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Modeling Environments: Interactive Causation and Adaptations to Environmental Conditions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Bruce Glymour
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Abstract

I argue that a phenotypic trait can be an adaptation to a particular environmental condition, as against others, only if the environmental condition and the phenotype interactively cause fitness. Models of interactive environmental causes of fitness generally require that environments be individuated by explicit representation rather than by measures of environmental quality, although the latter understanding of ‘environment’ is more prominent in the philosophy of biology. Hence, talk of adaptations to some but not other environmental conditions relies on conceptions of ‘environment’ importantly different from that commonly presupposed in philosophy of biology.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 78 , Issue 3 , July 2011 , pp. 448 - 471
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

My thanks to Gillian Barker, Robert Brandon, and two anonymous referees; their comments have much improved this article.

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