Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 8
Natural Selection and Causal Productivity
Roberta L. Millstein
Abstract In the recent philosophical literature, two questions have arisen
concerning the status of natural selection: (1) Is it a population-level phenomenon,
or is it an organism-level phenomenon? (2) Is it a causal process, or is it a purely
statistical summary of lower-level processes? In an earlier work (Millstein,
Br J Philos Sci, 57(4):627-653, 2006), I argue that natural selection should be
understood as a population-level causal process, rather than a purely statistical
population-level summation of lower-level processes or as an organism-level causal
process. In a 2009 essay entitled “Productivity, relevance, and natural selection,”
Stuart Glennan argues in reply that natural selection is produced by causal pro-
cesses operating at the level of individual organisms, but he maintains that there is
no causal productivity at the population level. However, there are, he claims, many
population-level properties that are causally relevant to the dynamics of evolution-
ary processes. Glennan's claims rely on a causal pluralism that holds that there are
two types of causes: causal production and causal relevance. Without calling into
question Glennan's causal pluralism or his claims concerning the causal relevance
of natural selection, I argue that natural selection does in fact exhibit causal
production at the population level. It is true that natural selection does not fit with
accounts of mechanisms that involve decomposition of wholes into parts, such as
Glennan's own. However, it does fit with causal production accounts that do not
require decomposition, such as Salmon's Mark Transmission account, given the
extent to which populations act as interacting “objects” in the process of natural
selection.
R.L. Millstein (
*
)
Department of Philosophy, University of California, Davis,
One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616, USA
e-mail:
rlmillstein@ucdavis.edu
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