Adaptation and Environment

Brandon, Robert N.

doi:10.1515/9781400860661

Cited by 186 publications

(70 citation statements)

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“…One such way is by proposing general empirical strategies based on our theory, and another is by looking at the areas for future research that may be inspired by the current work. By achieving this double task, our theory goes beyond a cheap 'just-so-story' (Brandon 1990) because, first of all, it is firmly grounded in Darwinian theory, recent theorizing included; secondly, because it dovetails common intuition and empirical evidence; and thirdly, because it provides a broad explanation for that wide range of phenomena that we call 'culture.' But exactly how widely does our theory apply?…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mating games: cultural evolution and sexual selection

Block

Dewitte²

2006

Biol Philos

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Abstract. In this paper, we argue that mating games, a concept that denotes cultural practices characterized by a competitive element and an ornamental character, are essential drivers behind the emergence and maintenance of human cultural practices. In order to substantiate this claim, we sketch out the essential role of the game's players and audience, as well as the ways in which games can mature and turn into relatively stable cultural practices. After outlining the life phase of mating games -their emergence, rise, maturation, and possible eventual decline -we go on to argue that participation in these games (in each phase) does make sense from an adaptationist point of view. The strong version of our theory which proposes that all cultural practices are, or once were, mating games, allows us to derive a set of testable predictions for the fields of archaeology, economics, and psychology.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mating games: cultural evolution and sexual selection

Block

Dewitte²

2006

Biol Philos

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“…This idea has been explicitly endorsed by some biologists and philosophers (e.g., again, Damuth 1985;Antonovics, Ellstrand and Brandon 1988;Brandon 1990) and probably implicitly assumed by many others. For simplicity, I will call this idea the "environmental homogeneity restriction" of the Causal Condition (hereafter, EHR).…”

Section: The "Environmental Homogeneity Restriction" Of the Causal Comentioning

confidence: 94%

“…Given that Brandon (1990) arguably provides the most detailed account of it, it is probably best to use his notion of environmental homogeneity here. Brandon (1990) distinguishes between three types of environment:…”

Section: The "Environmental Homogeneity Restriction" Of the Causal Comentioning

confidence: 99%

Multi-level selection and the issue of environmental homogeneity

Jeler

2017

Biol Philos

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In this paper, I identify two general positions with respect to the relationship between environment and natural selection. These positions consist in claiming that selective claims need and, respectively, need not be relativized to homogenous environments. I then show that adopting one or the other position makes a difference with respect to the way in which the effects of selection are to be measured in certain cases in which the focal population is distributed over heterogeneous environments. Moreover, I show that these two positions lead to two different interpretations -the Pricean and contextualist ones -of a type of selection scenarios in which multiple groups varying in properties affect the change in the metapopulation mean of individual-level traits. Showing that these two interpretations stem from different attitudes towards environmental homogeneity allows me to argue: a) that, unlike the Pricean interpretation, the contextualist interpretation can only claim that drift or selection is responsible for the change in frequency of the focal trait in a given metapopulation if details about whether or not group formation is random are specified; b) that the traditional main objection against the Pricean interpretation -consisting in arguing that the latter takes certain side-effects of individual selection to be effects of group selection -is unconvincing. This leads me to suggest that the ongoing debate about which of the two interpretations is preferable should concentrate on different issues than previously thought.

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“…One modification of the PIF, originally proposed by Beatty and Finsen (1989) and elaborated by Brandon (1990), is intended to address the problem of reducing the PIF to a single numerical value. Perhaps it was a mistake, then, to think that one single way of making this reduction was suitable in all circumstances and that, as discussed in challenge 2, the arithmetic mean does not, in general, work as a mathematical model of the PIF.…”

Section: Responses In Defense Of the Pifmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fitness: Philosophical Problems

Ramsey

Pence

2013

Encyclopedia of Life Sciences

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[120-150 words] 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 measured? Can a single conceptual model for fitness be offered that applies in all biological cases, or must fitness measures be case-specific? Philosophers have explored these questions over the last several decades, largely in the context of an influential definition of fitness proposed in the late 1970s: the propensity interpretation. This interpretation as first described undeniably suffers from significant difficulties, and debate regarding the tenability of amendments and alternatives to it remains unsettled.

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Adaptation and Environment

Cited by 186 publications

References 0 publications

Mating games: cultural evolution and sexual selection

Mating games: cultural evolution and sexual selection

Multi-level selection and the issue of environmental homogeneity

Fitness: Philosophical Problems

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