A systematic causal account of natural selection
and its philosophical consequences
Institute of Interdisciplinary Research - Department of Social Sciences and Humanities, "Alexandru Ioan Cuza" University of Iaşi
Institute of Interdisciplinary Research - Department of Social Sciences and Humanities, "Alexandru Ioan Cuza" University of Iaşi
Project title: A systematic causal account of natural selection and its philosophical consequences
Project code: PN-III-P1-1.1-TE-2021-1122
Contract number: TE 8 / 2022
Financed by: UEFISCDI
Principal investigator: Ciprian Jeler
Running period: May 2022 - November 2024
Abstract: This project intends to put forth a systematic causal account of natural selection, to distinguish this account from the traditional philosophical view of selection and to show how this new account helps settle a number of disputes in contemporary philosophy of biology. The premise for the first of these objectives is that, in order for us to say that natural selection is at work in a given biological setting, the minimal condition required is that a difference in phenotypic trait be a cause of a difference in actual reproductive values in a given environment. But all the notions on which this condition is based must be carefully defined, and our elaboration of a systematic account of natural selection thus proceeds by proposing solutions for how we should distinguish a phenotypic trait from a merely “circumstantial” trait and for how we should understand the relationship between selection and environment and, respectively, genetic drift. The second major objective of this project is to measure the proposed causal account against the traditional (propensionist) view of selection. Finally, we will test the fruitfulness of the proposed causal account by showing that, by adopting it, a number of contemporary disputes in philosophy of biology are defused.