to variability are an expected feature of evolution by natural selection. As a concrete instance of this causal (...)
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  2. Natural Selection and the Maximization of Fitness.Jonathan Birch - 2015 - Biological Reviews 91 (3):712-727.
    The notion that natural selection is a process of fitness maximization gets a bad press in population genetics, yet in other areas of biology the view that organisms behave as if attempting to maximize their fitness remains widespread. Here I critically appraise the prospects for reconciliation. I first distinguish four varieties of fitness maximization. I then examine two recent developments that may appear to vindicate at least one of these varieties. The first is the ‘new’ interpretation of Fisher's (...)
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  3. (1 other version)Natural selection and the limited nature of environmental resources.Bence Nanay - 2010 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 41 (4):418-419.
    In this paper, I am clarifying and defending my argument in favor of the claim that cumulative selection can explain adaptation provided that the environmental resources are limited. Further, elaborate on what this limitation of environmental resources means and why it is relevant for the explanatory power of natural selection.
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  4. Scaffolding Natural Selection.Walter Veit - 2022 - Biological Theory 17 (2):163-180.
    Darwin provided us with a powerful theoretical framework to explain the evolution of living systems. Natural selection alone, however, has sometimes been seen as insufficient to explain the emergence of new levels of selection. The problem is one of “circularity” for evolutionary explanations: how to explain the origins of Darwinian properties without already invoking their presence at the level they emerge. That is, how does evolution by natural selection commence in the first place? Recent results (...)
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  5. Natural selection, causality, and laws: What Fodor and piatelli-palmarini got wrong.Elliott Sober - 2010 - Philosophy of Science 77 (4):594-607.
    In their book What Darwin Got Wrong, Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini construct an a priori philosophical argument and an empirical biological argument. The biological argument aims to show that natural selection is much less important in the evolutionary process than many biologists maintain. The a priori argument begins with the claim that there cannot be selection for one but not the other of two traits that are perfectly correlated in a population; it concludes that there cannot (...)
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  6. Natural selection and its limits: where ecology meets evolution.Massimo Pigliucci - 2004 - In R. Casagrandi P. Melia (ed.), Atti del XIII Congresso Nazionale della Societa` Italiana di Ecologia.
    Natural selection [Darwin 1859] is perhaps the most important component of evolutionary theory, since it is the only known process that can bring about the adaptation of living organisms to their environments [Gould 2002]. And yet, its study is conceptually and methodologically complex, and much attention needs to be paid to a variety of phenomena that can limit the efficacy of selection [Antonovics 1976; Pigliucci and Kaplan 2000]. In this essay, I will use examples of recent work (...)
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  7. Natural process – Natural selection.Arto Annila - 2007 - Biophysical Chemistry 127: 123–128.
    Life is supported by a myriad of chemical reactions. To describe the overall process we have formulated entropy for an open system undergoing chemical reactions. The entropy formula allows us to recognize various ways for the system to move towards more probable states. These correspond to the basic processes of life i.e. proliferation, differentiation, expansion, energy intake, adaptation and maturation. We propose that the rate of entropy production by various mechanisms is the fitness criterion of natural selection. The (...)
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  8. Natural Selection Does Care about Truth.Maarten Boudry & Michael Vlerick - 2014 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 28 (1):65-77.
    True beliefs are better guides to the world than false ones. This is the common-sense assumption that undergirds theorizing in evolutionary epistemology. According to Alvin Plantinga, however, evolution by natural selection does not care about truth: it cares only about fitness. If our cognitive faculties are the products of blind evolution, we have no reason to trust them, anytime or anywhere. Evolutionary naturalism, consequently, is a self-defeating position. Following up on earlier objections, we uncover three additional flaws in (...)
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  9.  50
    Evolution by means of natural selection without reproduction: revamping Lewontin’s account.François Papale - 2020 - Synthese 198 (11):10429-10455.
    This paper analyzes recent attempts to reject reproduction with lineage formation as a necessary condition for evolution by means of natural selection :560–570, 2008; Stud Hist Philos Sci Part C Stud Hist Philos Biol Biomed Sci 42:106–114, 2011; Bourrat in Biol Philos 29:517–538, 2014; Br J Philos Sci 66:883–903, 2015; Charbonneau in Philos Sci 81:727–740, 2014; Doolittle and Inkpen in Proc Natl Acad Sci 115:4006–4014, 2018). Building on the strengths of these attempts and avoiding their pitfalls, it is (...)
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  10. Problems for Natural Selection as a Mechanism.Joyce C. Havstad - 2011 - Philosophy of Science 78 (3):512-523.
    Skipper and Millstein analyze natural selection and mechanism, concluding that natural selection is not a mechanism in the sense of the new mechanistic philosophy. Barros disagrees and provides his own account of natural selection as a mechanism. This discussion identifies a missing piece of Barros's account, attempts to fill in that piece, and reconsiders the revised account. Two principal objections are developed: one, the account does not characterize natural selection; two, the account (...)
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  11. The Negative View of Natural Selection.Jonathan Birch - 2012 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 43 (2):569-573.
    An influential argument due to Elliott Sober, subsequently strengthened by Denis Walsh and Joel Pust, moves from plausible premises to the bold conclusion that natural selection cannot explain the traits of individual organisms. If the argument were sound, the explanatory scope of selection would depend, surprisingly, on metaphysical considerations concerning origin essentialism. I show that the Sober-Walsh-Pust argument rests on a flawed counterfactual criterion for explanatory relevance. I further show that a more defensible criterion for explanatory relevance (...)
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  12. On natural selection and Hume's second problem.Armando Aranda-Anzaldo - 1998 - Evolution and Cognition 4 (2):156-172.
    David Hume's famous riddle of induction implies a second problem related to the question of whether the laws and principles of nature might change in the course of time. Claims have been made that modern developments in physics and astrophysics corroborate the translational invariance of the laws of physics in time. However, the appearance of a new general principle of nature, which might not be derivable from the known laws of physics, or that might actually be a non-physical one (this (...)
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  13. Natural Selection of Independently Originated Life Clades.Margarida Hermida - 2022 - Philosophy of Science 89 (3):454-470.
    Life on Earth descends from a common ancestor. However, it is likely that there are other instances of life in the universe. If so, each abiogenesis event will have given rise to an independently originated life clade, of which Earth-life is an example. In this paper, I argue that the set of all IOLCs in the universe forms a Darwinian population subject to natural selection, with more widely dispersed IOLCs being less likely to face extinction. As a result, (...)
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  14. Defining dysfunction: Natural selection, design, and drawing a line.Peter H. Schwartz - 2007 - Philosophy of Science 74 (3):364-385.
    Accounts of the concepts of function and dysfunction have not adequately explained what factors determine the line between low‐normal function and dysfunction. I call the challenge of doing so the line‐drawing problem. Previous approaches emphasize facts involving the action of natural selection (Wakefield 1992a, 1999a, 1999b) or the statistical distribution of levels of functioning in the current population (Boorse 1977, 1997). I point out limitations of these two approaches and present a solution to the line‐drawing problem that builds (...)
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  15.  78
    Probabilistic causation and the explanatory role of natural selection.Pablo Razeto-Barry & Ramiro Frick - 2011 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 42 (3):344-355.
    The explanatory role of natural selection is one of the long-term debates in evolutionary biology. Nevertheless, the consensus has been slippery because conceptual confusions and the absence of a unified, formal causal model that integrates different explanatory scopes of natural selection. In this study we attempt to examine two questions: (i) What can the theory of natural selection explain? and (ii) Is there a causal or explanatory model that integrates all natural selection (...)
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  16. Population Pluralism and Natural Selection.Jacob Stegenga - 2016 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 67 (1):1-29.
    I defend a radical interpretation of biological populations—what I call population pluralism—which holds that there are many ways that a particular grouping of individuals can be related such that the grouping satisfies the conditions necessary for those individuals to evolve together. More constraining accounts of biological populations face empirical counter-examples and conceptual difficulties. One of the most intuitive and frequently employed conditions, causal connectivity—itself beset with numerous difficulties—is best construed by considering the relevant causal relations as ‘thick’ causal concepts. I (...)
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  17. Natural Selection, Childrearing, and the Ethics of Marriage (and Divorce): Building a Case for the Neuroenhancement of Human Relationships. [REVIEW]Brian D. Earp, Anders Sandberg & Julian Savulescu - 2012 - Philosophy and Technology 25 (4):561-587.
    We argue that the fragility of contemporary marriages—and the corresponding high rates of divorce—can be explained (in large part) by a three-part mismatch: between our relationship values, our evolved psychobiological natures, and our modern social, physical, and technological environment. “Love drugs” could help address this mismatch by boosting our psychobiologies while keeping our values and our environment intact. While individual couples should be free to use pharmacological interventions to sustain and improve their romantic connection, we suggest that they may have (...)
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  18. Natural Selection Among Replicators, Interactors and Transactors.Donato Bergandi - 2013 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 35 (2):213-238.
    In evolutionary biology and ecology, ontological and epistemological perspectives based on the replicator and the interactor have become the background that makes it possible to transcend traditional biological levels of organization and to achieve a unified view of evolution in which replication and interaction are fundamental operating processes. Using the transactional perspective proposed originally by John Dewey and Arthur Fisher Bentley, a new ontological and methodological category is proposed here: the transactor. The transactional perspective, based on the concept of the (...)
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  19. On the meaning of natural selection.Rafael Andrés Alemañ-Berenguer - forthcoming - Naturaleza y Libertad. Revista de Estudios Interdisciplinares.
    Natural selection is one of the fundamental keys of evolutionary biology, which is as much as saying of almost all life sciences. However, the effort to assess its true meaning has been involved in endless controversies almost from the beginning. The rethinking of natural selection through an abstract scheme with three ingredients - −population, environment and interaction between them− could significantly contribute to clarify this debate.
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  20. The Nature of Darwin’s Support for the Theory of Natural Selection.Elisabeth A. Lloyd - 1983 - Philosophy of Science 50 (1):112-129.
    When natural selection theory was presented, much active philosophical debate, in which Darwin himself participated, centered on its hypothetical nature, its explanatory power, and Darwin's methodology. Upon first examination, Darwin's support of his theory seems to consist of a set of claims pertaining to various aspects of explanatory success. I analyze the support of his method and theory given in the Origin of Species and private correspondence, and conclude that an interpretation focusing on the explanatory strengths of (...) selection theory accurately reflects neither Darwin's own self-consciously held views, nor the nature of his support. Darwin's methodological and philosophical arguments were at once consistently empiricist and more sophisticated than such interpretations credit to him. (shrink)
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  21. The Ideological Matrix of Science: Natural Selection and Immunity as Case Studies.Agustin Ostachuk - 2019 - Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy 15 (1):182-213.
    The modern concept of ideology was established by the liberal politician and philosopher Destutt de Tracy, with the objective of creating an all-embracing and general science of ideas, which followed the sensualist and empiricist trend initiated by Locke that culminated in the positivism of Comte. Natural selection and immunity are two key concepts in the history of biology that were strongly based on the Malthusian concept of struggle for existence. This concept wrongly assumed that population grew faster than (...)
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  22. Natural Selections. [REVIEW]Ray Scott Percival - 1994 - Nature 371 (6499):666-667.
    How do you put both physicists and biologists on their guard? Answer: propound a philosophical theory that ignores Darwin's demolition of essentialism in species and brands any physicist who denies your theory of natural kinds as an anti-realist. A traditional division in philosophy is between metaphysics (what sorts of things exist) and epistemology (what and how we know). Some think that the core of realism is the metaphysical assumption that there is a world independent of our minds. But this (...)
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  23. (1 other version)Ortega y Gasset on Natural Selection and the Vocation of Man: Rejection or Elaboration of Darwinism?Lior Rabi - 2015 - Kairos: Journal of Philosophy and Science 13:47-81.
    In many of his writings and lectures Ortega y Gasset criticized Darwinism on numbers of issues. In this paper I aim to reexamine his critique and to prove that in 1916 the harsh critique was designed to hide the similarity between his ideas and Darwin's idea of Natural Selection. The origins of Ortega's idea on the vocation of man can be traced in his dialogue with Darwin in the year 1916. In the historiography his Philosophy of Life is (...)
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  24. Modelling with words: Narrative and natural selection.Dominic K. Dimech - 2017 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 62:20-24.
    I argue that verbal models should be included in a philosophical account of the scientific practice of modelling. Weisberg (2013) has directly opposed this thesis on the grounds that verbal structures, if they are used in science, only merely describe models. I look at examples from Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859) of verbally constructed narratives that I claim model the general phenomenon of evolution by natural selection. In each of the cases I look at, a particular (...)
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  25. La teoría de la selección natural darwiniana (The Darwinian Theory of Natural Selection).Santiago Ginnobili - 2010 - Theoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 25 (1):37-58.
    RESUMEN: El tema de este trabajo es la reconstrucción de la teoría de la selección natural darwiniana. Me propongo esbozar la ley fundamental de esta teoría de manera informal a partir de sus aplicaciones en El origen de las especies de Darwin y presentar sus conceptos fundamentales. Presentaré la red teórica de leyes especiales que surgen de la especialización de esta ley fundamental. Supondré el estructuralismo como marco metateórico. Señalaré también algunas consecuencias que mi propuesta tiene sobre ciertas discusiones (...)
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  26. What is ​‘natural’ in natural selection?Abhijeet Bardapurkar - 2013 - Resonance 18 (5):475 – 482.
    To understand Darwin’s concept of natural selection, we have to contrast it with his characterization of artificial selection, and then ask: what is natural in natural selection? While we do this, we develop two distinctions: one between ‘change by transformative action’ and ‘change by selection’, and another between ‘artificial selection’ and ‘natural selection’. The first distinction helps us understand evolution by selection and the second natural selection.
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  27. Thomistic Response to the Theory of Evolution: Aquinas on Natural Selection and the Perfection of the Universe.Mariusz Tabaczek - 2015 - Theology and Science 13 (3):325-344.
    Neither Aristotle nor Aquinas assumes the reality of the evolution of species. Their systems of thought, however, remain open to the new data, offering an essential contribution to the ongoing debate between scientific, philosophical, and theological aspects of the theory of evolution. After discussing some key issues of substance metaphysics in its encounter with the theory of evolution (hylomorphism, transformism of species, teleology, chance, the principle of proportionate causation), I present a Thomistic response to its major hypotheses. Concerning the philosophy (...)
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  28. Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection[REVIEW]Massimo Pigliucci - 2009 - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2009 (8).
    Ever since the publication of Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, a book for the lay reader that popularized the ideas of influential evolutionary biologists like William Hamilton and George Williams, there has been much discussion of so-called "universal Darwinism". Dawkins' dual aim was to reduce evolutionary phenomena to the level of the gene, while at the same time abstracting the Darwinian process of natural selection of "replicators" and making it into something that would apply beyond the domain of (...)
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  29. Adaptive speciation: The role of natural selection in mechanisms of geographic and non-geographic speciation.Jason M. Byron - 2005 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 36 (2):303-326.
    Recent discussion of mechanism has suggested new approaches to several issues in the philosophy of science, including theory structure, causal explanation, and reductionism. Here, I apply what I take to be the fruits of the 'new mechanical philosophy' to an analysis of a contemporary debate in evolutionary biology about the role of natural selection in speciation. Traditional accounts of that debate focus on the geographic context of genetic divergence--namely, whether divergence in the absence of geographic isolation is possible (...)
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  30. Social Darwinism, Eugenics, And Natural Selection.Mavaddat Javid - manuscript
    The eugenics movement was not the anomaly of just one country. In its day, it enamoured industrialized nations throughout the Western world. In the end, the eugenics movement ultimately did not recover from the stigma it sustained as a result of the Second World War. However, with the advancement of genetic engineering and the researches into embryonic stem cells, discussions about eugenics are becoming relevant once more, and it will be the responsibility of the informed (and not merely reactionary) to (...)
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  31. From Toys to Games: Overcoming the View of Natural Selection as a Filter.Víctor J. Luque - 2016 - Kairos 17 (1):1-24.
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  32. Cuteness as a Product of Natural Selection.John T. Sanders - manuscript
    This is a more detailed version of my "On 'Cuteness'", which appeared in the British Journal of Aesthetics in April 1992. For John Morreall, cuteness is an abstract general attribute of infants that causes adults to want to care for them (or which is the reason, or at least important reason, for such solicitousness). I shall try to show, in what follows, that this is, if not an altogether fallacious way of explaining the matter, at least an extremely misleading one. (...)
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  33. Aristotelian Natural Problems and Imperial Culture: Selective Readings.Michiel Meeusen - 2018 - Schole 12 (1):28-47.
    The Natural Problems, attributed to Aristotle, have gained much scholarly attention in the last decades, yet a systematic study of how the collection circulated in the Graeco-Roman Empire remains a blind spot in contemporary scholarship. Indeed, the Imperial Era is a seminal period for the history of the text, not just as a conduit between Aristotle and the Middle Ages – which in itself is essential for explaining the subsequent Arabic and Latin uptake of the Problems more clearly – (...)
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  34. (1 other version)The Generalized Selective Environment.Hugh Desmond - 2023 - In Agathe du Crest, Martina Valković, André Ariew, Hugh Desmond, Philippe Huneman & Thomas A. C. Reydon (eds.), Evolutionary Thinking Across Disciplines: Problems and Perspectives in Generalized Darwinism. Springer Verlag. pp. 2147483647-2147483647.
    As the principle of natural selection is generalized to explain (adaptive) patterns of human behavior, it becomes less clear what the selective environment empirically refers to. While the environment and individual are relatively separable in the non-human biological context, they are highly entangled in the context of moral, social, and institutional evolution. This chapter brings attention to the problem of generalizing the selective environment, and argues that it is ontologically disunified and definable only through its explanatory function. What (...)
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  35. De la selección natural al diseño: una propuesta de extensión del darwinismo formal.Giorgio Airoldi & Cristian Saborido - 2017 - Metatheoria – Revista de Filosofía E Historia de la Ciencia 8 (1):71--80.
    Darwin’s claim that Natural Selection, through optimization of fitness, explains complex biological design has not yet been properly formalized. Alan Grafen’s Formal Darwinism Project aims at providing such a formalization and at demonstrating that fitness maximization is coherent with results from Population Genetics, usually interpreted as denying it. We suggest that Grafen’s proposal suffers from some limitations linked to its concept of design as optimized fitness. In order to overcome these limitations, we propose a classification of evolutionary facts (...)
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  36. Selection in a Complex World: Deriving Causality from Stable Equilibrium.Hugh Desmond - 2018 - Erkenntnis 83 (2):265-286.
    It is an ongoing controversy whether natural selection is a cause of population change, or a mere statistical description of how individual births and deaths accumulate. In this paper I restate the problem in terms of the reference class problem, and propose how the structure of stable equilibrium can provide a solution in continuity with biological practice. Insofar natural selection can be understood as a tendency towards equilibrium, key statisticalist criticisms are avoided. Further, in a modification (...)
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  37. Function, selection, and construction in the brain.Justin Garson - 2012 - Synthese 189 (3):451-481.
    A common misunderstanding of the selected effects theory of function is that natural selection operating over an evolutionary time scale is the only functionbestowing process in the natural world. This construal of the selected effects theory conflicts with the existence and ubiquity of neurobiological functions that are evolutionary novel, such as structures underlying reading ability. This conflict has suggested to some that, while the selected effects theory may be relevant to some areas of evolutionary biology, its relevance (...)
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  38. There is no Asymmetry of Identity Assumptions in the Debate over Selection and Individuals.Casey Helgeson - 2015 - Philosophy of Science 82 (1):21-31.
    A long-running dispute concerns which adaptation-related explananda natural selection can be said to explain. At issue are explananda of the form: why a given individual organism has a given adaptation rather than that same individual having another trait. It is broadly agreed that one must be ready to back up a “no” answer with an appropriate theory of trans-world identity for individuals. I argue, against the conventional wisdom, that the same is true for a “yes” answer. My conclusion (...)
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  39. Preconception Gender Selection: A Threat to the Natural Sex Ratio?Edgar Dahl - 2005 - Reproductive Biomedicine Online 10 (1):116-118.
    This brief paper summarizes a series of postal investigations on the acceptance of selection for X or Y spermatozoa. These were conducted mainly in Germany but also in the UK, the Netherlands and the US. Selected families were approached with a series of questions about their wish to use sperm selection, and their choice of boys or girls. In general, large majorities opposed this approach for family balancing or sex selection on the basis of cost and inconvenience (...)
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  40. Can Cumulative Selection Explain Adaptation?Bence Nanay - 2005 - Philosophy of Science 72 (5):1099-1112.
    Two strong arguments have been given in favor of the claim that no selection process can play a role in explaining adaptations. According to the first argument, selection is a negative force; it may explain why the eliminated individuals are eliminated, but it does not explain why the ones that survived (or their offspring) have the traits they have. The second argument points out that the explanandum and the explanans are phenomena at different levels: selection is a (...)
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  41. ¿Son a priori los modelos explicativos de la selección natural?José Díez & Pablo Lorenzano - 2017 - Metatheoria – Revista de Filosofía E Historia de la Ciencia 8:31--42.
    The epistemic status of Natural Selection has intrigued to biologists and philosophers since the very beginning of the theory to our present times. One prominent contemporary example is Elliott Sober, who claims that Natural Selection, and some other theories in biology, and maybe in economics, are peculiar in including explanatory models/conditionals that are a priori in a sense in which explanatory models/conditionals in Classical Mechanics and most other standard theories are not. In this paper, by analyzing (...)
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  42. Making the most of clade selection.W. Ford Doolittle - 2017 - Philosophy of Science 84 (2):275-295.
    Clade selection is unpopular with philosophers who otherwise accept multilevel selection theory. Clades cannot reproduce, and reproduction is widely thought necessary for evolution by natural selection, especially of complex adaptations. Using microbial evolutionary processes as heuristics, I argue contrariwise, that (1) clade growth (proliferation of contained species) substitutes for clade reproduction in the evolution of complex adaptation, (2) clade-level properties favoring persistence – species richness, dispersal, divergence, and possibly intraclade cooperation – are not collapsible into species-level (...)
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  43. Sexual Selection, Aesthetic Choice, and Agency.Hugh Desmond - forthcoming - In Elisabeth Gayon, Philippe Huneman, Victor Petit & Michel Veuille (eds.), 150 Years of the Descent of Man. New York: Routledge.
    Darwin hypothesized that some animals, when selecting sexual partners, possess a genuine “sense of beauty” that cannot be accounted for by the logic of natural selection. This hypothesis has been notoriously controversial. In this chapter I propose that the concept of agency can be useful to operationalize the “sense of beauty”, and can help identify the conditions under which one can infer that animals are acting as (aesthetic) agents. Focusing on a case study of the behavior of the (...)
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  44. Do Students See the “Selection” in Organic Evolution? A Critical Review of the Causal Structure of Student Explanations.Abhijeet Bardapurkar - 2008 - Evolution: Education and Outreach 1 (3):299-305.
    This paper critically reviews and characterizes the student's causal-explanatory understanding; this is done as a step toward explicating the problematic of evolution education as it concerns the cognitive difficulties in understanding Darwin's theory of natural selection. The review concludes that the student's understanding is fundamentally different from Darwin's, for the student understands evolutionary change as necessary individual transformation caused by the transformative action of various physical and behavioral factors. This is in complete contrast to Darwin's (and even the (...)
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  45. Nonveridical biosemiotics and the Interface Theory of Perception: implications for perception-mediated selection.Brian Khumalo & Yogi Hale Hendlin - 2024 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 23 (4):1-19.
    Recently, the relationship between evolutionary ecology and perceptual science has received renewed attention under perception-mediated selection, a mode of natural selection linking perceptual saliency, rather than veridicality, to fitness. The Interface Theory of Perception (ITP) has been especially prominent in claiming that an organism’s perceptual interface is populated by icons, which arise as a function of evolved, species-specific perceptual interfaces that produce approximations of organisms’ environments through fitness-tuned perceptions. According to perception-mediated selection, perception and behavior calibrate (...)
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  46. Adapting to Environmental Heterogeneity: Selection and Radiation.Hugh Desmond - 2021 - Biological Theory 17 (1):80-93.
    Environmental heterogeneity is invoked as a key explanatory factor in the adaptive evolution of a surprisingly wide range of phenomena. This article aims to analyze this explanatory scheme of categorizing traits or properties as adaptations to environmental heterogeneity. First it is suggested that this scheme can be understood as a reaction to how heterogeneity adaptations were discounted or ignored in the modern synthesis. Then a positive account is proposed, distinguishing between two broad categories of adaptation to environmental heterogeneity: properties selected (...)
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  47. Pluralism in evolutionary controversies: styles and averaging strategies in hierarchical selection theories.Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther, Michael J. Wade & Christopher C. Dimond - 2013 - Biology and Philosophy 28 (6):957-979.
    Two controversies exist regarding the appropriate characterization of hierarchical and adaptive evolution in natural populations. In biology, there is the Wright-Fisher controversy over the relative roles of random genetic drift, natural selection, population structure, and interdemic selection in adaptive evolution begun by Sewall Wright and Ronald Aylmer Fisher. There is also the Units of Selection debate, spanning both the biological and the philosophical literature and including the impassioned group-selection debate. Why do these two discourses (...)
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  48. Are biological traits explained by their 'selected effect' functions?Joshua R. Christie, Carl Brusse, Pierrick Bourrat, Peter Takacs & Paul Edmund Griffiths - forthcoming - Australasian Philosophical Review.
    The selected effects or ‘etiological’ theory of Proper function is a naturalistic and realist account of biological teleology. It is used to analyse normativity in philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, philosophy of medicine and elsewhere. The theory has been developed with a simple and intuitive view of natural selection. Traits are selected because of their positive effects on the fitness of the organisms that have them. These ‘selected effects’ are the Proper functions of the traits. Proponents argue (...)
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  49. Proper function and recent selection.Peter H. Schwartz - 1999 - Philosophy of Science 66 (3):210-222.
    "Modern History" versions of the etiological theory claim that in order for a trait X to have the proper function F, individuals with X must have been recently favored by natural selection for doing F (Godfrey-Smith 1994; Griffiths 1992, 1993). For many traits with prototypical proper functions, however, such recent selection may not have occurred: traits may have been maintained due to lack of variation or due to selection for other effects. I examine this flaw in (...)
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  50. (1 other version)Dos usos de los modelos de optimalidad en las explicaciones por selección natural.Santiago Ginnobili & Ariel Roffé - 2017 - Metatheoria 8 (1):43-55.
    Resumen -/- El objetivo de este trabajo consiste en analizar las relaciones entre los modelos de optimalidad y la selección natural. Defenderemos que esas relaciones pueden dividirse en dos tipos, en tanto hay dos tipos de explicaciones seleccionistas, que llamaremos “históricas” y “ahistóricas”. Las explicaciones históricas revelan como una población dada adquiere un rasgo que es adaptativo en ese ambiente e involucran muchas generaciones, variación, etc. Las explicaciones ahistóricas, explican por qué, en determinado momento, ciertos tipos de organismos tienen (...)
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