•  973
    A New Foundation for the Propensity Interpretation of Fitness
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 64 (4): 851-881. 2013.
    The propensity interpretation of fitness (PIF) is commonly taken to be subject to a set of simple counterexamples. We argue that three of the most important of these are not counterexamples to the PIF itself, but only to the traditional mathematical model of this propensity: fitness as expected number of offspring. They fail to demonstrate that a new mathematical model of the PIF could not succeed where this older model fails. We then propose a new formalization of the PIF that avoids these (and…Read more
  •  483
    Fitness: Philosophical Problems
    with Charles Pence
    eLS. 2013.
    Fitness plays many roles throughout evolutionary theory, from a measure of populations in the wild to a central element in abstract theoretical presentations of natural selection. It has thus been the subject of an extensive philosophical literature, which has primarily centered on the way to understand the relationship between fitness values and reproductive outcomes. If fitness is a probabilistic or statistical quantity, how is it to be defined in general theoretical contexts? How can it be me…Read more
  •  467
    EvoText: A new tool for analyzing the biological sciences
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 57 83-87. 2016.
    We introduce here evoText, a new tool for automated analysis of the literature in the biological sciences. evoText contains a database of hundreds of thousands of journal articles and an array of analysis tools for generating quantitative data on the nature and history of life science, especially ecology and evolutionary biology. This article describes the features of evoText, presents a variety of examples of the kinds of analyses that evoText can run, and offers a brief tutorial describing how…Read more
  •  453
    Causal Inference from Noise
    Noûs 55 (1): 152-170. 2021.
    "Correlation is not causation" is one of the mantras of the sciences—a cautionary warning especially to fields like epidemiology and pharmacology where the seduction of compelling correlations naturally leads to causal hypotheses. The standard view from the epistemology of causation is that to tell whether one correlated variable is causing the other, one needs to intervene on the system—the best sort of intervention being a trial that is both randomized and controlled. In this paper, we argue t…Read more
  •  406
    How to Do Digital Philosophy of Science
    Philosophy of Science 85 (5): 930-941. 2018.
    Philosophy of science is expanding via the introduction of new digital data and tools for their analysis. The data comprise digitized published books and journal articles, as well as heretofore unpublished material such as images, archival text, notebooks, meeting notes, and programs. The growth in available data is matched by the extensive development of automated analysis tools. The variety of data sources and tools can be overwhelming. In this article, we survey the state of digital work in t…Read more
  •  365
    Sameness in Biology
    with Grant Ramsey and Anne Siebels Peterson
    Philosophy of Science 79 (2): 255-275. 2012.
    Homology is a biological sameness relation that is purported to hold in the face of changes in form, composition, and function. In spite of the centrality and importance of homology, there is no consensus on how we should understand this concept. The two leading views of homology, the genealogical and developmental accounts, have significant shortcomings. We propose a new account, the hierarchical-dependency account of homology, which avoids these shortcomings. Furthermore, our account provides …Read more
  •  229
    What are the ‘levels’ in levels of selection?
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. forthcoming.
    The levels of selection debate is generally taken to be a debate about how natural selection can occur at the various levels of biological organization. In this paper, we argue that questions about levels of selection should be analyzed separately from questions about levels of organization. In the deflationary proposal we defend, all that is necessary for multilevel selection is that there are cases in which particles are nested in collectives, and that both the collectives and the particles th…Read more
  •  201
    Organisms, Traits, and Population Subdivisions: Two Arguments against the Causal Conception of Fitness?
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 64 (3): 589-608. 2013.
    A major debate in the philosophy of biology centers on the question of how we should understand the causal structure of natural selection. This debate is polarized into the causal and statistical positions. The main arguments from the statistical side are that a causal construal of the theory of natural selection's central concept, fitness, either (i) leads to inaccurate predictions about population dynamics, or (ii) leads to an incoherent set of causal commitments. In this essay, I argue that n…Read more
  •  153
    The concepts and origins of cell mortality
    History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 45 (23): 1-23. 2023.
    Organismal death is foundational to the evolution of life, and many biological concepts such as natural selection and life history strategy are so fashioned only because individuals are mortal. Organisms, irrespective of their organization, are composed of basic functional units—cells—and it is our understanding of cell death that lies at the heart of most general explanatory frameworks for organismal mortality. Cell death can be exogenous, arising from transmissible diseases, predation, or othe…Read more
  •  143
    Human Nature in a Post-essentialist World
    Philosophy of Science 80 (5): 983-993. 2013.
    In this essay I examine a well-known articulation of human nature skepticism, a paper by Hull. I then review a recent reply to Hull by Machery, which argues for an account of human nature that he claims is both useful and scientifically robust. I challenge Machery’s account and introduce an alternative account—the “life-history trait cluster” conception of human nature—that I hold is scientifically sound and makes sense of our intuitions about—and desiderata for—human nature.
  •  122
    Why reciprocal altruism is not a kind of group selection
    Biology and Philosophy 26 (3): 385-400. 2011.
    Reciprocal altruism was originally formulated in terms of individual selection and most theorists continue to view it in this way. However, this interpretation of reciprocal altruism has been challenged by Sober and Wilson (1998). They argue that reciprocal altruism (as well as all other forms of altruism) evolves by the process of group selection. In this paper, we argue that the original interpretation of reciprocal altruism is the correct one. We accomplish this by arguing that if fitness att…Read more
  •  114
    Can fitness differences be a cause of evolution?
    Philosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology 5 (20130604): 1-13. 2013.
    Biological fitness is a foundational concept in the theory of natural selection. Natural selection is often defined in terms of fitness differences as “any consistent difference in fitness (i.e., survival and reproduction) among phenotypically different biological entities” (Futuyma 1998, 349). And in Lewontin’s (1970) classic articulation of the theory of natural selection, he lists fitness differences as one of the necessary conditions for evolution by natural selection to occur. Despite this …Read more
  •  100
    The fundamental constraint on the evolution of culture
    Biology and Philosophy 22 (3): 401-414. 2007.
    This paper argues that there is a general constraint on the evolution of culture. This constraint – what I am calling the Fundamental Constraint – must be satisfied in order for a cultural system to be adaptive. The Fundamental Constraint is this: for culture to be adaptive there must be a positive correlation between the fitness of cultural variants and their fitness impact on the organisms adopting those variants. Two ways of satisfying the Fundamental Constraint are introduced, structural sol…Read more
  •  100
    Is Cultural Fitness Hopelessly Confused?
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 68 (2). 2017.
    Fitness is a central concept in evolutionary theory. Just as it is central to biological evolution, so, it seems, it should be central to cultural evolutionary theory. But importing the biological fitness concept to CET is no straightforward task—there are many features unique to cultural evolution that make this difficult. This has led some theorists to argue that there are fundamental problems with cultural fitness that render it hopelessly confused. In this essay, we defend the coherency of c…Read more
  •  90
    Block Fitness
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 37 (3): 484-498. 2006.
    There are three related criteria that a concept of fitness should be able to meet: it should render the principle of natural selection non-tautologous and it should be explanatory and predictive. I argue that for fitness to be able to fulfill these criteria, it cannot be a property that changes over the course of an individual's life. Rather, I introduce a fitness concept--Block Fitness--and argue that an individual's genes and environment fix its fitness in such a way that each individual's fit…Read more
  •  80
    The Causal Structure of Evolutionary Theory
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 94 (3): 421-434. 2016.
    One contentious debate in the philosophy of biology is that between the statisticalists and causalists. The former understand core evolutionary concepts like fitness and selection to be mere statistical summaries of underlying causal processes. In this view, evolutionary changes cannot be causally explained by selection or fitness. The causalist side, on the other hand, holds that populations can change in response to selection—one can cite fitness differences or driftability in causal explanati…Read more
  •  78
    In this commentary on Lewens, I argue that although his criticisms of Machery's conception of human nature are sound, I disagree with his conclusion that human nature cannot inform us regarding issues of human enhancement. I introduce a framework for understanding human nature, the “life history trait cluster account,” which aligns the concept of human nature with the human sciences and allows human nature to inform questions of human enhancement.
  •  77
    Guilt by association?
    with Michael Deem
    Philosophical Psychology 29 (4): 570-585. 2016.
    Recent evolutionary perspectives on guilt tend to focus on how guilt functions as a means for the individual to self-regulate behavior and as a mechanism for reinforcing cooperative tendencies. While these accounts highlight important dimensions of guilt and provide important insights into its evolutionary emergence, they pay scant attention to the large empirical literature on its maladaptive effects on individuals. This paper considers the nature of guilt, explores its biological function, and…Read more
  •  77
    Empathy and the Evolutionary Emergence of Guilt
    with Michael J. Deem
    Philosophy of Science 89 (3): 434-453. 2022.
    Guilt poses a unique evolutionary problem. Unlike other dysphoric emotions, it is not immediately clear what its adaptive significance is. One can imagine thriving despite or even because of a lack of guilt. In this article, we review solutions offered by Scott James, Richard Joyce, and Robert Frank and show that although their solutions have merit, none adequately solves the puzzle. We offer an alternative solution, one that emphasizes the role of empathy and posttransgression behavior in the e…Read more
  •  75
    Driftability
    Synthese 190 (17): 3909-3928. 2013.
    In this paper, I argue (contra some recent philosophical work) that an objective distinction between natural selection and drift can be drawn. I draw this distinction by conceiving of drift, in the most fundamental sense, as an individual-level phenomenon. This goes against some other attempts to distinguish selection from drift, which have argued either that drift is a population-level process or that it is a population-level product. Instead of identifying drift with population-level features,…Read more
  •  74
    Culture in humans and other animals
    Biology and Philosophy 28 (3): 457-479. 2013.
    The study of animal culture is a flourishing field, with culture being recorded in a wide range of taxa, including non-human primates, birds, cetaceans, and rodents. In spite of this research, however, the concept of culture itself remains elusive. There is no universally assented to concept of culture, and there is debate over the connection between culture and related concepts like tradition and social learning. Furthermore, it is not clear whether culture in humans and culture in non-human an…Read more
  •  73
    Chance in Evolution (edited book)
    University of Chicago. 2016.
    Evolutionary biology since Darwin has seen a dramatic entrenchment and elaboration of the role of chance in evolution. It is nearly impossible to discuss contemporary evolutionary theory in any depth at all without making reference to at least some concept of “chance” or “randomness.” Many processes are described as chancy, outcomes are characterized as random, and many evolutionary phenomena are thought to be best described by stochastic or probabilistic models. Chance is taken by various autho…Read more
  •  72
    Questions about what human nature is and how we can learn about it are difficult to answer. They are difficult not just because humans are complex creatures whose behavior is deeply embedded in the cultural environment that they are a part of, but also because it is not obvious what a concept of human nature is supposed to do or what it is for. The concept of human nature is often used as a normative concept, one that can serve as a guide to action, showing us how we ought to behave. Less common…Read more
  •  72
    Animal innovation defined and operationalized
    with Meredith L. Bastian and Carel van Schaik
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 30 (4): 393-407. 2007.
    Innovation is a key component of most definitions of culture and intelligence. Additionally, innovations may affect a species' ecology and evolution. Nonetheless, conceptual and empirical work on innovation has only recently begun. In particular, largely because the existing operational definition (first occurrence in a population) requires long-term studies of populations, there has been no systematic study of innovation in wild animals. To facilitate such study, we have produced a new definiti…Read more
  •  67
    On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction (review)
    with Hope Hollocher, Agustin Fuentes, Charles H. Pence, Daniel John Sportiello, and Michelle M. Wirth
    Quarterly Review of Biology 86 (2): 137-138. 2011.
  •  65
    Can altruism be unified?
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 56 32-38. 2016.
    There is clearly a plurality of forms of altruism. Classically, biological altruism is distinguished from psychological altruism. Recent discussions of altruism have attempted to distinguish even more forms of altruism. I will focus on three altruism concepts, biological altruism, psychological altruism, and helping altruism. The questions I am concerned with here are, first, how should we understand these concepts? and second, what relationship do these concepts bear to one another? In particul…Read more
  •  64
    Is Organismic Fitness at the Basis of Evolutionary Theory?
    Philosophy of Science 82 (5): 1081-1091. 2015.
    Fitness is a central theoretical concept in evolutionary theory. Despite its importance, much debate has occurred over how to conceptualize and formalize fitness. One point of debate concerns the roles of organismic and trait fitness. In a recent addition to this debate, Elliott Sober argues that trait fitness is the central fitness concept, and that organismic fitness is of little value. In this paper, by contrast, we argue that it is organismic fitness that lies at the bases of both the concep…Read more
  •  63
    The Nature of Programmed Cell Death
    Biological Theory 14 (1): 30-41. 2019.
    In multicellular organisms, cells are frequently programmed to die. This makes good sense: cells that fail to, or are no longer playing important roles are eliminated. From the cell’s perspective, this also makes sense, since somatic cells in multicellular organisms require the cooperation of clonal relatives. In unicellular organisms, however, programmed cell death poses a difficult and unresolved evolutionary problem. The empirical evidence for PCD in diverse microbial taxa has spurred debates…Read more
  •  63
    Three Kinds of Niche Construction
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 73 (2): 351-372. 2022.
    Niche construction theory concerns how organisms can change selection pressures by altering the feature–factor relationship between themselves and their environment. These alterations are standardly understood to be brought about through two kinds of organism–environment interaction: perturbative and relocational niche construction. We argue that a reconceptualization is needed on the grounds that if a niche is understood as the feature–factor relationship, then there are three fundamental ways …Read more