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Heritability and Indirect Causation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Neven Sesardic
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Abstract

Genetic differences can lead to phenotypic differences either directly or indirectly (via causing differences in external environments, which then affect phenotype). This possibility of genetic effects being mediated by environmental influences is often used by scientists and philosophers to argue that heritability is not a very helpful causal or explanatory notion. In this paper it is shown that these criticisms are based on serious misconceptions about methods of behavior genetics.

Type
Genes, Development, and Evolution
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 70 , Issue 5: Proceedings of the 2002 Biennial Meeting of The Philosophy of Science Association. Part I: Contributed Papers , December 2003 , pp. 1002 - 1014
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

The work on this paper was supported by a grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project No. LU3005/01H).

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