Population Pluralism and Natural Selection
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8396294 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jacob Stegenga (0000-0002-7016-3708, University of Utah, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2016 |
| Volume | 67 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 1-29 |
| Publication date | 2016-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0007-0882 • E-ISSN: 1464-3537 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/bjps/axu003 |
| OpenAlex | W2088509286 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 15 |
| References cited | 46 |
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 argue that the fine-grained causal relations that could constitute membership in a biological population are huge in number and many are manifested by degree, and thus we can construe population membership as being defined by massively multidimensional constructs, the differences between which are largely arbitrary. I end by showing that positions in two recent debates in theoretical biology depend on a view of biological populations at odds with the pluralism defended here. 1 Introduction2 Biological Population, Broad and Narrow3 Difficulties with Narrow Biological Population Conditions 3.1 Against the genealogical condition 3.2 Against the conspecificity condition 3.3 Against the proximity condition 3.4 Against the typology condition4 Causal Connectivity5 Massively Multidimensional Population Constructs6 Population Uniqueness and Natural Selection 6.1 Statisticalism and its discontents 6.2 Price at what price?7 Conclusion
Economics · Epistemology · Interpretation (philosophy) · Logistic regression · Natural selection · Odds · Pluralism (philosophy) · Population · Positive economics · Selection (genetic algorithm) · Sociology · Statistics · Typology · Uniqueness · Computer Science · Demography · Evolution and Genetic Dynamics · Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation · Mathematics · Philosophy · Philosophy and History of Science · Psychology · Social Psychology
Effectiveness of medical interventions
Thinking about populations and races in time
Uma Proposta Em Dois Passos Para Reabilitar O Realismo Experimental
A Chemostat Model for Evolution by Persistence
Experimental Explication
Facts, Conventions, and the Levels of Selection
Mereological Perspectivism in Philosophy of Biology
Radical pluralism, classificatory norms and the legitimacy of species classifications
Two logics of experiment in biology & medicine
Two kinds of drift
Defining Paradigm Darwinian Populations
A Tale of Two Individuality Accounts and Integrative Pluralism
Do Humans Have Continental Populations
Bivalent Selection and Graded Darwinian Individuality
Philosophical analyses of scientific concepts
Hunting Causes and Using Them
How the Laws of Physics Lie
Evolution and the Levels of Selection
The Selfish Gene
Causality
Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection
Individuality and Selection
Adaptation
The Units of Selection
The Dappled World
The Polygenomic Organism
The Structure and Confirmation of Evolutionary Theory
The Nature of Selection
Genes in Conflict
Species Pluralism and Anti-Realism
The Empirical Inadequacy of Species Cohesion by Gene Flow
Not a Sure Thing
Species
The Trials of Life
Deep Conventionalism about Evolutionary Groups
Manipulation and the Causes of Evolution
Why the Causal View of Fitness Survives
Selection, Drift, and the “Forces” of Evolution
Artifact, Cause and Genic Selection
Selection and Causation
Making Populations
The Use of Race in Medicine as a Proxy for Genetic Differences
The Pomp of Superfluous Causes
On Representing the Relationship between the Mathematical and the Empirical
Realism, Conventionalism, and Causal Decomposition in Units of Selection
Searching for Darwinism in Generalized Darwinism
Natural Selection as a Population-Level Causal Process
The Natures of Selection
Arbitrariness and Causation in Classical Population Genetics
| Unique citing works | 15 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,36 |
| Citation span | 2015 - 2026 (12) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 10 |