Abstract
Genic selectionism holds that all selection can be understood as operating on particular genes. Critics (and conventional biological wisdom) insist that this misrepresents the actual causal structure of selective phenomena at higher levels of biological organization, but cannot convincingly defend this intuition. I argue that the real failing of genic selectionism is pragmatic – it prevents us from adopting the most efficient corpus of causal laws for predicting and intervening in the course of affairs – and I offer a Pragmatic account of causation itself which ultimately bears out the claim that genic selectionism misrepresents the causal structure of selective contexts.
Similar content being viewed by others
REFERENCES
Armstrong, D. M.: 1983, What Is a Law of Nature?, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Ayer, A. J.: 1956, ‘What Is a Law of Nature?’ reprinted in A. Ayer (1963), The Concept of a Person and Other Essays, St. Martin's Press, New York, pp. 209–234.
Braithwaite, R. B.: 1927, ‘The Idea of Necessary Connexion’ Mind 36, 467–477.
Brandon, R. N.: 1984, ‘The Levels of Selection’ in R. N. Brandon and R. M. Burian (eds), Genes, Organisms, Populations: Controversies over the Units of Selection, MIT Press, Cambridge, pp. 133–141.
Brandon, R. N.: 1990, Adaptation and Environment, Princeton University Press, Princeton.
Cartwright, N.: 1989, Nature's Capacities and Their Measurement, Clarendon Press, Oxford.
Dawkins, R.: 1976, The Selfish Gene, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Dawkins, R.: 1982, The Extended Phenotype: The Gene as the Unit of Selection, Freeman, Oxford.
Dawkins, R.: 1994, ‘Burying the Vehicle’ (Open peer commentary on Wilson and Sober's (1994a) ‘Reintroducing Group Selection to the Human Behavioral Sciences’), Behavioral and Brain Sciences 17, 616–617.
Dretske, F. I.: 1977, ‘Laws of Nature’ Philosophy of Science 44, 248–268.
Godfrey-Smith, P. and R. Lewontin: 1993, ‘The Dimensions of Selection’ Philosophy of Science 60 373–395.
Goodman, N.: 1954, Fact, Fiction and Forecast, The Athlone Press, Atlantic Highlands, NJ.
Gould, S. J.: 1980, ‘Caring Groups and Selfish Genes’ in The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History, Norton, New York, pp. 85–92.
Kitcher, P.: 1989, ‘Explanatory Unification and the Causal Structure of the World’ in P. Kitcher and W. Salmon (eds), Scientific Explanation, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN, pp. 410–505.
Kneale, W.: 1950, ‘Natural Laws and Contrary-to-Fact Conditionals’ reprinted in T. L. Beauchamp, ed.: 1974, Philosophical Problems of Causation, Dickenson, Belmont, CA.
Kneale, W.: 1961, ‘Universality and Necessity’ reprinted in T. L. Beauchamp, ed.: 1974, Philosophical Problems of Causation, Dickenson, Belmont, CA.
Lewis, D.: 1973a, ‘Causation’ Journal of Philosophy 70, 556–567.
Lewis, D.: 1973b, Counterfactuals, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Lewontin, R. and L. Dunn: 1960, ‘The Evolutionary Dynamics of a Polymorphism in the House Mouse’ Genetics 45, 705–722.
Lloyd, E. A.: 1988, The Structure and Confirmation of Evolutionary Theory, Greenwood Press, New York.
Lloyd, E. A.: 1989, ‘A Structural Approach to Defining Units of Selection’ Philosophy of Science 56, 395–418.
Mayr, E.: 1963, Animal Species and Evolution, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Molnar, G.: 1969, ‘Kneale's Argument Revisited’ Philosophical Review 78, 79–89.
Nagel, E.: 1961, The Structure of Science, Harcourt, Brace and World, New York.
Popper, K. R.: 1959, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Hutchinson, London.
Popper, K. R.: 1967, ‘A Revised Definition of Natural Necessity’ British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 18, 316–324.
Ramsey, F. P.: 1928, ‘Universals of Law and Fact’ reprinted in Ramsey: 1978, in D. H. Mellor (ed.), Foundations, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, pp. 128–132.
Ramsey, F. P.: 1929, ‘General Propositions and Causality’ reprinted in Ramsey: 1978, in D. H. Mellor (ed.), Foundations, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, pp. 133–151.
Skyrms, B.: 1980, Causal Necessity, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.
Sober, E.: 1984, The Nature of Selection: Evolutionary Theory in Philosophical Focus, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Sober, E. and R. C. Lewontin: 1982, ‘Artifact, Cause, and Genic Selection’ Philosophy of Science 49, 157–180.
Sober, E. and D. S. Wilson: 1994, ‘A Critical Review of Philosophical Work on the Units of Selection Problem’ Philosophy of Science 61, 534–555.
Sober, E. and D. S. Wilson: 1998, Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior, Harvard University Press, Cambridge.
Stanford, P. K.: forthcoming, ‘The Pragmatic Theory of Causation’.
Sterelny, K. and P. Kitcher: 1988, ‘The Return of the Gene’ Journal of Philosophy 85, 339–361.
Strawson, P. F.: 1952, An Introduction to Logical Theory, Methuen, London.
Tooley, M.: 1987, Causation: A Realist Approach, Oxford University Press, New York.
Waters, C. K.: 1991, ‘Tempered Realism about the Force of Selection’ Philosophy of Science 58, 553–573.
Williams, G. C.: 1966, Adaptation and Natural Selection: A Critique of Some Current Evolutionary Thought, Princeton University Press, Princeton.
Wilson, D. S. and E. Sober: 1994a, ‘Reintroducing Group Selection to the Human Behavioral Sciences’ Behavioral and Brain Sciences 17, 585–608.
Wilson, D. S. and E. Sober: 1994b, Authors' response to open peer commentary on ‘Reintroducing Group Selection to the Human Behavioral Sciences’ Behavioral and Brain Sciences 17, 639–647.
Wimsatt, W.: 1980, ‘Reductionistic Research Strategies and Their Biases in the Units of Selection Controversy’ in T. Nickles (ed.), Scientific Discovery, Vol. 2. Reidel, Dordrecht, pp. 213–259.
Wimsatt, W.: 1981, ‘The Units of Selection and the Structure of the Multi-level Genome’ PSA 1980, Vol. 2, Philosophy of Science Association, East Lansing, pp. 122–183.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Stanford, P.K. The Units Of Selection And The Causal Structure Of The World. Erkenntnis 54, 215–233 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1005641025742
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1005641025742