Hostname: page-component-5cf477f64f-tgq86 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-08T02:41:08.241Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Tempered Realism about the Force of Selection

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

C. Kenneth Waters
C. Kenneth Waters*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy University of Minnesota
*
‡Send reprint requests to the author, Department of Philosophy, 355 Ford Hall, 224 Church St. SE, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Darwinians are realists about the force of selection, but there has been surprisingly little discussion about what form this realism should take. Arguments about the units of selection in general and genic selectionism in particular reveal two realist assumptions: (1) for any selection process, there is a uniquely correct identification of the operative selective forces and the level at which each impinges; and (2) selective forces must satisfy the Pareto-style requirement of probabilistic causation. I argue that both assumptions are false; we must temper realism about the force of selection and revise the way we think about probabilistic causation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 58 , Issue 4 , December 1991 , pp. 553 - 573
Copyright
Copyright © 1991 The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

I owe special thanks to Craig Nelson and Ron Giere who discussed drafts of the dissertation chapter on which this is based and to Philip Kitcher, Alex Rosenberg and Elliott Sober for comments on the finished chapter and on the distilled version that I delivered to the APA. Michael Bradie, Jim Griesemer, David Queller, Harold Kincaid, Richard Lewontin and an anonymous referee provided valuable comments on later versions. I am also grateful to audiences around the country and especially to Robert Audi and Philip Hugly for encouraging me to clarify the implications of my ideas on genic selection. I would like to thank my colleague Dick Grandy for special help.

References

Brandon, R. N. and Burian, R. M. (eds.) (1984), Genes, Organisms, Populations: Controversies over the Units of Selection. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Cartwright, N. (1979), “Causal Laws and Effective Strategies”, Nous 13: 419–437.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dawkins, R. (1976), The Selfish Gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dawkins, R. (1982), The Extended Phenotype: The Gene as the Unit of Selection. Oxford: Freeman.Google Scholar
Eells, E. and Sober, E. (1983), “Probabilistic Causality and the Question of Transitivity”, Philosophy of Science 50: 35–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Good, I. J. (1961 and 1962), “A Causal Calculus 1 and 2”, British Journal for Philosophy of Science 11: 305–318, 12: 43–51, 13: 88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gould, S. (1980), “Caring Groups and Selfish Genes”, in The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History. New York: Norton, pp. 85–92.Google Scholar
Hedrick, P. W.; Ginevan, M. E.; and Ewing, E. P. (1976), “Genetic Polymorphism in Heterogeneous Environments”, Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 7: 1–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levene, H. (1953). “Genetic Equilibrium When More than One Ecological Niche is Available”, American Naturalist 87: 331–333.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewontin, R. and Dunn, L. (1960), “The Evolutionary Dynamics of a Polymorphism in the House Mouse”, Genetics 45: 705–722.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lloyd, E. A. (1989), “A Structural Approach to Defining Units of Selection”, Philosophy of Science 56: 395–418.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maynard Smith, J. (1987), “How to Model Evolution”, in J. Dupré (ed.), The Latest on the Best: Essays on Evolution and Optimality. Cambridge: Bradford MIT Press, pp. 119–131.Google Scholar
Mayr, E. (1963), Animal Species and Evolution. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Otte, R. (1981), “A Critique of Suppes' Theory of Probabilistic Causality”, Synthese 48: 167–189.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosen, D. (1978), “In Defense of a Probabilistic Theory of Causality”, Philosophy of Science 45: 604–613.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosenberg, A. (1983), “Discussion: Coefficients, Effects, and Genic Selection”, Philosophy of Science 50: 332–338.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Salmon, W. (1980), “Probabilistic Causality”, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 61: 50–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skyrms, B. (1980), Causal Necessity: A Pragmatic Investigation of the Necessity of Laws. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Sober, E. (1981), “Evolutionary Theory and the Ontological Status of Properties”, Philosophical Studies 40: 147–176.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sober, E. (1982), “Frequency-dependent Causation”, Journal of Philosophy 79: 247–253.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sober, E. (1984), The Nature of Selection: Evolutionary Theory in Philosophical Focus. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Sober, E. and Lewontin, R. (1982), “Artifact, Cause and Genic Selection”, Philosophy of Science 49: 157–180.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sober, E. and Lewontin, R. (1983), “Discussion: Reply to Rosenberg on Genic Selectionism”, Philosophy of Science 50: 648–650.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sterelny, K. and Kitcher, P. (1988), “The Return of the Gene”, Journal of Philosophy 85: 339–361.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Suppes, P. (1970), A Probabilistic Theory of Causality. Amsterdam: North-Holland.Google Scholar
Waters, C. K. (1985a), “Environments, Pragmatics, and Genic Selectionism”, presented at the 1985 Meeting of the Eastern Division of the APA. Abstract in Proceedings and Addresses of APA 59: 351.Google Scholar
Waters, C. K. (1985b), Models of Natural Selection: From Darwin to Dawkins. Ph.D. Dissertation, Indiana University.Google Scholar
Williams, G. C. (1966), Adaptation and Natural Selection: A Critique of Some Current Evolutionary Thought. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Williams, G. C. (1986), “Comments on Sober's The Nature of Selection”, Biology and Philosophy 1: 114–122.Google Scholar
Wimsatt, W. (1980), “Reductionistic Research Strategies and Their Biases in the Units of Selection Controversy”, in T. Nickles (ed.), Scientific Discovery, vol. 2. Dordrecht: Reidel, pp. 213–259.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wimsatt, W. (1981), “The Units of Selection and the Structure of the Multi-level Genome”, PSA 1980, vol. 2. East Lansing: Philosophy of Science Association, pp. 122–183.Google Scholar