Elliott Sober
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 368398 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Elliott Sober |
| NOMBRES | Elliott |
| APELLIDO | Sober |
| FIRMA | SOBER E |
| AFILIACIONES | University of Wisconsin–Madison |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3130-1263 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 94 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 584 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 94 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1976 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 12 |
Inference to the Best Explanation, Bayesianism, and the Screening-Off Challenge
In their 2013 paper, William Roche and Elliott Sober used Bayesian confirmation theory and the probabilistic concept of screening-off to pose problems for the epistemological theory of Inference to the Best Explanation. Several philosophers replied to those criticisms and Roche and Sober refined and extended their critique in subsequent papers. This article assesses where the debate now stands
The Philosophy of Evolutionary Theory
Natural selection, mutation, and adaptation are well-known and central topics in Darwin's theory of evolution and in the 20th - and 21st -century theories which grew out of it, but many other important topics are used in evolutionary biology that raise interesting philosophical questions. In this book, Elliott Sober analyses a much larger range of topics, including fitness, altruism, common ancestry, chance, taxonomy, phylogenetic inference, oper…
Interpolating Decisions
Decision theory requires agents to assign probabilities to states of the world and utilities to the possible outcomes of different actions. When agents commit to having the probabilities and/or utilities in a decision problem defined by objective features of the world, they may find themselves unable to decide which actions maximize expected utility. Decision theory has long recognized that work-around strategies are available in special cases; t…
Purely Probabilistic Measures of Explanatory Power
All extant purely probabilistic measures of explanatory power satisfy the following technical condition: if Pr(E | H1) > Pr(E | H2) and Pr(E | ∼H1)
Philosophy in Science
The task of Philosophy in Science ( PinS ) is to use philosophical tools to help solve scientific problems. This article describes how I stumbled into this line of work and then addressed several topics in philosophy of biology—units of selection, cladistic parsimony, robustness and trade-offs in model building, adaptationism, and evidence for common ancestry—often in collaboration with scientists. I conclude by offering advice for would-be PinS …
Hypotheses that attribute false beliefs
Why expect organisms that have beliefs to have false beliefs? And if an organism occasionally occupies a neural state that encodes a perceptual belief, how do you evaluate hypotheses about the state's semantic content, where some of those hypotheses attribute beliefs that are sometimes false while others attribute beliefs that are always true? To address the first of these questions, we discuss evolution by natural selection. To address the secon…
Disjunction and distality
Histories, dynamical laws, and initial conditions −Invariance under time-reversibility and its failure in Markov processes, with application to the second law of thermodynamics and the past hypothesis
The Requirement of Total Evidence
The requirement of total evidence is a mainstay of Bayesian epistemology. Peter Fisher Epstein argues that the requirement generates mistaken conclusions about several examples that he devises. Here we examine the example of Epstein’s that we find most interesting and argue that Epstein’s analysis of it is flawed
Core Questions in Philosophy
Writing in an engaging lecture-style format, Elliott Sober shows students how philosophy is best used to evaluate many different kinds of arguments and to construct sound theories. Well-known historical texts are discussed, not as a means to honor the dead or merely to discuss what various philosophers have thought, but to engage with, criticize, and even improve ideas from the past. In addition—because philosophy cannot function apart from its e…
What is relative plausibility
Allen and Pardo’s explanation of Relative Plausibility as a theory of evidence and proof in litigation is ambiguous and underspecified. Their account suggests at least three different interpretations of what they mean. They might be advocating “anti-halfism,” which tracks the “conventional account” but merely rejects >0.5 as the proper standard of proof. Or they might be advocating “probabilistic holism,” in which trial decision-makers apply prob…
The Design Argument
This Element analyzes the various forms that design arguments for the existence of God can take, but the main focus is on two such arguments. The first concerns the complex adaptive features that organisms have. Creationists who advance this argument contend that evolution by natural selection cannot be the right explanation. The second design argument - the argument from fine-tuning - begins with the fact that life could not exist in our univers…
The Design Argument
Explanation = Unification? A New Criticism of Friedman’s Theory and a Reply to an Old One
According to Michael Friedman’s theory of explanation, a law X explains laws Y 1 , Y 2 , ..., Y n precisely when X unifies the Y ’s, where unification is understood in terms of reducing the number of independently acceptable laws. Philip Kitcher criticized Friedman’s theory but did not analyze the concept of independent acceptability. Here we show that Kitcher’s objection can be met by modifying an element in Friedman’s account. In addition, we a…
Similarities as Evidence for Common Ancestry
Darwin claims in the Origin that similarity is evidence for common ancestry, but that adaptive similarities are ‘almost valueless’ as evidence. This second claim seems reasonable for some adaptive similarities but not for others. Here we clarify and evaluate these and related matters by using the law of likelihood as an analytic tool and by considering mathematical models of three evolutionary processes: directional selection, stabilizing selecti…
Ockham's Razors
Ockham's razor, the principle of parsimony, states that simpler theories are better than theories that are more complex. It has a history dating back to Aristotle and it plays an important role in current physics, biology, and psychology. The razor also gets used outside of science - in everyday life and in philosophy. This book evaluates the principle and discusses its many applications. Fascinating examples from different domains provide a rich…
Time and Knowability in Evolutionary Processes
Historical sciences like evolutionary biology reconstruct past events by using the traces that the past has bequeathed to the present. Markov chain theory entails that the passage of time reduces the amount of information that the present provides about the past. Here we use a Moran process framework to show that some evolutionary processes destroy information faster than others. Our results connect with Darwin’s principle that adaptive similarit…
Trait fitness is not a propensity, but fitness variation is
Screening-Off and Causal Incompleteness
We begin by considering two principles, each having the form causal completeness ergo screening-off. The first concerns a common cause of two or more effects; the second describes an intermediate link in a causal chain. They are logically independent of each other, each is independent of Reichenbach's principle of the common cause, and each is a consequence of the causal Markov condition. Simple examples show that causal incompleteness means that…
Introduction to the Synthese special issue on Hans Reichenbach, Istanbul, and Experience and Prediction
Reichenbach’s cubical universe and the problem of the external world
Responses to Fitelson, Sansom, and Sarkar
Précis of Evidence and Evolution
Natural Selection, Causality, and Laws
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 correlate…
Realism, Conventionalism, and Causal Decomposition in Units of Selection
I discuss two subjects in Samir Okasha’s excellent book, Evolution and the Levels of Selection. In consonance with Okasha’s critique of the conventionalist view of the units of selection problem, I argue that conventionalists have not attended to what realists mean by group, individual, and genic selection. In connection with Okasha’s discussion of the Price equation and contextual analysis, I discuss whether the existence of these two quantitati…
How to Tell When Simpler, More Unified, or Less Ad Hoc Theories will Provide More Accurate Predictions
Traditional analyses of the curve fitting problem maintain that the data do not indicate what form the fitted curve should take. Rather, this issue is said to be settled by prior probabilities, by simplicity, or by a background theory. In this paper, we describe a result due to Akaike [1973], which shows how the data can underwrite an inference concerning the curve's form based on an estimate of how predictively accurate it will be. We argue that…
Evolution, Population Thinking, and Essentialism
Ernst Mayr has argued that Darwinian theory discredited essentialist modes of thought and replaced them with what he has called “population thinking”. In this paper, I characterize essentialism as embodying a certain conception of how variation in nature is to be explained, and show how this conception was undermined by evolutionary theory. The Darwinian doctrine of evolutionary gradualism makes it impossible to say exactly where one species ends…
Prediction Versus Accommodation and the Risk of Overfitting
When a scientist uses an observation to formulate a theory, it is no surprise that the resulting theory accurately captures that observation. However, when the theory makes a novel prediction—when it predicts an observation that was not used in its formulation—this seems to provide more substantial confirmation of the theory. This paper presents a new approach to the vexed problem of understanding the epistemic difference between prediction and a…
The Multiple Realizability Argument Against Reductionism
Reductionism is often understood to include two theses: (1) every singular occurrence that the special sciences can explain also can be explained by physics; (2) every law in a higher-level science can be explained by physics. These claims are widely supposed to have been refuted by the multiple realizability argument, formulated by Putnam (1967, 1975) and Fodor (1968, 1975). The present paper criticizes the argument and identifies a reductionist…
Unto others
Mathematics and Indispensability
Mathematics plays an indispensable role in the explanations that modern science provides of empirical phenomena. From this unexceptionable observation, a controversial philosophical conclusion is sometimes drawn. The claim is advanced that the empirical success of a scientific theory confirms the mathematical claims embedded within it. According to this line of thinking, we have reason to believe that mathematical statements are true, and that th…
Venetian Sea Levels, British Bread Prices, and the Principle of the Common Cause
When two causally independent processes each have a quantity that increases monotonically (either deterministically or in probabilistic expectation), the two quantities will be correlated, thus providing a counterexample to Reichenbach's principle of the common cause. Several philosophers have denied this, but I argue that their efforts to save the principle are unsuccessful. Still, one salvage attempt does suggest a weaker principle that avoids …
Probabilistic Causality and the Question of Transitivity
After clarifying the probabilistic conception of causality suggested by Good (1961–2), Suppes (1970), Cartwright (1979), and Skyrms (1980), we prove a sufficient condition for transitivity of causal chains. The bearing of these considerations on the units of selection problem in evolutionary theory and on the Newcomb paradox in decision theory is then discussed
Artifact, Cause and Genic Selection
Several evolutionary biologists have used a parsimony argument to argue that the single gene is the unit of selection. Since all evolution by natural selection can be represented in terms of selection coefficients attaching to single genes, it is, they say, “more parsimonious” to think that all selection is selection for or against single genes. We examine the limitations of this genic point of view, and then relate our criticisms to a broader vi…
Natural Selection and Distributive Explanation
The thesis that natural selection explains the frequencies of traits in populations, but not why individual organisms have the traits tehy do, is here defended and elaborated. A general concept of ‘distributive explanation’ is discussed
Two Outbreaks of Lawlessness in Recent Philosophy of Biology
John Beatty (1995) and Alexander Rosenberg (1994) have argued against the claim that there are laws in biology. Beatty's main reason is that evolution is a process full of contingency, but he also takes the existence of relative significance controversies in biology and the popularity of pluralistic approaches to a variety of evolutionary questions to be evidence for biology's lawlessness. Rosenberg's main argument appeals to the idea that biolog…
Independent Evidence About a Common Cause
To infer the state of a cause from the states of its effects, independent lines of evidence are preferable to dependent ones. This familiar idea is here investigated, the goal being to identify its presuppositions. Connections are drawn with Reichenbach's (1956) and Salmon's (1984) discussions of the principle of the common cause
Instrumentalism, Parsimony, and the Akaike Framework
Akaike's framework for thinking about model selection in terms of the goal of predictive accuracy and his criterion for model selection have important philosophical implications. Scientists often test models whose truth values they already know, and they often decline to reject models that they know full well are false. Instrumentalism helps explain this pervasive feature of scientific practice, and Akaike's framework helps provide instrumentalis…
Common Cause Explanation
Russell (1948), Reichenbach (1956), and Salmon (1975, 1979) have argued that a fundamental principle of science and common sense is that “matching” events should not be chalked up to coincidence, but should be explained by postulating a common cause. Reichenbach and Salmon provided this intuitive idea with a probabilistic formulation, which Salmon used to argue for a version of scientific realism. Van Fraassen (1980, 1982) showed that the princip…
Psychologism
The Principle of Parsimony
The evolution of rationality
Mental representations
Trait fitness is not a propensity, but fitness variation is
Realism, Conventionalism, and Causal Decomposition in Units of Selection
I discuss two subjects in Samir Okasha’s excellent book, Evolution and the Levels of Selection. In consonance with Okasha’s critique of the conventionalist view of the units of selection problem, I argue that conventionalists have not attended to what realists mean by group, individual, and genic selection. In connection with Okasha’s discussion of the Price equation and contextual analysis, I discuss whether the existence of these two quantitati…
Reconstructing the Past
Panglossian functionalism and the philosophy of mind
Time and Knowability in Evolutionary Processes
Historical sciences like evolutionary biology reconstruct past events by using the traces that the past has bequeathed to the present. Markov chain theory entails that the passage of time reduces the amount of information that the present provides about the past. Here we use a Moran process framework to show that some evolutionary processes destroy information faster than others. Our results connect with Darwin’s principle that adaptive similarit…
An Empirical Critique of Two Versions of the Doomsday Argument – Gott's Line and Leslie's Wedge
Common Ancestry and Natural Selection
We explore the evidential relationships that connect two standard claims of modern evolutionary biology. The hypothesis of common ancestry (which says that all organisms now on earth trace back to a single progenitor) and the hypothesis of natural selection (which says that natural selection has been an important influence on the traits exhibited by organisms) are logically independent; however, this leaves open whether testing one requires assum…
Mental representations
Simplicity
Journal Article Book Reviews Get access Simplicity. By Elliott Sober. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975. Pp. 189. Price £6.50) Susan Haack Susan Haack Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 26, Issue 105, October 1976, Pages 373–374, https://doi.org/10.2307/2218873 Published: 01 October 1976
Simplicity
Computability and cognition
Psychologism
Evolution, Population Thinking, and Essentialism
Ernst Mayr has argued that Darwinian theory discredited essentialist modes of thought and replaced them with what he has called “population thinking”. In this paper, I characterize essentialism as embodying a certain conception of how variation in nature is to be explained, and show how this conception was undermined by evolutionary theory. The Darwinian doctrine of evolutionary gradualism makes it impossible to say exactly where one species ends…
The evolution of rationality
The Principle of Parsimony
Artifact, Cause and Genic Selection
Several evolutionary biologists have used a parsimony argument to argue that the single gene is the unit of selection. Since all evolution by natural selection can be represented in terms of selection coefficients attaching to single genes, it is, they say, “more parsimonious” to think that all selection is selection for or against single genes. We examine the limitations of this genic point of view, and then relate our criticisms to a broader vi…
Dispositions and Subjunctive Conditionals, or, Dormative Virtues are no Laughing Matter
Reflexion sur la notion d'habitus ou de propriete habituelle a partir de la distinction de deux theses: l'equivalence, selon laquelle l'assignation d'une propriete habituelle equivaut a determiner les conditions de son exercice| la reductibilite, selon laquelle l'assignation d'une telle propriete suppose la mise en evidence de son fondement physique. L'A. discute dans cette perspective les vues de Tinbergen sur la sociabilite, celles de Gall sur …
Equilibrium explanation
Probabilistic Causality and the Question of Transitivity
After clarifying the probabilistic conception of causality suggested by Good (1961–2), Suppes (1970), Cartwright (1979), and Skyrms (1980), we prove a sufficient condition for transitivity of causal chains. The bearing of these considerations on the units of selection problem in evolutionary theory and on the Newcomb paradox in decision theory is then discussed
Reply to Rosenberg on Genic Selectionism
Rosenberg (1983), in his comments on our article (Sober and Lewontin 1982) concerning the units of selection controversy, has matters precisely backwards. He chides us for conflating a causal theory with a mathematical model, whereas this is precisely the error we argued is at the core of the position defended by Williams (1966) and Dawkins (1976). Their idea—genic selectionism—confuses the computational adequacy of a mathematical model with a su…
Sets, Species, and Evolution
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Common Cause Explanation
Russell (1948), Reichenbach (1956), and Salmon (1975, 1979) have argued that a fundamental principle of science and common sense is that “matching” events should not be chalked up to coincidence, but should be explained by postulating a common cause. Reichenbach and Salmon provided this intuitive idea with a probabilistic formulation, which Salmon used to argue for a version of scientific realism. Van Fraassen (1980, 1982) showed that the princip…
Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology
This collection of readings is designed for classroom use in the growing field of evolutionary biology. It assembles articles by outstanding philosophers and biologists who seek to clarify and connect some of the major concepts of evolutionary theory. Sections cover: Guiding Ideas in Evolutionary Biology; Fitness; Units of Selection; Adaptation; Function and Teleology; The Reduction of Mendelian Genetics to Molecular Biology; and The Nature of Sp…
Panglossian functionalism and the philosophy of mind
Constructive Empiricism and the Problem of Aboutness
Van Fraassen's (1980) constructive empiricism asserts that it is not for science to reach a verdict on whether a theory is true or false, if the theory is about unobservable entities; science's only interest here, says Van Fraassen, is to discover whether the theory is ‘empirically adequate’. However, if a theory is soley about observables, empirical adequacy and truth are said to ‘coincide’, here discovering the theory's truth value is an approp…
Common Causes and Decision Theory
One of us (Eells 1982) has defended traditional evidential decision theory against prima facie Newcomb counterexamples by assuming that a common cause forms a conjunctive fork with its joint effects. In this paper, the evidential theory is defended without this assumption. The suggested rationale shows that the theory's assumptions are not about the nature of causality, but about the nature of rational deliberation. These presuppositions are weak…
Parsimony, Likelihood, and the Principle of the Common Cause
The likelihood justification of cladistic parsimony suggested in Sober (1984) is here shown to be incomplete. Even so, cladistic parsimony remains a counterexample to the principle of the common cause formulated by Reichenbach (1956) and Salmon (1975, 1979, 1984)
Marxism and Methodological Individualism
It is often held that Marxism embodies distinctive methodological doctrines which distinguish it from ‘bourgeois’ social science. The difference has been characterized in various ways: Marxism is scientific and materialist, bourgeois theory ideological and idealist; Marxism is holistic, bourgeois theory is individualistic; Marxism is dialectical and historical, bourgeois
Explanation and Causation
Likelihood and Convergence
A common view among statisticians is that convergence (which statisticians call consistency) is a necessary property of an inference rule or estimator. In this paper, this view is challenged by appeal to an example in which a rule of inference has a likelihood rationale but is not convergent. The example helps clarify the significance of the likelihood concept in statistical inference
Confirmation and Law-Likeness
That a given piece of copper conducts electricity increases the credibility of statements asserting that other pieces of copper conduct electricity, and thus confirms the hypothesis that all copper conducts electricity. But the fact that a given man now in this room is a third son does not increase the credibility of statements asserting that other men now in this room are third sons, and so does not confirm the hypothesis that all men now in thi…
Independent Evidence About a Common Cause
To infer the state of a cause from the states of its effects, independent lines of evidence are preferable to dependent ones. This familiar idea is here investigated, the goal being to identify its presuppositions. Connections are drawn with Reichenbach's (1956) and Salmon's (1984) discussions of the principle of the common cause
Philosophy (76 obras) · Epistemology (73 obras) · Computer Science (48 obras) · Philosophy and History of Science (47 obras) · Mathematics (27 obras) · Artificial Intelligence (22 obras) · Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation (22 obras) · Philosophy of science (22 obras) · Mathematical economics (18 obras) · Artificial Intelligence (17 obras)