Abstract:
There is surprisingly little philosophical work on conceptually spelling out the difference between the traits on which natural selection may be said to act (e.g. \"having a high running speed\") and mere circumstantial traits (e.g. \"happening to be in the path of a forest fire\"). I label this issue the \"selectable traits problem\" and, in this paper, I propose a solution for it. I first show that, contrary to our first intuition, simply equating selectable traits with heritable ones is not an adequate solution. I then go on to argue that two recent philosophical solutions to this problem-due to Peter Godfrey-Smith and Pierrick Bourrat-are unconvincing because they cannot accommodate frequency-dependent selection. The way out of this difficulty is, I argue, to accept that extrinsic properties dependent on relations between intrinsic properties of the population members should also count as selectable traits. I then show that my proposal is legitimized by more than the simple accommodation of frequency-dependent selection.
摘要:
令人惊讶的是,在概念上很少有哲学工作来阐明自然选择所依据的特征(例如“具有高运行速度”)和仅仅是间接特征(例如“发生在森林火灾的路径中”)之间的差异。我将此问题标记为“可选择的特征问题”,在本文中,我提出了一个解决方案。我首先表明,与我们最初的直觉相反,简单地将可选择的性状与可遗传的性状等同起来并不是一个合适的解决方案。然后我继续争辩说,由于PeterGodfrey-Smith和PierrickBourrat的原因,最近对这个问题的两种哲学解决方案都没有说服力,因为它们无法适应频率相关的选择。解决这个困难的方法是,我争辩说,接受依赖于种群成员内在属性之间关系的外在属性也应该算作可选择的特征。然后,我表明,我的建议不仅仅是通过简单地适应频率相关的选择而合法化。