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663Origins and evolution of religion from a Darwinian point of view: synthesis of different theoriesIn Thomas Heams, Philippe Huneman, Guillaume Lecointre & Marc Silberstein (eds.), Handbook of Evolutionary Thinking in the Sciences, Springer. pp. 761-779. 2015.The religious phenomenon is a complex one in many respects. In recent years an increasing number of theories on the origin and evolution of religion have been put forward. Each one of these theories rests on a Darwinian framework but there is a lot of disagreement about which bits of the framework account best for the evolution of religion. Is religion primarily a by-product of some adaptation? Is it itself an adaptation, and if it is, does it benefi ciate individuals or groups? In this chapter,…Read more
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410The idea of mismatch in evolutionary medicineBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science. forthcoming.Mismatch is a prominent concept in evolutionary medicine and a number of philosophers have published analyses of this concept. The word ‘mismatch’ has been used in a diversity of ways across a range of sciences, leading these authors to regard it as a vague concept in need of philosophical clarification. Here, in contrast, we concentrate on the use of mismatch in modelling and experimentation in evolutionary medicine. This reveals a rigorous theory of mismatch within which the term ‘mismatch’ is…Read more
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381Are biological traits explained by their 'selected effect' functions?Australasian Philosophical Review. forthcoming.The selected effects or ‘etiological’ theory of Proper function is a naturalistic and realist account of biological teleology. It is used to analyse normativity in philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, philosophy of medicine and elsewhere. The theory has been developed with a simple and intuitive view of natural selection. Traits are selected because of their positive effects on the fitness of the organisms that have them. These ‘selected effects’ are the Proper functions of the traits. Pr…Read more
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202Following from my criticisms of Calcott’s analysis on the permissive/instructive distinction, I rebut his claims that 1) he clarifies my measure one-to-one specificity; 2) for all intents and purposes of his analysis his notion of precision is different from my measure of one- to-one specificity; 3) Waddington box is a better and different model than the extension of Woodward’s radio I propose.
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173The evolution of complex life forms, such as multicellular organisms, is the result of a number of evolutionary transitions in individuality (ETIs). Several attempts have been made to explain their origins, many of which have been internalist (i.e., based largely on internal properties of these life form's ancestors). Here, we show how an externalist perspective, via the ecological scaffolding model in which properties of complex life forms arise from an external scaffold, can shed new light on …Read more
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171The Evolutionary Gene and the Extended Evolutionary SynthesisBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 69 (3): 775-800. 2017.Advocates of an ‘extended evolutionary synthesis’ have claimed that standard evolutionary theory fails to accommodate epigenetic inheritance. The opponents of the extended synthesis argue that the evidence for epigenetic inheritance causing adaptive evolution in nature is insufficient. We suggest that the ambiguity surrounding the conception of the gene represents a background semantic issue in the debate. Starting from Haig’s gene-selectionist framework and Griffiths and Neumann-Held’s notion o…Read more
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128From 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
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116Levels, Time and Fitness in Evolutionary Transitions in IndividualityPhilosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology 7 (20150505). 2015.Yes, fitness is the central concept of evolutionary biology, but it is an elusive concept. Almost everyone who looks at it seriously comes out in a different place
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106How 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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102Levels 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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80Dissolving the Missing Heritability ProblemPhilosophy of Science 84 (5): 1055-1067. 2017.Heritability estimates obtained from genome-wide association studies are much lower than those of traditional quantitative methods. This phenomenon has been called the “missing heritability problem.” By analyzing and comparing GWAS and traditional quantitative methods, we first show that the estimates obtained from the latter involve some terms other than additive genetic variance, while the estimates from the former do not. Second, GWAS, when used to estimate heritability, do not take into acco…Read more
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69Multispecies individualsHistory and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 40 (2): 33. 2018.We assess the arguments for recognising functionally integrated multispecies consortia as genuine biological individuals, including cases of so-called ‘holobionts’. We provide two examples in which the same core biochemical processes that sustain life are distributed across a consortium of individuals of different species. Although the same chemistry features in both examples, proponents of the holobiont as unit of evolution would recognize one of the two cases as a multispecies individual whils…Read more
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68Interpreting Heritability CausallyPhilosophy of Science 84 (1): 14-34. 2017.A high heritability estimate usually corresponds to a situation in which trait variation is largely caused by genetic variation. However, in some cases of gene-environment covariance, causal intuitions about the sources of trait difference can vary, leading experts to disagree as to how the heritability estimate should be interpreted. We argue that the source of contention for these cases is an inconsistency in the interpretation of the concepts ‘genotype’, ‘phenotype’, and ‘environment’. We pro…Read more
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66The arithmetic mean of what? A Cautionary Tale about the Use of the Geometric Mean as a Measure of FitnessBiology and Philosophy 37 (2): 1-22. 2022.Showing that the arithmetic mean number of offspring for a trait type often fails to be a predictive measure of fitness was a welcome correction to the philosophical literature on fitness. While the higher mathematical moments of a probability-weighted offspring distribution can influence fitness measurement in distinct ways, the geometric mean number of offspring is commonly singled out as the most appropriate measure. For it is well-suited to a compounding process and is sensitive to variance …Read more
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65Is God an Adaptation?: Robert Wright’s, The Evolution of God, Little Brown, 2009Philosophia 39 (2): 397-408. 2011.In this critical notice to Robert Wright’s The Evolution of God, we focus on the question of whether Wright’s God is one which can be said to be an adaptation in a well defined sense. Thus we evaluate the likelihood of different models of adaptive evolution of cultural ideas in their different levels of selection. Our result is an emphasis on the plurality of mechanisms that may lead to adaptation. By way of conclusion we assess epistemologically some of Wright’s more controversial claims concer…Read more
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63On the causal interpretation of heritability from a structural causal modeling perspectiveStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 94 (C): 87-98. 2022.
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55Natural Selection and Drift as Individual-Level Causes of EvolutionActa Biotheoretica 66 (3): 159-176. 2018.In this paper I critically evaluate Reisman and Forber’s :1113–1123, 2005) arguments that drift and natural selection are population-level causes of evolution based on what they call the manipulation condition. Although I agree that this condition is an important step for identifying causes for evolutionary change, it is insufficient. Following Woodward, I argue that the invariance of a relationship is another crucial parameter to take into consideration for causal explanations. Starting from Re…Read more
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54In What Sense Can There Be Evolution by Natural Selection Without Perfect Inheritance?International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 32 (1): 13-31. 2019.ABSTRACTIn Darwinian Population and Natural Selection, Peter Godfrey-Smith brought the topic of natural selection back to the forefront of philosophy of biology, highlighting different issues surro...
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54Explaining Drift from a Deterministic SettingBiological Theory 12 (1): 27-38. 2017.Drift is often characterized in statistical terms. Yet such a purely statistical characterization is ambiguous for it can accept multiple physical interpretations. Because of this ambiguity it is important to distinguish what sorts of processes can lead to this statistical phenomenon. After presenting a physical interpretation of drift originating from the most popular interpretation of fitness, namely the propensity interpretation, I propose a different one starting from an analysis of the conc…Read more
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48Distinguishing 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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46Evolution is About Populations, But Its Causes are About IndividualsBiological Theory 14 (4): 254-266. 2019.There is a tension between, on the one hand, the view that natural selection refers to individual-level causes, and on the other hand, the view that it refers to a population-level cause. In this article, I make the case for the individual-level cause view. I respond to recent claims made by McLoone that the individual-level cause view is inconsistent. I show that if one were to follow his arguments, any causal claim in any context would have to be regarded as vindicating a form of population-le…Read more
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45It is striking that the concept of fitness although fundamental in evolutionary theory, still remains ambiguous. I argue here that time, although usually neglected, is an important parameter in regards to the concept of fitness. I will show some of the benefits of taking it seriously using the example of recent debates over evolutionary transitions in individuality. I start from Okasha's assertion that once an evolutionary transition in individuality is completed an ontologically new level of se…Read more
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44Facts, Conventions, and the Levels of SelectionCambridge University Press. 2021.Debates concerning the units and levels of selection have persisted for over fifty years. One major question in this literature is whether units and levels of selection are genuine, in the sense that they are objective features of the world, or merely reflect the interests and goals of an observer. Scientists and philosophers have proposed a range of answers to this question. This Element introduces this literature and proposes a novel contribution. It defends a realist stance and offers a way o…Read more
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43Why the missing heritability might not be in the DNABioessays 39 (7): 1700067. 2017.Graphical AbstractThere are four major hypotheses (H1, H2, H3, and H4) as to the source of missing heritability. We propose that estimates obtained from GWAS underestimate heritability by not taking into account non-DNA (epigenetic) sources of heritability. Taking those factors into account (H4) should result in increased heritability estimates.
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41Natural Selection beyond Life? A Workshop ReportLife 11 (10): 1051. 2021.Natural selection is commonly seen not just as an explanation for adaptive evolution, but as the inevitable consequence of “heritable variation in fitness among individuals”. Although it remains embedded in biological concepts, such a formalisation makes it tempting to explore whether this precondition may be met not only in life as we know it, but also in other physical systems. This would imply that these systems are subject to natural selection and may perhaps be investigated in a biological …Read more
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37Function, persistence, and selection: Generalizing the selected-effect account of function adequatelyStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 90 (C): 61-67. 2021.
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36Unifying heritability in evolutionary theoryStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 91 (C): 201-210. 2022.
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35Evolution by Natural Selection: Confidence, Evidence and the Gap, by Michaelis Michael: Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2016, pp. xv + 152, £61.99 (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 95 (4): 816-819. 2017.
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Biology |
Evolutionary Biology |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
General Philosophy of Science |