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108How to Read ‘Heritability’ in the Recipe Approach to Natural SelectionBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 66 (4): 883-903. 2015.There are two ways evolution by natural selection is conceptualized in the literature. One provides a ‘recipe’ for ENS incorporating three ingredients: variation, differences in fitness, and heritability. The other provides formal equations of evolutionary change and partitions out selection from other causes of evolutionary changes such as transmission biases or drift. When comparing the two approaches there seems to be a tension around the concept of heritability. A recent claim has been made …Read more
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50Distinguishing Natural Selection from Other Evolutionary Processes in the Evolution of AltruismBiological Theory 10 (4): 311-321. 2015.Altruism is one of the most studied topics in theoretical evolutionary biology. The debate surrounding the evolution of altruism has generally focused on the conditions under which altruism can evolve and whether it is better explained by kin selection or multilevel selection. This debate has occupied the forefront of the stage and left behind a number of equally important questions. One of them, which is the subject of this article, is whether the word “selection” in “kin selection” and “multil…Read more
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105Levels of Selection Are Artefacts of Different Fitness Temporal MeasuresRatio 28 (1): 40-50. 2015.In this paper I argue against the claim, recently put forward by some philosophers of biology and evolutionary biologists, that there can be two or more ontologically distinct levels of selection. I show by comparing the fitness of individuals with that of collectives of individuals in the same environment and over the same period of time – as required to decide if one or more levels of selection is acting in a population – that the selection of collectives is a by-product of selection at the in…Read more
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130From survivors to replicators: evolution by natural selection revisitedBiology and Philosophy 29 (4): 517-538. 2014.For evolution by natural selection to occur it is classically admitted that the three ingredients of variation, difference in fitness and heredity are necessary and sufficient. In this paper, I show using simple individual-based models, that evolution by natural selection can occur in populations of entities in which neither heredity nor reproduction are present. Furthermore, I demonstrate by complexifying these models that both reproduction and heredity are predictable Darwinian products (i.e. …Read more
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Biology |
Evolutionary Biology |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
General Philosophy of Science |