Elliott Sober

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 accommodation. In fact, there are several problems that need to be disentangled; in all of them, the key is the concept of overfitting. We float the hypothesis that accommodation is a defective methodology only when the methods used to accommodate the data fail to guard against the risk of overfitting. We connect our analysis with the proposals that other philosophers have made. We also discuss its bearing on the conflict between instrumentalism and scientific realism. Introduction Predictivisms—a taxonomy Observations Formulating the problem What might Annie be doing wrong? Solutions Observations explained Mayo on severe tests The miracle argument and scientific realism Concluding comments.

Human beings are peculiar. In laboratory experiments, they often cooperate in one-shot prisoners’ dilemmas, they frequently offer 1/2 and reject low offers in the ultimatum game, and they often bid 1/2 in the game of divide-the-cake All these behaviors are puzzling from the point of view of game theory. The first two are irrational, if utility is measured in a certain way.1 The last isn’t positively irrational, but it is no more rational than other possible actions, since there are infinitely many other Nash equilibria besides the one in which both players bid 1/2. At the same time, these behaviors seem to indicate that people are sometimes inclined to be cooperative, fair, and just. In his stimulating new book, Brian Skyrms sets himself the task of showing why these inclinations evolved, or how they might have evolved, under the pressure of natural selection. The goal is not to justify our ethical intuitions, but to explain why we have them.2..

As every philosopher knows, “the design argument” concludes that God exists from premisses that cite the adaptive complexity of organisms or the lawfulness and orderliness of the whole universe. Since 1859, it has formed the intellectual heart of creationist opposition to the Darwinian hypothesis that organisms evolved their adaptive features by the mindless process of natural selection. Although the design argument developed as a defense of theism, the logic of the argument in fact encompasses a larger set of issues. William Paley saw clearly that we sometimes have an excellent reason to postulate the existence of an intelligent designer. If we find a watch on the heath, we reasonably infer that it was produced by an intelligent watchmaker. This design argument makes perfect sense. Why is it any different to claim that the eye was produced by an intelligent designer? Both critics and defenders of the design argument need to understand what the ground rules are for inferring that an intelligent designer is the unseen cause of an observed effect.

Aristotle’s principle that “nature does nothing in vain” (NDNIV) is central to his teleological approach to understanding organisms. First, we argue that James G. Lennox’s influential account of NDNIV is unsuccessful. Second, we propose an alternative account that includes a natural state model. According to a natural state model of development, an organism will develop toward its natural state unless interfering forces prevent that from happening. Third, we argue that this account also fits Aristotle’s discussion in the Generation of Animals and can explain monstrosities in nature that at first sight seem to be counterexamples to NDNIV. Fourth, we take a broader look at NDNIV, arguing that it does not entail that all structures are teleological (since it accommodates the thought that by-products and some neglected items that Aristotle calls “tokens” are nonteleological), that it does not entail that there is only one function per organ, that NDNIV is not an anthropocentric principle, and that, perhaps surprisingly, the teleological structures of an organism can benefit others apart from the organism and its progeny. Finally, we argue that Aristotle endorsed an empirical justification of NDNIV wherein the principle is justified by its many successful applications.

ABSTRACT 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 selection, and drift. Our results apply both to Darwin’s theory of evolution and to modern evolutionary biology. _1_ Introduction _2_ The Likelihood Framework _3_ A Sufficient Condition for a Similarity to Favour Common Ancestry over Separate Ancestry _4_ The 1/p Criterion and Its Limitations _5_ Directional Selection versus Drift _6_ Stabilizing Selection versus Drift _7_ Going beyond Two Taxa _8_ Conclusions Appendix

According to Michael Friedman’s theory of explanation, a law X explains laws Y1, Y2, …, Yn 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 argue that there are serious objections to the use that Friedman makes of the concept of independent acceptability.

We argued that explanatoriness is evidentially irrelevant in the following sense: Let H be a hypothesis, O an observation, and E the proposition that H would explain O if H and O were true. Then our claim is that Pr = Pr. We defended this screening-off thesis by discussing an example concerning smoking and cancer. Climenhaga argues that SOT is mistaken because it delivers the wrong verdict about a slightly different smoking-and-cancer case. He also considers a variant of SOT, called “SOT*”, and contends that it too gives the wrong result. We here reply to Climenhaga’s arguments and suggest that SOT provides a criticism of the widely held theory of inference called “inference to the best explanation”.

The hypothesis of group selection fell victim to a seemingly devastating critique in 1960s evolutionary biology. In Unto Others, we argue to the contrary, that group selection is a conceptually coherent and empirically well documented cause of evolution. We suggest, in addition, that it has been especially important in human evolution. In the second part of Unto Others, we consider the issue of psychological egoism and altruism -- do human beings have ultimate motives concerning the well-being of others? We argue that previous psychological and philosophical work on this question has been inconclusive. We propose an evolutionary argument for the claim that human beings have altruistic ultimate motives.

We address the following issues raised by the commentators of our target article and book: the problem of multiple perspectives; how to define group selection; distinguishing between the concepts of altruism and organism; genetic versus cultural group selection; the dark side of group selection; the relationship between psychological and evolutionary altruism; the question of whether the psychological questions can be answered; psychological experiments. We thank the contributors for their commentaries, which provide a diverse agenda for future study of evolution and morality. Our response will follow the organization of our book, distinguishing between evolutionary issues that concern fitness effects and psychological issues that concern motives.

That some propositions are testable, while others are not, was a fundamental idea in the philosophical program known as logical empiricism. That program is now widely thought to be defunct. Quine’s (1953) “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” and Hempel’s (1950) “Problems and Changes in the Empiricist Criterion of Meaning” are among its most notable epitaphs. Yet, as we know from Mark Twain’s comment on an obituary that he once had the pleasure of reading about himself, the report of a death can be an exaggeration. The research program that began in Vienna and Berlin continues, even though many of the specific formulations that came out of those circles are flawed and need to be replaced.

Karl Popper argued in 1974 that evolutionary theory contains no testable laws and is therefore a metaphysical research program. Four years later, he said that he had changed his mind. Here we seek to understand Popper’s initial position and his subsequent retraction. We argue, contrary to Popper’s own assessment, that he did not change his mind at all about the substance of his original claim. We also explore how Popper’s views have ramifications for contemporary discussion of the nature of laws and the structure of evolutionary theory.

In Chapter 12 of Warrant and Proper Function, Alvin Plantinga constructs two arguments against evolutionary naturalism, which he construes as a conjunction E&N .The hypothesis E says that “human cognitive faculties arose by way of the mechanisms to which contemporary evolutionary thought directs our attention (p.220).”1 With respect to proposition N , Plantinga (p. 270) says “it isn’t easy to say precisely what naturalism is,” but then adds that “crucial to metaphysical naturalism, of course, is the view that there is no such person as the God of traditional theism.” Plantinga tries to cast doubt on the conjunction E&N in two ways.His “preliminary argument” aims to show that the conjunction is probably false, given the fact (R) that our psychological mechanisms for forming beliefs about the world are generally reliable.His “main argument” aims to show that the conjunction E&N is self-defeating — if you believe E&N , then you should stop believing that conjunction.Plantinga further develops the main argument in his unpublished paper “Naturalism Defeated” (Plantinga 1994).We will try to show that both arguments contain serious errors

This book consists of four essays on Darwin’s theory of evolution and three postscripts on contemporary evolutionary theory. The main questions that the chapters address are: How are common ancestry and natural selection related to each other in Darwin’s theory? What were Darwin’s views about group selection and the evolution of altruism? Why did Darwin change his mind about sex ratio, and how are his ideas related to the creationism that preceded him and the evolutionary biology that followed? Do Darwin’s theory and modern evolutionary theory obey the principle of methodological naturalism and ought they to do so?The book is philosophical because it focuses on the logic of arguments. I attend closely to Darwin’s texts, but I sometimes use tools that Darwin did not have available. These include ideas from contemporary biology and from probability theory. I see merit in this approach because it helps elucidate Darwin’s theory. Darwin pointed to the need for this sort of ..

These essays by leading scientists and philosophers address conceptual issues that arise in the theory and practice of evolutionary biology. The third edition of this widely used anthology has been substantially revised and updated. Four new sections have been added: on women in the evolutionary process, evolutionary psychology, laws in evolutionary theory, and race as social construction or biological reality. Other sections treat fitness, units of selection, adaptationism, reductionism, essentialism, species, phylogenetic inference, cultural evolution, and evolutionary ethics. Each of the twelve sections contains two or three essays that develop different views of the subject at hand. For example, the section on evolutionary psychology offers one essay by two founders of the field and another that questions its main tenets. One sign that a discipline is growing is that there are open questions, with multiple answers still in competition; the essays in this volume demonstrate that evolutionary biology and the philosophy of evolutionary biology are living, growing disciplines.

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 reductionistic thesis that follows from one of the argument's premises

Altruism has both an evolutionary and a psychological meaning. As the term is used in evolutionary theory, a trait is deemed altruistic if it reduces the fitness of the actor and enhances the fitness of someone else. In its psychological sense, the thesis that we have altruistic ultimate motives asserts that we care about the welfare of others, not just as a means of enhancing our own well-being, but as an end in itself. In Unto Others (hereafter UO), we consider both evolutionary altruism (Part I) and psychological altruism (Part II) from an evolutionary perspective. We propose a multilevel selection theory to explain how altruism can evolve from group selection, based on Darwin’s solution to the problem. Our presentation of multilevel selection theory expands the range of topics beyond altruism in other respects as well. In Part I1 of UO, we evaluate the arguments, both conceptual and empirical, that philosophers and psychologists have advanced in an attempt to choose between psychological egoism and motivational pluralism. We conclude that these arguments are inconclusive.

We have two main objections to Kerr and Godfrey-Smith's (2002) meticulous analysis. First, they misunderstand the position we took in Unto Others – we do not claim that individual-level statements about the evolution of altruism are always unexplanatory and always fail to capture causal relationships. Second, Kerr and Godfrey-Smith characterize the individual and the multi-level perspectives in terms of different sets of parameters. In particular, they do not allow the multi-level perspective to use the individual fitness parameters i and i. We don't see why the multi-level perspective prevents one from thinking in these terms. Kerr and Godfrey-Smith's argument that Uyenoyama and Feldman's (1980, 1992) definition of altruism belongs more to the individualist perspective than it does to the multi-level perspective is an artifact of their choice of parameters; the same point applies to their argument about the individualism inherent in the idea of Class I and Class II fitness structures.

The naïve see causal connections everywhere. Consider the fact that Evelyn Marie Adams won the New Jersey lottery twice. The naïve find it irresistible to think that this cannot be a coincidence. Maybe the lottery was rigged or perhaps some uncanny higher power placed its hand upon her brow. Sophisticates respond with an indulgent smile and ask the naïve to view Adams’ double win within a larger perspective. Given all the lotteries there have been, it isn’t at all surprising that someone would win one of them twice. No need to invent conspiracy theories or invoke the paranormal – the double win was a mere coincidence.

A distinction is drawn between property causation and token causation. According to the former, a positive causal factor in a population raises the probability of its effects within "background contexts". The latter, which concerns "actual physical connections" between token events, is not explicated here although its distinctness from the first concept and its importance are discussed. The applicability of both is illustrated by two currently controversial issues in evolutionary theory -- the units of selection controversy and the use of parsimony as an inference rule in phylogenetic reconstruction.