Natural Selection and the Nature of Statistical Explanations
There is a widespread philosophical interpretation of natural selection in evolutionary theory: natural selection, like mutation, migration, and drift are seen as forces that propel the evolution of populations. Natural selection is thus a population level causal process. This account has been chal...
| Published in: | Crítica |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM)
2023-10-01
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://critica.filosoficas.unam.mx/index.php/critica/article/view/1465 |
| Summary: | There is a widespread philosophical interpretation of natural selection in evolutionary theory: natural selection, like mutation, migration, and drift are seen as forces that propel the evolution of populations. Natural selection is thus a population level causal process. This account has been challenged by the Statistics, claiming that natural selection is not a population level cause but rather a statistical feature of a population. This paper examines the nature of the aforementioned ontological debate and the nature of statistical explanations given by population genetics. I claim that the Modern Synthesis provides good explanations of the changes in trait structure of populations without appealing to detailed causal information about the individual trajectories of the members of a population.
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| ISSN: | 0011-1503 1870-4905 |