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Darwin proposed, back in 1859, that species arose due to natural selection—the pruning of deleterious genetic variations in a population, which led to the thinking that the “inherent design” in nature, formerly thought to be due to a designer (“God”) was due to a force Darwin called “natural selection” (NS). The line of reasoning is thus: (1) two individuals of the same population are mostly the same genetically/phenotypically, but have small differences between them, and one of the small differences is a difference in a trait needed for survival. (2) But both traits can contribute to fitness, how does NS ‘know’ to select for either coextensive trait? Now think about two traits: trait T and trait T’. What would explain the fixation of either trait in the population we are discussing? NS is not—cannot—be the mechanism of evolution.
In 2010, philosopher Jerry Fodor and cognitive scientist Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, wrote a book titled “What Darwin Got Wrong“, which argued that NS is not a causal mechanism in regard to the formation of new species. Their argument is (pg 114):
- Selection-for is a causal process.
- Actual causal relations aren’t sensitive to counterfactual states of affairs: if it wasn’t the case that A, then the fact that it’s being A would have caused its being B doesn’t explain its being the case that B.
- But the distinction between traits that are selected-for and their free-riders turns on the truth (or falsity) of relevant counterfactuals.
- So if T and T’ are coextensive, selection cannot distinguish the case in which T free-rides on T’ from the case that T’ free-rides on T.
- So the claim that selection is the mechanism of evolution cannot be true.
This argument is incredibly strong. If it is true, then NS cannot be the mechanism by which evolution occurs; NS is not—nor can it be—the mechanism of evolution. So, regarding the case of two traits that are coextensive with each other, it’s not possible to ascertain which trait was selected-for and which trait was the free-rider. NS cannot distinguish between two locally coextensive traits, so, therefore, it is not an explanatory mechanism and does not explain the evolution of species, contra Darwin. It cannot be the mechanism that connects phenotypic variation with fitness variation.
The general adaptationist argument is: “(1) the claim that evolution is a process in which creatures with adaptive traits are selected and (2) the claim that evolution is a process in which creatures are selected for their adaptive traits” (Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini, 2010: 13). Darwinists are committed to inferring (2) from (1), though it is fallacious. It is known as the intensional fallacy.
“Due to the intensionality of “select-for” and “trait”, one cannot infer from ‘Xs have trait t and Xs were selected’ to ‘Xs were selected for having trait t’” (Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini, 2010: 139). How does one distinguish from a trait that was selected-for and a free-rider that hitched a ride on the truly adaptive trait for the organism in question? The argument provided above shows that it is not possible. “Darwinists have a crux about free-riding because they haven’t noticed the intensionality of selection-for and the like; and when it is brought to their attention, they haven’t the slightest idea what to do about it” (Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini, 2010: 16).
No observation can show whether or not trait T or T’ was selected-for in virtue of its contribution to fitness in a given population; favoring one story over another in regard to the adaptation of a trait in question, therefore, does not make any logical sense due to the problem of free-riders (and, also, favoring one story over another is due to bias for the like of the specific adaptive just-so story in question). For if two traits are coextensive—meaning that traits coincide with one another—then how can NS—which does not have a mind—‘know’ to “select-for” whichever trait contributes to fitness in the population in question? Breeders are the perfect example.
Breeders have minds and can therefore select for certain traits and against undesirable traits; however, of course, since NS does not have a mind, this is not the case when it comes to naturally selected traits (so-called), since NS does not have a mind. NS cannot explain the distribution of phenotypic traits throughout the world; there is no agent of NS nor are there ‘laws of selection’, therefore NS is not an explanatory mechanism. Explanations based on NS are based only on correlations with traits and fitness, not on causes themselves (this critique can be extended to numerous other fields, too). The problem with relying only on correlations between traits and fitness is two-fold: (1) the trait in question can be irrelevant to fitness and (2) the trait in question can be a free-rider.
Creatures have traits that increase fitness because they were selected-for, the story goes. NS explains why the creature in question has trait T, which increases fitness in environment E. One can then also make the claim that the selection of the trait in question was due to the increased fitness it gave the creature. However, if this claim is made, “then the theory of natural selection would reduce to a trait’s being a cause of reproductive success [which then] explains its being a cause of reproductive success which explains nothing (and isn’t true).”
So since genetically-linked traits are coextensive with an infinitude of different possible outcomes, then the hypothesis that trait X is an adaptation is underdetermined by all possible observations, which means that NS cannot explain how and why organisms have the traits they do, since NS cannot distinguish between two coextensive traits, since NS lacks a mind and agency.
NS can be said to be an explanation if and only if two conditions are met: (1) if NS can be understood as acting on counterfactuals and (2) if NS can be said to be acting on any physical evolutionary laws.
(1) A counterfactual is an “if-clause”, which is contrary to a fact. A counterfactual is a statement that cannot be true, for example, “I hear but I have no ears” or “I see but I have no eyes.” Thus, if it were possible for NS to be an explanation for the continuance of a specific trait that is linked to other traits (that is, they are coextensive) in a given population, it would need to—necessarily—invoke a counterfactual about NS. It would need to be the case that the trait in question would still be selected for in the absence of free-riders. As an example from Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini (2010: 103) a heart pumps blood (what it was selected-for) and makes pumping sounds (its linked free-rider). Thus, if the pumping of blood and the sound that blood-pumping makes were not coextensive, then the pumping, not the pumping sounds, get selected for.
There is a huge problem, though. Counterfactuals are intentional statements; they refer to concepts found in our minds, not any physical things. NS does not have a mind and thus lacks the ability to “select-for” since “selecting-for” is intentional. Therefore NS does not act on counterfactuals; it is blind to the fact of counterfactuals since it does not have a mind.
(2) It does not seem likely that there are “laws of selection”. Clearly, the adaptive value of any phenotype depends on the environment that the organism is in. Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini (2010: 149) write (emphasis theirs):
The problem is that it’s unlikely that there are laws of selection. Suppose that P1 and P2 are coextensive but that, whereas the former is a property that affects fitness, the latter is merely a correlate of a property that does. The suggestion is that all this comes out right if the relation between P1 and fitness is lawful, and the relation between P2 and fitness is not. …it’s just not plausible that there are laws that relate phenotypic traits per se to fitness. What (if any) effect a trait has on fitness depends on what kind of phenotype is embedded in, and what ecology the creature that has the trait inhabits. This is to say that, if you wish to explain the effects that a phenotypic trait has on a creature’s fitness, what you need is not its history of selection but its natural history. And natural history offers not laws of selection but narrative accounts of causal chains that lead to the fixation of phenotypic traits. Although laws support counterfactuals, natural histories do not; and, as we’ve repeatedly remarked, it’s counterfactual support on which distinguishing the arches from the spandrels depends.
There is, too, a simple example regarding coextensive traits and selection. Think of the lactase gene. It is well-known that we humans are adapted to drink milk—and the cause is gene-culture coevolution that occurred at around the time of cow domestication (Beja-Perreira et al, 2003; Gerbalt et al, 2011). No one disputes the fact that gene-culture coevolution is how and why we can drink milk. But what people do dispute is the adaptive just-so story (Gould and Lewontin, 1976; Lloyd, 1999; Richardson, 2007) that was made to explain how and why the trait went to fixation in certain human populations. Nielsen (2009) writes (emphasis mine):
The difference in lactose intolerance among human geographic groups, is caused by a difference in allele frequencies in and around the lactase gene (Harvey et al. 1998; Hollox et al. 2001; Enattah et al. 2002; Poulter et al. 2003). The cause for the difference in allele frequencies is primarily natural selection emerging about the same time as dairy farming evolved culturally (Bersaglieri et al. 2004). Together, these observations lead to a compelling adaptive story of natural selection favoring alleles causing lactose tolerance. But even in this case we have not directly shown that the cause for the selection is differential survival due to an ability/inability to digest lactose. We must acknowledge that there could have been other factors, unknown to us, causing the selection acting on the region around the Lactase gene. Even if we can argue that selection acted on a specific mutation, and functionally that this mutation has a certain effect on the ability to digest lactose, we cannot, strictly speaking, exclude the possibility that selection acted on some other pleiotropic effect of the mutation. This argument is not erected to dispute the adaptive story regarding the lactase gene, the total evidence in favor of adaptation and selection related to lactose tolerance is overwhelming in this case, but rather to argue that the combination of a functional effect and selection does not demonstrate that selection acted on the specific trait in question.
Selection could have acted on a free-rider that is coextensive with the lactase gene, and just because “the story fits the data” well (that’s a necessary truth; of course the story can fit the data because any story can be formulated for any data) does not mean that it is true, that the reason for trait T is reason R since they “fit the data so well.”
Of course, this holds for EP, evolutionary anthropology, and my favorite theory for the evolution of human skin color, the vitamin D hypothesis. I do not, of course, deny that light skin is needed in order to synthesize vitamin D in climates with low UVB; that is a truism. What is denied is the fact that selection acted on light skin (and its associated/causal genes); what is denied is the combination of functional effect and selection. Just-so stories are necessarily true; they, of course, fit any data because one can formulate any story to fit any data points they have. Thus, Darwinists are just storytellers who have a bunch of data; there is no way to distinguish between the selection of a trait because it increased fitness and the selection of a free-rider that is “just there” that does not increase fitness, but the thing that increases fitness is what the free-rider “rode in on.”
NS is not and cannot be an explanatory mechanism. Darwinism has already been falsified (Jablonka and Lamb, 2005; Noble, 2011; Noble, 2012; Noble, 2017) and so, this is yet another nail-in-the-coffin for Darwinism. The fact that traits that are coextensive means that NS would have to “know” which trait to act on; NS cannot “know” which of the coextensive traits to act on (because it has no mind) and, NS cannot be a general mechanism that connects phenotypic variation to variation in fitness. NS does not explain the evolution of species, nor can NS distinguish between two locally coextensive traits—traits T and T’—because NS has no agency and does not have a mind. Therefore NS is not an explanatory mechanism. Just invoking NS to explain the continuance of any trait fails to explain the survival of the trait because NS cannot distinguish between traits that enhance an organism’s fitness and free-riders which are irrelevant to survival but are coextensive with the selected-for trait, as long as the traits in question are coextensive.
P1) If there is selection for T but not T’, various counterfactuals must be true.
P2) If the counterfactuals are true, then NS must be an intentional-agent, or there must be laws about “selection-for”.
P3) NS is mindless.
P4) There are no laws for “selection-for”.
∴ It is false that selection for T but not T’ occurs in a population.
One then has two choices:
(1) Argue that NS has a mind and therefore that it can “select for” certain traits that are adaptable in a given population of organisms in the environment in question. “Select-for” implies intention. Intentional acts only occur in organisms with minds. Intentional states are only possible if something has a mind. Humans are the only organisms with minds. Humans are the only organisms that can act intentionally. NS does not have a mind. (Animal breeder’s are an example that can select-for desirable traits and against undesirable traits because animals breeder’s are humans and humans can act intentionally.) Therefore NS does not act intentionally since it does not have a mind. I don’t think anyone would argue that NS has a mind and acts intentionally as an agent, therefore P3 is true.
(2) Argue that there are laws for “selection-for” phenotypic traits related to fitness. But it’s not possible that there are laws that relate to the selection of a phenotype, per se, in a given population. The effect of a trait depends on the ecology of the organism in question as well as its natural history. Therefore, to understand the effects of a phenotypic trait on the fitness of an organism we must understand its natural history, not its selection history (so-called). Therefore P4 is true.
There are no laws for “selection-for”, nor does NS have a mind that can select a trait that lends to an organism’s fitness and not a trait that’s just correlated with the trait in question
NotPoliticallyCorrect 
So instead of a”selection scenario” to specific genes to explain allele frequency shifts, do you propose a type of “stimulus-response” scenario? For instance, in the case of skin color or adaptation, natural forces interacts with a population (stimulus) and (as a response) activation/success from adaptive traits increase but due to the presence of free riders (which can also be deleterious).
Click to access 1303.0805.pdf
it doesn’t work in a directed process but more of a “circumstantial” process?
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Just give up, bud. You’re just too dumb to understand the science.
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Try again.
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Do you know the difference between intention and intension?
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Intension is the character that determines the applicability of a term whereas intention implies intent (for instance,intentional states imply action, which is only possible in organisms with minds). “Select-for” is intensional. For example “One, but not the other, coextensive trait can be selected for.” Sorting is intensional; if such an agent were doing the sorting, then this would account for the intensionality. “Selection-for” is intensional.
Natural selection doesn’t have a mind, therefore there is no intention with regard to selection. Intensional causation in regard to natural selection would require there to be either laws for “selection-for” or there is a mind involved in the process of causation through natural selection. NS is mindless and there are no laws for selection-for.
“Selection-for” is intensional; coextensive but distinct phenotypic properties exist; one is conducive to fitness, the other is just a free-rider with the trait that increases fitness; but natural selection cannot distinguish between coextensive traits where one is a free-rider and the other is conducive to fitness. It cannot distinguish.
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Just making sure.
Actually you need to define what a trait is. Because the environment selects organisms not individual traits. So selection is not intensional.
Secondly, selection is dependent on physical laws. Falling out of a tree is an effect from gravitational law. Organisms living in trees evolve adaptations to not fall of of these trees. Therefore there selection is dependent on biophysical laws.
P1 natural selection cannot purport to do what it does if it does not follow bio-physical laws
P2 biology reduces to physical laws. (E.g. thermodynamics, law of conservation of mass and energy, gravitational laws)
P3 bio-physical/nomological laws must exist
C1 natural selection does in fact contribute to phenotypic variation.
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A particular character that an organism has.
“The environment” can’t “select” since that implies intentionality and “the environment” has no mind.
There are no laws for “selection-for” because the effect that trait T has on the fitness of an organism depends on its natural, not (so-called) selective, history. Natural history doesn’t offer causal laws, but narrative accounts of causal chains which lead to the fixation of traits in a certain population.
Nomological explanations are about the relationship between two properties whereas historical narratives are about a causal chain of events which leads to the fixation of trait T in a population of organisms, for instance. Nomological laws were taken care of in the last argument provided in the article. (There are no laws for “selection-for” thus It is false that selection for T but not T’ occurs in a population.
You’re a reductive physicalist?
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“A particular character that an organism has.”
Define a “particular character”. I thought you agreed with noble that an organism not it’s individual genotypes is what’s selected for?
“Nomological explanations are about the relationship between two properties whereas historical narratives are about a causal chain of events which leads to the fixation of trait T in a population of organisms”
Yes and nomological explanations are what govern the relationship between causal events. You’re creating a distinction without a difference.
“Nomological laws were taken care of in the last argument provided in the article. (There are no laws for “selection-for” thus It is false that selection for T but not T’ occurs in a population.”
Actually I just gave 3 examples of “selection for” laws. Either way, your argument rests on a category mistake as I mentioned earlier( I wonder why you ignored it?) Natural selection does not select for, the environment does, therefore you syllogism’s conclusion is that Environment cannot explain phenotypic variation, not natural selection. Which we all already know how ridiculous that idea is.
“You’re a reductive physicalist?”
I’m a reductionist, a holist, a rationalist, empiricist, skeptic, anti realist, scientific realist, ad infinium. I’m sure that blows your mind, but intelligent people do not adhere to absolutist ideology.
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A phenotypic trait.
Is a creature’s phenotype appropriate for the ecology that it inhabits?
How do those laws establish that T and not T’ would be “selected-for”?
Like natural selection, the environment does not have a mind either; only humans can select.
hahaha
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“A phenotypic trait.”
So a trait is defined as a particular character and a particular character is defined as a trait? Do you not see how that isn’t answering the question? You could just give me an example….
“Is a creature’s phenotype appropriate for the ecology that it inhabits?”
It depends on the ecology.
“How do those laws establish that T and not T’ would be “selected-for”?”
Well first as repeated for the nth time, Traits are not selected for, Organisms are, so the distinction between byproduct and adaption is redundant unless the byproduct is enormously a maladaptive one, like Schizophrenia.
If Phsyical law A,X,Y and B are consistent constraints that form an ecology, Which ever organism has the most adaptive genotype to these constraints prospers while the other does not. What is being selected is the entirety of traits, not just one.
“Like natural selection, the environment does not have a mind either; only humans can select.”
Nope. Even artificial selection cannot select for a singular “trait” because such a finite concept does not actually exist. Since I’ve already demonstrated the existence of laws that govern “select for” the Environment can in fact select.
“hahaha”
Wow, he doesn’t actually get how stupid he sounds. How humorous.
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Big vs small peacock feathers.
It’s tautological.
No it’s not redundant; byproduct explanations for schizophrenia are just-so stories as are adaptationist explanations.
There are no laws of trait fixation; natural selection is not a mechanism and there is nothing to play the role of mechanism. If two traits are coextensive then how does NS distinguish the fitness-causer from the non-fitness-causer? No mechanism can play the role of “natural selection” explains trait fixation.
P1) Niches are individuated post hoc by reference to the phenotypes that live in said niche.
P2) If the organisms weren’t there, the niche would not be there either.
C) Therefore there is no fitness of phenotypes to lifestyles that explain said adaptation.
Breeders can manipulate phenotypes; they can select for traits they deem desirable and select against traits they do not want. There is intention in animal breeding—something that NS—and “the environment”—lacks because it does not have a mind.
These laws govern trait fixation and can play the role of “mechanism”? “The environment” does not have a mind and therefore cannot “select” either; ecological niches are intensional.
What does natural selection predict? NS does not distinguish causes of fitness from their local confounds so there cannot be a theory of NS.
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“Big vs small peacock feathers.”
So where is the cut off between big and small peacock feathers? Do you think Adaptations are absolute?
“No it’s not redundant; byproduct explanations for schizophrenia are just-so stories as are adaptationist explanations.There are no laws of trait fixation; natural selection is not a mechanism and there is nothing to play the role of mechanism. If two traits are coextensive then how does NS distinguish the fitness-causer from the non-fitness-causer?””
Evolution in general is a process not a mechanism, Environment and the Organisms in them are the Mechanisms. Natural selection is just a kind of evolution.
You’re also still thinking in terms of individual traits, organisms are what is selected and when you take that into consideration, the subsequent deduction is that all traits including byproducts are also adaptations because they comprise the whole organism’s genome. Even then, some adaptations can be beneficial in one environment while deleterious in another. So the only Maladaptive traits are Cognitive ones because by definition increased cognition is general adaptability. So schizophrenia is the only Psychological trait we can say is in fact maladaptive because by definition it is Ego Dissolution and is therefore a hindrance in any environment.
Differentiation adaptation vs byproduct is redundant but determining how a trait became selected is a different story and independent verification helps solve this. Jerry coyne also laid out a few examples of other methods in his criticism of Fodor.
“P1) Niches are individuated post hoc by reference to the phenotypes that live in said niche.
P2) If the organisms weren’t there, the niche would not be there either.
C) Therefore there is no fitness of phenotypes to lifestyles that explain said adaptation.”
So now you’re denying that niche construction is a selective force? How can a system be holistic if it doesn’t interact holistically? Ridiculous.
“There is intention in animal breeding—something that NS—and “the environment”—lacks because it does not have a mind.”
Selection does not require intention. “Select for” is just a term, Evolution is actually an emergent filtration process, as is a niche and environmental disruption is what fuels this filtration. There is no intensionality going on, when you remove the Anthropomorphic language.
Is this really the route you’re taking? I already called it out before, That’d you’d try to extend the arguments on semantic holism to Evolution. Do you remember? If you can’t dispense with anthropomorphism in Evolution, then Evolution must be progressive through a self actualizing universe. It’s funny, i read Fodor’s thesis a long time ago and had a weird feeling you’d try to propagate it.
“What does natural selection predict? ”
https://sci-hub.tw/https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-017-0077
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A phenotypic trait is a trait that increases a creature’s fitness in relation to the current ecology it finds itself in; one can also say that X is a phenotypic trait since “phenotype” is the set of observable characters resulting from GxE.
NS can’t be a “kind of evolution” if it can’t distinguish between two coextensive traits.
Organisms are selected for the relative fitness of their phenotypes. NS cannot distinguish between traits that cause fitness from traits that are just correlated with fitness so NS does not explain why different organisms have the traits they do.
Byproducts are selected, not selected for. Byproducts have no clear benefit for the organisms fitness or survival. A byproduct is a trait that moved to fixation in the EEA because it was coextensive with an adaptive trait.
An independent verifier is an observation which confirms that X originated as an adaptation, and not as a result of a byproduct, drift, pleiotropy etc. So the hypothesis that trait T is an adaptation needs to disconfirm byproduct, drift, pleiotropy, exaptation etc. No such observation is possible because the observation that X is an adaptation is underdetermined by all possible observations. So selectionist explanations are just-so stories.
So there is no way for NS to identify T over T’?
When two traits are coextensive, how does NS distinguish the one that causes fitness from the trait that doesn’t (its linked free-rider)? It can’t because selection-for is an intensional notion.
The theory of natural selection states that organisms are selected for the relative fitness of their phenotypes in relation to their ecologies. Phenotypic traits are selected for their role in causing increases in fitness corresponding with the following principle:
If in a given ecology, organisms with T1 are more fit than organisms with T2, then, all else being equal, creatures with T1 will be selected and not creatures with T2. If both of these organisms are equally fit, then neither type of organism will be selected in preference to the other organism. But what if T1 and T2 are linked? Now suppose that T1 causes increased fitness and T2 does not. The traits are linked, so the correlation of T2 and fitness is the same as the correlation of T1 with fitness. Thus, all else being equal, if T1 is selected then so is T2. If T2 is selected then so is T1.
Darwin should have said that traits are selected which cause alterations in fitness in a given ecology, not that they’re correlated with alterations in fitness. But then Darwin would have needed to identify a mechanism that in a given ecology responds differently to phenotypic traits depending on whether or not they are causes of alterations of fitness of merely correlated with the causes of the alterations of fitness. In lieu of a mechanism, there is no theory of natural selection.
The theory of NS presumes a distinction between “selects” and “selects-for”, so for the theory to explain the distribution of phenotypic traits it must satisfy (1) or (2): (1) that NS has a mind/mental powers since intensionality is intentional, then intentional states have the ability to distinguish between coextensive traits; and (2) counter-factual supporting laws that phylogenetically link certain phylogenetic traits across different ecologies so that if you have one, you have the other. There is no agent of selection, (1) is discarded and there are no laws of selection so (2) is discarded so:
P1) For NS to explain the distribution of phenotypic traits it must satisfy (1) or (2).
P2) NS does not satisfy (1) or (2).
C) NS does not explain trait fixation.
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“A phenotypic trait is a trait that increases a creature’s fitness in relation to the current ecology it finds itself in. NS cannot distinguish between traits that cause fitness from traits that are just correlated with fitness so NS does not explain why different organisms have the traits they do. Byproducts are selected, not selected for. Byproducts have no clear benefit for the organisms fitness or survival.
How does that answer the question or address the main issue? Ceteris paribus is meaningless. If the whole organism, meaning the whole suite of phenotypes and genotypes present on an organism are what is selected, then all traits whether they are coextensive or not are adaptations.
Evolution(synonymous with NS) does not make decisions, the environment does. This fills “requirement”(LOL) #2 because an environment is just a system of nomological laws, with corresponding counterfactuals. Selected for” is only intensional because it implies decision making. “Filtration” defines a random emergent process and better encapsulates the actual properties of Evolution, whilst simultaneously dispensing any kind of intension, therefore when Evolution is expressed in this manner it not longer “requires” #1, of course it does still need #2 but Biology reduces to physics. As a physiology and biochemistry “expert” you cannot deny this.
“An independent verifier is an observation which confirms that X originated as an adaptation, and not as a result of a byproduct, drift, pleiotropy etc.”
No. An Independent verifier confirms a post hoc relationship as causal.. It isn’t specifically for adaptationist theories.
“P1) For NS to explain the distribution of phenotypic traits it must satisfy (1) or (2).
P2) NS does not satisfy (1) or (2).
C) NS does not explain trait fixation.”.
Im not sure why you’re just repeating yourself instead of actually pointing out any misconceptions I may have about your position.Are you going to actually address my citation? You asked a question and I answered it. “byproduct, drift, pleiotropy, exaptation etc. ” are not mutually exclusive to natural selection. The issue(and this goes back to the whole thing with you and Fodor defining words wrong) is that “byproducts” is an umbrella term for your list and since we already established organisms are what goes through this filtration then that list can in fact also be one of adaptations. A trait produced by natural selection is not equivalent to an “adaptation” or “a trait that causes fitness” Subsequently the supposed mechanism to distinguish this is not needed because the premise is unfounded and formed from a semantic non sequiter.
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It is the main issue; byproducts are not adaptations.
False.
Ceteris paribus, there must be laws about which traits would win trait competitions (T1 or T2). No laws exist showing which trait would win a trait competition. Therefore there are no laws of selection-for.
Reductionism is false.
That’s what an independent verifier is in regard to adaptationist theories; a verifier is something that disconfirms other explanations.
Oh because that’s your “argument” right?
That’s what I meant with my question “What does natural selection predict?” meaning that it does not predict which trait out of T1 or T2 would win a trait competition. NS does not predict anything.
So there is no mechanism.
I reiterated the argument against NS; NS does not satisfy (1) or (2) therefore it is not an evolutionary mechanism.
(I’m an “expert” in HMS by the way.)
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“It is the main issue; byproducts are not adaptations. False. Ceteris paribus,”
No, the point I’m talking about is at what line do you say a specific quantity of particular organic characters forms a “trait”? Which of course does tie back into the main issue, because there is no line, and the ensuing consequence is that no singular part of an organism is selected. The whole organism is selected ad infinium. So although “neutral” traits can supposedly be coextensive to adaptive traits, there is no such thing as a Neutral organism, your phenotype is either selected or it’s not, you either reproduce or you don’t. “Neutral organisms” cannot get free rides.A Neutral and selected organism are not and cannot be coextensive, therefore the intensionality of “selected for” crumbles as does the rest of Fodor’s argument. So far that’s two arguments that take away the intensionality “of selected for”
I’ll humor you, lets get back to the topic of Artificial selection and say you could definitively isolate a trait to it’s lowest finite level (possibly molecular or atomic) whilst simultaneously controlling for every other environmental factor. What you would find is that the amount of change is so small that the magnitude of selection would be insignificant. The point being, that stating ” ceteris paribus” does not actually address anything because it isn’t relevant to the kind of conceptual criticism I’m offering.
“Therefore there are no laws of selection-for. Reductionism is false.”
Darwin actually didn’t use the term “selected for” once in his original theory. In fact the first and full term that was later coined in the 50’s was “selected for phenotype”. A phenotype is all of the characteristics on an organism that can be affected by the environment, not just one or two. The latter term is not intensional. That’s a another strawman fallacy by Fodor. SO those kinds of laws are not needed but, another kind is which brings me to the next issue:
Biology is impossible without reducing to chemistry which is impossible without reducing to physics. Those kinds of laws are the only laws required for there to be selection between organisms and their respective populations. You don’t know what reductionsim means or more specifically you fail to to give off a hint of understanding or to even acknowledge the difference between conceptual and physical reductionism. Until then I’ll be waiting on a real response.
“Oh because that’s your “argument” right? meaning that it does not predict which trait out of T1 or T2 would win a trait competition. ”
No dumbass, despite what you like to strawman, I know what a fucking argument is. You’re literally too stupid to tell when I am or when I’m not making one.
Your question is nonsensical which is why i assumed you mean’t “how can you predict evolution.” NS is a process not a mechanism. Environment is one of the selecting mechanisms and when it filters through death(natural selection) and not through migrations(genetic drift) it is blind to neutral variation in a population of organisms, an example is if I lived in a world where only three colors existed, but I could only see two of them 100% of the time. How could I make a distinction between the three when I don’t even know the properties or even the existence of the other? Translation: any organism or “trait” that persists trans-generationally is adaptive, any that does not reproduce is maladaptive. NS only sees Maladaptive or adaptive, Neutral variation is not visible to it. Therefore it’s not intensional. That’s the 3rd one.
“So there is no mechanism.”
NS is an explanatory process not a mechanism unless you consider it a sub-mechanism under evolution, but that’s just semantics. Environment is the mechanism of All Evolution. There is no mechanism for distinguishing traits of fitness and traits correlated with fitness because the distinction does not actually exist. That’s a product of You and Fodor’s misconceptions on how evolution works.
“(I’m an “expert” in HMS by the way.)”
You’re clearly not an expert in anything.
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This doesn’t circumvent the problem of free-riders.
You think that saying “The whole organism is selected” is a solution to the problem of free-riders.
Those kinds of laws are most definitely needed. Since the term “select-for” implies an agent or law that does said selecting of phenotypes; no such laws exist (and “the environment” is not an agent either, so that’s false) therefore there are no laws of selection.
If you don’t have a notion of “trait that is selected-for” then you don’t have a notion of “trait selection” so you, therefore, cannot say that traits are selected for their connection with fitness.
“Selection-for” requires a set of nomologically necessary, counterfactual-supporting generalizations, meaning laws that determine how the relative fitness of having the traits in question would be selected in a possible world where the coextension between the two traits does not hold—there are no such laws. So to explain why T but not T’ is selected for, you need a mechanism that is differentially responsive to T over T’. Then, and only then, can one explain why counterfactuals of the “If T and T’ were uncorrelated . . .” are true or false. But it is not possible.
Biology does not reduce to chemistry, biology is not applied chemistry,
Here’s a good piece for you:
Historical contingency and the futility of reductionism: Why chemistry (and biology) is not physics
Using this “logic”, byproducts are adaptations, which is false. (Traits exist which are not adaptations; a byproduct is a phenotypic character that is the byproduct of another character with no current utility.) Byproducts have a specific definition that you’re disregarding. NS doesn’t “see” anything (it lacks a mind); when the traits are coextensive, then NS cannot distinguish between the free-rider and the fitness-enhancing trait. So NS doesn’t predict which traits an organism has. The theory of NS cannot explain or predict why a population of organisms has the traits they do.
So there is no way for NS to “know” when two traits are coextensive and which to select-for since there is no agent and there are no laws. NS cannot be the explanatory mechanism, nor the explanatory filtration process, to use yours and Coyne’s terminology since it’s not an agent. (Nor can the environment stand-in, since it is not an agent nor are there laws of selection.) “The environment” is not “the mechanism of all evolution”, we don’t know the mechanism of evolution. Saying that “the environment” is the mechanism of evolution does not, again, circumvent the problem of free-riders: “the environment” does not–cannot—distinguish between coextensive traits since it is not an agent and it lacks the conceptual resources to discriminate traits that cause fitness from traits that are merely correlated with traits that cause fitness. And, again, there are no laws of selection.
Shoot me an email next time you’re in New Jersey and I’ll show you.
(Also refer back to the argument provided on trait competitions. That’s the crux of the issue.)
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“This doesn’t circumvent the problem of free-riders. You think that saying “The whole organism is selected” is a solution to the problem of free-riders.(Traits exist which are not adaptations; a byproduct is a phenotypic character that is the byproduct of another character with no current utility.)”
You cannot give me a definitive description of a trait. Even if you quantified it, it would have such an insignificant morphological change(because you’d be changing it on a molecular or atomic scale), there would be barely any beneficial gain to be had. Especially considering Biological systems are holistic to begin with. Logically, Selection can only have notable effects on clusters of traits and organisms. Even if you held all equal except some arbitrary collection of characters that define a trait between Organism A and Organism B they would still have different phenotypes and since the phenotype of the organism is the object of selection all traits are considered adaptive if the organism has successfully reproduced. There can be no non- semantic distinction between adaptations and byproducts, more specifically there can be no neutral traits. Byproducts are just adapations that are slightly less adaptive than the one it piggybacks on, ad infinium. The only maladaptive traits that can exist are cognitive ones like Schizophrenia.This holds true even if “current” means “relative to setting”. At that point you’d simply be arguing that NS is not a sufficient explanatory process by itself, not that it can’t explain any trait variation whatsoever. If that is indeed your position, I’d like to know, before I continue to waste my time on something so benign. Do you have quarrels with any other forms of selection?
“no such laws exist (and “the environment” is not an agent either, so that’s false) therefore there are no laws of selection.”
Environment is not an agent, it’s a system of nomological laws. Neutral organisms do not exist, and if they did they would be blind to the environment. The intensionality present is between maladative and adaptive Phenotypes which is explained by these laws.
“we don’t know the mechanism of evolution. ”
LOL of course we do! A chaotic environment, and the organism. We aren’t entirely sure which kinds of evolution affected which organisms temporally but that’s simply an issue of time and resources.
“Here’s a good piece for you:”
You don’t know what reductionism means. Name one example of a chemical or biological system that is not made of physical components. It’s impossible. Saying Biology is irreducible to chemistry means that You can’t commensurate it without appealing to chemistry, which at that point it’s no longer Biology. It’s semantic. P=Existence.
“NS doesn’t “see” anything (it lacks a mind); when the traits are coextensive, then NS cannot distinguish between the free-rider and the fitness-enhancing trait. So NS doesn’t predict which traits an organism has. The theory of NS cannot explain or predict why a population of organisms has the traits they do. ”
It’s a metaphor. Words aren’t things you autistic retard. You’re saying The environment cannot choose because it has no laws or mind, I’m saying it can’t choose because there is no option, Organisms are not coextensive with each other. Therefore there is no intensionality in the phrase “select for phenotype”
“Shoot me an email next time you’re in New Jersey”
I don’t think I’d ever go that that shit hole. Too many italians.
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Your “the whole organism is what’s selected” shpeal is irrelevant; Fodor states that too: “The logic of the situation remains the same whether it’s an architect or Mother Nature or some psychologist doing the selecting; and it’s likewise independent of whether it is the organism’s phenotype that is being selected-for or it’s behavioral repertoire. The moral so far is: selection-for problems need to appeal to counterfactuals if they are to distinguish between coextensive hypotheses where it’s the theory of association or the theory of adaptation that raises the question.
Selection-for problems cannot appeal to counterfactuals.
The argument establishes that the claim that NS is the mechanism of evolution cannot be true.
The mechanism needs to distinguish between what’s selected and what’s selected-against—it cannot because “nature” and “the environment” have no minds and there are no laws of selection.
Do you claim that reductionism is true—that is, that biology and chemistry will eventually be absorbed by physics.
I “know what reductionism means”, my point is proven.
There is an “option”, when it comes to coextensive phenotypic traits:
When two traits are coextensive, how does NS distinguish the one that causes fitness from the trait that doesn’t (its linked free-rider)? It can’t because selection-for is an intensional notion.
The theory of natural selection states that organisms are selected for the relative fitness of their phenotypes in relation to their ecologies. Phenotypic traits are selected for their role in causing increases in fitness corresponding with the following principle:
If in a given ecology, organisms with T1 are more fit than organisms with T2, then, all else being equal, creatures with T1 will be selected and not creatures with T2. If both of these organisms are equally fit, then neither type of organism will be selected in preference to the other organism. But what if T1 and T2 are linked? Now suppose that T1 causes increased fitness and T2 does not. The traits are linked, so the correlation of T2 and fitness is the same as the correlation of T1 with fitness. Thus, all else being equal, if T1 is selected then so is T2. If T2 is selected then so is T1.
Darwin should have said that traits are selected which cause alterations in fitness in a given ecology, not that they’re correlated with alterations in fitness. But then Darwin would have needed to identify a mechanism that in a given ecology responds differently to phenotypic traits depending on whether or not they are causes of alterations of fitness of merely correlated with the causes of the alterations of fitness. In lieu of a mechanism, there is no theory of natural selection.
The theory of NS presumes a distinction between “selects” and “selects-for”, so for the theory to explain the distribution of phenotypic traits it must satisfy (1) or (2): (1) that NS has a mind/mental powers since intensionality is intentional, then intentional states have the ability to distinguish between coextensive traits; and (2) counter-factual supporting laws that phylogenetically link certain phylogenetic traits across different ecologies so that if you have one, you have the other. There is no agent of selection, (1) is discarded and there are no laws of selection so (2) is discarded so:
P1) For NS to explain the distribution of phenotypic traits it must satisfy (1) or (2).
P2) NS does not satisfy (1) or (2).
C) NS does not explain trait fixation.
You continuously repeating “The whole organism is what is selected” is irrelevant to this argument. No, “the environment” is not a set of nomological laws; it cannot distinguish between coextensive traits—which is the actual objection here.
By the way:
Have you read On the Origin?
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“Your “the whole organism is what’s selected” shpeal is irrelevant; The mechanism needs to distinguish between what’s selected and what’s selected-against—it cannot because “nature” and “the environment” have no minds and there are no laws of selection.”
It’s very relevant.
Argument 1:
P1: To differentiate traits correlated or causal to fitness, traits must be objectively commensurable to the most finite level.
P2. You cannot commensurate traits to said level without deflating the selection coefficient.
C1: “select for” is redundant in relevance to individual traits
Argument 2:
P1: Subsequently, selection can only be significant to clusters or the totality of traits on an organism
P2: but how you define clusters is arbitrary
C2: The distinction between adaption and byproduct is redundant in relevance to clusters of traits
Argument 3:
P1: Subsequently, the totality of traits is the only quantifiable target of selection
P2: Reproduction is what mediates this selection
P3: An animal either reproduces or it does not
C1: Organisms cannot be coextensive to each other; The distinction between adaptation and byproduct organisms is redundant and nonsensical.
Argument 4:
P1: For the intensionality of maldaptive/beneficial to exist there must be laws of selection or intentionality behind the counterfactual(reproducing or not).
P2: Organisms communicate and have intentionality
P3: organisms compete and cooperate for reproductive success in environments.
C4: Organisms give intentionality to selection
Argument 5:
P1: For the intensionality of maldaptive/beneficial to exist there must be laws of selection or intentionality behind the counterfactual(reproducing or not).
P2: An environment is a system of interacting physical laws
P3: The difficulty of reproducing is standardized by these laws(monkies in a tree and gravity)
C1 The environment provides nomological laws of selection.
“The argument establishes that the claim that NS is the mechanism of evolution cannot be true.”
NS is not “the” mechanisms of evolution its one of many sub-processes that make up evolution.
“Do you claim that reductionism is true—that is, that biology and chemistry will eventually be absorbed by physics.”
What do you mean by absorbed? Most of everything in chemistry is explainable by physics, but at that point you’re not discussing chemistry anymore.
“Have you read On the Origin?”
Yes, Darwin agreed that it was the Organism that was selected not finite traits. “select for phenotype” wasn’t used until the 50’s.
That’s how I know you haven’t.
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Those aren’t “arguments”, they’re more like “wordsalads”:
“Argument 1” is unsound; I’ve described “phenotypic trait” which is a trait that increases a creature’s fitness in relation to the current ecology it finds itself in; the term “select-for” is intensional and implies agential selection.
“Argument 2” is false; the “distinction” between byproduct and adaptation are not “redundant”; a byproduct is selected, just not selected for. Both adaptationist and byproduct hypotheses are just as likely which is why an independent verifier is needed. But it’s not possible for there to be an independent verifier:
P1) To test any selectionist/adaptationist claim you need to de-confound traits that are coextensive in the OEE.
P2) To test the claim, one needs a time machine.
P3) Time machines don’t exist.
C) Therefore selectionist/adaptationist claims are not testable.
P1) The hypothesis that trait X is a byproduct is falsifiable if and only if an observation exists by which we can verify that trait X moved to fixation in virtue of being a byproduct of “intelligence” and not in virtue of it being an adaptation.
P2) No such observation exists because time machines exist (and even if they did exist there would still be no way of deconfounding linked traits in the OEE).
C) Therefore byproduct and adaptationist hypotheses are just-so stories.
P1) A just-so story is an ad hoc hypothesis—a hypothesis is ad hoc if it is not independently verified of the data it purports to explain.
P2) The hypothesis that trait X is an adaptation is independently verifier if, and only if it succesfully predicts a novel fact (an observation which was not used in the contstruction of the hypothesis and would be expected if the trait were an adaptation and unexpected if the trait were a byproduct).
P3) No prediction of that nature is possible because the hypothesis that trait X is an adaptation is underdetermined by all possible observations (meaning their are no hallmarks of adaptation).
P4) Selectionist/adaptationist hypotheses cannot be independently verified because they are inherently ad hoc.
C) Therefore selectionist/adaptationist hypotheses are just-so stories.
“Argument 3” is irrelevant; doesn’t respond at all to my long screed above about t1 and t2. It doesn’t—at all—circumvent the problem of free-riders and the selection of coextensive traits.
“Argument 4” is nonsensical.
P1) Believers must have the concept of belief because in order to have beliefs one must recognize that they can be either true or false, one cannot understand objective truths without knowing the nature of beliefs.
P2) So in order to develop an understanding of objective truth, one must be able to talk with others about the world, and so all believers must be language users.
C) Other species lack language, therefore they don’t have beliefs.
“Beliefs” are intentional states; animals lack minds; therefore animals lack beliefs and by proxy intentional states.
You’re pushing something similar to Samir Okasha, but Fodor’s argument takes care of it. I’ve read Okasha’s recent book. It’s not convincing.
It also, again, does not circumvent the problem of free-riders.
“Argument 5”, too, doesn’t respond to my original t1/t2 argument either; I’ve already laid it out above and “Argument 5” does not address it.
By the way:
P1) Niches are individuated post hoc by reference to the phenotypes that live in said niche.
P2) If the organisms weren’t there, the niche would not be there either.
C) Therefore there is no fitness of phenotypes to lifestyles that explain said adaptation.
You’re relying on a bad article. I’ve read all of Darwin’s book and Darwin does indeed use intensional language when speaking about NS.
Which edition did you read?
“Natural Selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest, rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working … at the improvement of each organic being.” (Darwin, 1859: 133, Barnes n Noble edition)
Darwin was the first to employ agential thinking (what Samir Okasha terms ‘type 2 agential thinking”). Darwin’s analog with animal breeders and NS is nonsensical since animal breeders are agents and NS is not.
I’ll probably give you the last word here. If I feel like replying I will.
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Do you? It doesn’t appear so from your comments. For example, you say “no intensionality in selects for phenotype.” Notice that “Selects for”just is an intensional context (compare “selects for” to merely “selects”). An intensional context is one in which co-referential terms cannot be substituted for one another without change in truth value.
An example should make it clear. Suppose only and all chairs are green. It follows that if I “select” a chair, then I thereby “select” a green thing. We can substitute ‘chair’ and ‘green thing’ without changing the truth of the proposition (or sentence if you prefer). So “selects” is not intensional. Now take “select for” – If I “select for” a chair it doesn’t follow that I am selecting for a green thing. We cannot substitute ‘chair’ and ‘green thing’ in this proposition/sentence and still retain the same truth value. This is because it is in virtue of the object being a chair that I am choosing it rather than it being green.
Another example just to make it perfectly clear. If I select a kangaroo, then it follows that I select an animal that lives in Australia. If I select for a Kangaroo, although I will thereby select an animal that lives in Australia, It does not entail that I have selected for an animal that lives in Australia. What I selected for was a kangaroo, the fact that kangaroos live in Australia simply tags along (it is a happy coincidence).
“Selects” is an extensional notion whereas “selection-for” is an intensional notion.
Also, notice that if you don’t have a notion of “a trait that’s selected for” then (a fortiori) you don’t have a notion of trait selection, so you can’t state the fundamental Darwinian thesis: that creatures have the traits they do because those traits are selected-for their connection with fitness. As Mayr writes: “’Selection-for’ specifies the particular phenotypic attribute and corresponding component of the genotype (DNA) that is responsible for the success of the selected individual.”
Hope this helps clear up this misunderstanding.
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“Those aren’t “arguments”, they’re more like “wordsalads”:”
Come back when you know what an argument is. Your pathetic excuses are tiresome.
“I’ve described “phenotypic trait” which is a trait that increases a creature’s fitness in relation to the current ecology it finds itself in”
No. You cannot define a word by using that same word in the definition you prescribe it. Argument 1 is sound.
“a byproduct is selected, just not selected for. ”
Organisms are selected for their environments. Selection only acts on whole organisms and their populations. Intensionality only exists on that level. You’re attacking a strawman. The distinction isn’t wrong because you can’t actually differentiate between a vestigial trait and an adaptation, it’s wrong because you can’t quantify a trait without 1) lowering the selection coefficient rendering the dichotomy a waste of time, or 2) making the cut off arbitrary
Your first Argument is a non-sequiter. You don’t need a time machine test the hypothesis, you only need it to be 100% sure of it. In science we don’t care abut being right, just less wrong.
The second one is just as stupid. Determining whether something was selected is demonstrably easier than figuring out how something was selected. And you don’t need to islate T2,T3, and T4 to determine if T1 is an adaptation, because the former could also have been selected.
” doesn’t respond at all to my long screed above about t1 and t2.”
It did address it, you just didn’t understand it. Your rant about t1 and t2 is irrelevant if selection doesn’t occur between traits. How hard is that to understand?
““Beliefs” are intentional states; animals lack minds; therefore animals lack beliefs and by proxy intentional st”
Modern grammatical language is not a prerequisite for thought. Neither is symbolism in general, You can create thought with just sensory representations, in fact it is the main way we do so. Language and intelligence are not binary concepts, they exist on a spectrum with varying complexity. Animals have thoughts, beliefs and intentions they’re just less complex and qualitative versions of ours. Most Social creatures communicate, specifically to express intentions and beliefs to other individuals in their groups. Like birds or primates who make vocalizations to warn their population of incoming threats. Even if we assume your silly premise, Humans do have minds, which means there is Intentionality to NS at least regarding humans. Sexual selection is a form of NS but instead of relying on environmental fluctuations it relies on the intentionality of other organisms.
You didn’t actually understand any of my arguments
Sad.
They proved 3 points:
1.Selection acts on whole organisms
The intensionality that does exist is completely explainable by the Environment and other organisms.
“You’re relying on a bad article. I’ve read all of Darwin’s book and Darwin does indeed use intensional language when speaking about NS.”
I didn’t read an article. I’m simply more educated in Biology than you are. I never said he didn’t use intensional language, he just didn’t use the kind that you or fodor are referring to.
“Which edition did you read?”
I don’t remember, that was back when I was debating creationists. Some things never change though 🙂
“I’ll probably give you the last word here. If I feel like replying I will.”
You’re not fooling anyone.
Bucky,
“Do you? ”
Clearly, my statement was in reference to coextensive traits. That kind of intensionality is non-existent if selection acts on the phenotype level.
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“Clearly, my statement was in reference to coextensive traits. That kind of intensionality is non-existent if selection acts on the phenotype level.”
There is only one kind of intensionality (with an s) – it’s the kind I just described to you. Any mechanism that can differentiate between coextensive traits, properties, terms, referents, or what-have-you will ipso facto be an intensional mechanism.
A phenotype just is a bundle of traits. The mechanism of natural selection is the driving force behind which traits become phenotypic. NS does not act on whole organisms (although it is true that it is organisms and populations of organisms that die or survive). NS selects traits in populations. It is the traits that cause the organism’s fitness. Now everyone and their grandmother knows that genetic hitchhiking is real. Some traits come along for the ride even though they are not causes of fitness (these freerider traits are correlated with traits that cause fitness). The problem is, that TNS posits exogenous ecological selection pressures as the mechanism or filter. The reason this is a problem is because the exogenous selection pressures explain “selection of” both the free-rider and the fitness causing trait without being able to say anything different about the trait that is “selected for.”
An example might make it clear: Suppose A-creatures have the phenotypic trait of long legs, suppose this is, as a matter of fact, fitness enhancing because the long legs allow the creatures to run faster thereby being able to avoid predators. Suppose further that long-leggedness is coextensive with change in leg colour, and suppose that the leg colour has no bearing on fitness. Now as far as the environment is concerned both traits are equally correlated with fitness – it cannot distinguish which is the cause of fitness and which is the mere free-rider. The same story justifies both: (i) The A-creatures with long legs are able to run faster than the A-creatures without long legs, and can avoid predators chasing them, this allows them to produce more offspring and pass along said trait to the next generation. (ii) The A-creatures with yellow legs are able to run faster than the A-creatures without yellow legs, and can avoid predators chasing them, this allows them to produce more offspring and pass along said trait to the next generation. Now it may be intuitive, true, and knowable by us that it is the long-leggedness that is a cause of fitness rather than the yellow-leggedness, but notice that the narrative based on ecological variables explains equally the proliferation of both traits (the fit and the free-rider). As far as the mechanism is concerned both are selected, and although it is true that one is selected-for, the mechanism so sketched doesn’t tell you which. The mechanism (exogenous ecological or environmental variables) simply cannot cash in on “selection-for” even though it requires such a concept in order to properly explain phenotypic trait fixation in virtue of fitness. The question isn’t an epistemic one, the question is whether one’s pet theory has the tools available to it to distinguish coextensive traits where only one is a cause of fitness and the other is a mere ride-along.
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(((jerry fodor))). sad!
Dennett states that Fodor’s discussion of Gould and Lewontin’s spandrel argument misrepresents that argument, stating “that far from suggesting an alternative to adaptationism, the very concept of a spandrel depends on there being adaptations”.
“[t]he rival mechanisms Fodor cites are supplements to natural selection, not replacements”, and that “Evo-devo is not an alternative to adaptation; rather, it is a way to explain how the genes mechanistically produce adaptations.”
Blackburn writes that “His problem is fortunately quite easily solved […] Two traits may be found together in nature, but one can play a causal role in producing a reproductive advantage, when the other does not.”
The evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne describes this book as “a profoundly misguided critique of natural selection”[21] and “as biologically uninformed as it is strident”.[22]
Because they are prominent in their own fields, some readers may suppose that they are authorities on evolution who have written a profound and important book. They aren’t, and it isn’t.[23]
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Dennet is incoherent; Coyne says the same things about every challenge to the MS; adaptationism isn’t a coherent hypothesis (see the argument by Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini); regarding Blackburn’s objection: we have minds, NS does not so NS cannot select-for the fitness-enhancing trait or a mere free-rider coextensive with the adaptive trait.
Nevermind the fact that most critics misconstrue the argument. See An Outline of the Fodor & Piattelli-Palmarini Argument Against Natural Selection.
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” Coyne says the same things about every challenge to the MS”
Because all of them rely on speculation and run counter to the majority of evidence that exists.
“Nevermind the fact that most critics misconstrue the argument. See”
That’s absolutely false. That’s a copout used by Fodor to explain his own humiliation. Fodor is no longer taken seriously, he was once considered entertaining and was respected until he showcased a complete lack of understanding in basic Evolutionary Biology, Biochemistry, and even Philosophy.
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The argument presented is conceptual and therefore evidence is irrelevant to the objection.
Nope.
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“therefore evidence is irrelevant to the objection.”
Either way I’ve already proven the argument is wrong conceptually. It misdefines the terms it attempts to denounce, which causes the rest of the argument to fall apart.
“Nope.”
Yup. Fodor is a hack
Deal with it.
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What does it misdefine? Where is the misdefinition in the 12-point argument? There are no “laws for selection-for” and no causal mechanism can do what natural selection claims “selection-for” does therefore NS is not mechanistic Nevermind the fact that NS does not fit neither of the dominant concepts of “mechanism”, therefore NS is not mechanistic since it does not even fit either of the definitions of mechanism.
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“What does it misdefine? Where is the misdefinition in the 12-point argument? There are no “laws for selection-for” and no causal mechanism can do what natural selection claims “selection-for” does therefore NS is not mechanistic Nevermind the fact that NS does not fit neither of the dominant concepts of “mechanism”, therefore NS is not mechanistic since it does not even fit either of the definitions of mechanism.”
I addressed all of this in the other new comment, no need to have two discussions about the same exact thing.
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“There is only one kind of intensionality”
No shit. “Kind” meant in this instance not type
“Any mechanism that can differentiate between coextensive traits, properties, terms, referents, or what-have-you will ipso facto be an intensional mechanism.”
I’m aware, but are you aware that NS is not a mechanism? It’s actually an emergent process. The environment does most of the selecting as you ironically(is that irony?) admitted.
“A phenotype just is a bundle of traits. The mechanism of natural selection is the driving force behind which traits become phenotypic. NS does not act on whole organisms (although it is true that it is organisms and populations of organisms that die or survive). NS selects traits in populations. It is the traits that cause the organism’s fitness. ”
Fitness is just an individual’s ability to reproduce. All traits that comprise an organisms phenotype are coextensive with each other. This effect is a direct consequence of selection occurring on the phenotypic level not on the level of individual traits. Organisms are not modular entities they’re holistic structures. Subsequently you can look at varying frequencies of trait fixation between populations but what is considered a “trait” will always be arbitrary. You can’t actually make a trait objectively commensurable without lowering the fitness advantage that it could potentially gain, and in Unitary organisms like Humans, selection is rarely if ever geared toward singular changes. NS sufficiently explains the advantage of a an adaptive phenotype to a particular environment, but cannot sufficiently explain the advantage of an adaptive trait within a population to a specific environment.
You’re aware that Sexual selection is literally NS with intention right?
“The question isn’t an epistemic one, the question is whether one’s pet theory has the tools available to it to distinguish coextensive traits where only one is a cause of fitness and the other is a mere ride-along.”
That sounds like an epistemic issue…Even then, if it’s not conceptual or empirical, then what significance does it have? We can in fact differentiate between a byproduct and adaptation, Even if NS can’t.So i fail to see how Fodor’s argument is relevant to Evolution.
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Apologies on the length of this comment (I just want to cover my bases)
“I’m aware, but are you aware that NS is not a mechanism?”
Please see E. Mayr “What Evolution is” (2001) – “Darwin didn’t just present ‘a well-thought-out theory of evolution. Most importantly, he also proposed a theory of causation, the theory of natural selection.” Alternatively you could just University of Berkeley’s ‘understanding evolution’ website and click on Natural Selection. The first sentence reads “Natural selection is one of the basic mechanisms of evolution.” See also, Michealis Michael “Evolution By Natural Selection” quoted below – notice the term “mechanism” in the quote.
“The environment does most of the selecting”
Yes, that is the problem. The ecological (exogenous) selection pressures explain in exactly the same way the proliferation of both the fit and the free-rider trait. The flow of causation of evolution is supposed to go through the fit trait. So a mechanism (that explains evolution) that selects for traits based on their fitness must be able to distinguish the casual traits from mere correlates of causal traits. Ecological selectors can’t distinguish these because the magnitude of proliferation of both traits relative to ecological selectors is exactly the same. In other words, can exogenous selectors break coextensions? Answer: No. why? For the simple reason that whatever story is told by reference to exogenous selection pressures in order to explain one trait can equally be told to explain the other so long as both traits are linked. From the outside of the organism both situations look exactly the same. The mechanism cannot tell the fit from the free-rider. In philosophical jargon: extensions don’t determine intensions.
“All traits that comprise an organisms phenotype are coextensive with each other.”
Exactly! This is what makes Fodor’s argument effective. His argument doesn’t just apply to a few cases (as some critics suggest). Rather, as Fodor himself has pointed out numerous times, the argument is completely general since all traits that belong to a creature’s phenotype are ipso facto correlated with fitness. Correlation isn’t just happening occasionally, it happens all the time because every trait of a phenotype is thereby correlated with any and all other traits of the phenotype.
“This effect is a direct consequence of selection occurring on the phenotypic level not on the level of individual traits.”
This is just plain wrong. It is variation in traits (not whole phenotypes) in conjunction with differential reproduction (caused largely by ecological variables) that determine which traits get passed along to the next generation and eventually become phenotypic – See again, Berkeley’s “Understanding Evolution” website. The beetles with the trait of a green shell get gobbled up while the beetles with the brown shell trait survive and pass along this trait to the next generation. Selection here, isn’t acting on the beetles whole phenotype (since this would include a multitude of other traits), rather, the selection pressures (predation) are acting on the individual trait of shell colour.
“That sounds like an epistemic issue…Even then, if it’s not conceptual or empirical, then what significance does it have? We can in fact differentiate between a byproduct and adaptation, Even if NS can’t.So i fail to see how Fodor’s argument is relevant to Evolution.”
Fodor’s argument is not about what WE can know. Hence, the argument is not an epistemic one. Epistemology is about knowledge. Fodor’s argument is a conceptual argument. The argument is about the structure of TNS and the explanatory power (or lack thereof) of TNS. Remember, Fodor is jumping up and down on two points: 1) There IS a fact of the matter about which traits cause fitness. and 2) There is nothing stopping us from finding out (knowing) which traits cause fitness. There are all kinds of ways that we can find out which traits are causes of fitness and which are correlates of causes of fitness. Fodor’s point is that we don’t (and indeed can’t) use TNS to tell us which are causes and which are correlates of causes because TNS can’t say anything different about either one.
Notice that Natural Selection is supposed to be an explanatory theory. It is supposed to explain why we see creatures with the phenotypic traits that they have. As Michaelis Michael writes in ‘Evolution by Natural Selection’: “the whole point of natural selection is to provide an explanation, a mechanism that can explain the sorts of change associated with the two phenomena Darwin tried to explain: the variation and degree of adaption manifested by the biological world.” (Notice in passing, the term “mechanism”). The flow of causation of evolution is supposed to go through the fit trait. So a mechanism (that explains evolution) that selects for traits based on their fitness must be able to distinguish the casual traits from mere correlates of causal traits. Ecological selectors can’t distinguish these because the magnitude of proliferation of both traits relative to ecological selectors is exactly the same. What could distinguish the trait that is a cause of fitness from the trait that is a correlate of a cause of fitness? A mechanism that either has a mind, or makes use of nomological laws. There is neither mind in evolution nor laws of selection. So a mechanism that filters by ecological pressure cannot distinguish the cause of fitness from mere correlates of causes of fitness.
Put another way: If the theory is going to be a causal explanatory theory of phenotypic trait fixation, then it needs to be sensitive to causes vs correlates. The theory (and the selection pressures posited by the theory) need to offer a different explanation for the fixation of fit traits, than it does for correlates of fit traits. But as I have explained above (and in a different comment), exogenous selection pressures can’t provide a different explanation. So the theory, as it is currently formulated, cannot explain phenotypic trait fixation. (I suspect Fodor is correct in that we cannot have a fully generalizable scientific theory of trait fixation, rather what we have is individual causal histories of how certain traits become fixated in certain creatures in certain ecologies).
I want to put Fodor’s argument one further time in a slightly different way before ending this comment:
TNS is supposed to be an explanatory theory. More importantly, NS is supposed to be the causal mechanism that explains why phenotypes (bundles of traits) and the creatures that have them proliferate. So TNS says something about causation rather than simply correlation. If you don’t have “selection for,” then you don’t have a way to differentiate between coexstensive traits where only one is a cause of fitness (In other words, you don’t have a way to differentiate between cause and correlation). If you don’t differentiate between which trait is selected for being a cause of fitness and which is a free-rider, then you don’t have a mechanism (or theory) that explains phenotypic distribution in virtue of fitness (since NS is supposed to explain the traits that become part of the phenotype). So, TNS must presuppose “selection for.” The problem is that a causal mechanism that requires or makes use of “selection for” (or in other words, a causal mechanism that is intensional with an ‘S’ such that it can differentiate between coexstensive properties, traits, predicates, referents, etc.) needs to appeal either to (a) a mind, or (b) nomological laws…. and there is neither of these at the biological level. So TNS cannot cash the kind of causal mechanism it needs to cash in order for NS to do that thing it purports to do (explain phenotypic variation across species and ecologies).
One final point, Fodor isn’t attacking evolution. Fodor’s argument is only against the structure and explanatory power of Natural Selection as it is currently formulated in the neo-darwinian or new-synthesis traditions.
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“Apologies on the length of this comment (I just want to cover my bases)”
No worries I’ve had to deal with much longer and more superfluous responses in the past. I feel as though I should cation when covering your bases, because you may be obfuscating the issue at hand.
“Please see E. Mayr”
You’re misunderstanding. I know how evolution works, which is precisely why i am saying it is not a mechanism. Environment and the organisms are the mechanisms that create changes in phenotype variation over time. That Entire process is called evolution.
“The beetles with the trait of a green shell get gobbled up while the beetles with the brown shell trait survive and pass along this trait to the next generation. Selection here, isn’t acting on the beetles whole phenotype (since this would include a multitude of other traits),”
You need to ask yourself two questions, which then may clear some of your misconceptions:
1) How are genes inherited?
2) Why are are all traits in an organism coextensive?
In reality all traits are selected, just some are less so than to others. A beetle with a brown shell is not adaptive in that context if it also has a genetic abnormality that causes it to be missing legs.
“There is neither mind in evolution nor laws of selection”
Well I consider reproduction a law of selection. So Sexual selection(a type of NS) appeases both conditions.
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“You’re misunderstanding. I know how evolution works, which is precisely why i am saying it is not a mechanism. Environment and the organisms are the mechanisms that create changes in phenotype variation over time.”
While evolution isn’t itself a mechanism, the processes that drive evolution (one of which, and the most important, is Natural Selection) are mechanisms. Indeed, they have to be if we subscribe to the scientific materialist world view (which I take is common ground in this discussion). The theory of Natural Selection is a mechanistic theory which posits ecological selection pressures as the determiners of fitness. See the following:
https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/evo_25
https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/darwin/evolution-today/how-does-natural-selection-work/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection
https://synergy.st-andrews.ac.uk/bellpet/about/natural-selection/
All of the above links specifically designate natural selection as a mechanism. There isn’t anything else for natural selection to be but a mechanism.
“1) How are genes inherited?”
The argument doesn’t turn on how genes are inherited. All that matters to Fodor’s argument is just that some genes are inherited.
“2) Why are all traits in an organism coextensive?”
Again, it doesn’t matter to the argument why (“how”rather than “why” is the more apt term here) all traits in an organism are coexstensive. The fact that they are follows from the definition of coextensive. Fodor’s argument rears its head so long as there is coexstensive traits.
“In reality all traits are selected, just some are less so than to others.”
Again, it is true that all traits are selected (no one is denying this), but the Darwinian thesis says that some traits are “selected for” being causes of fitness. Alternatively you can say that some traits are “selected against” but “selection against” is also intensional so it won’t help circumvent Fodor’s argument. A theory which purports to give the mechanism which explains trait fixation in virtue of fitness needs to be able to distinguish (offer different explanations for) those traits that are the fitness causing traits, from the merely correlated free-riding traits. An explanation via exogenous selection pressures can’t distinguish the fit from the free-rider because the magnitude of correlation is the same for both, and the exogenous selectors only have access to correlation. Now if there was a mind in the mechanism, so to speak, as there is with artificial selection, then there would be no issue because the selection vs selection-for distinction would be cashed through the intentions of the mind/breeder. Obviously we don’t want a mind here so lets move on to the second option:
Laws of selection.
Reproduction isn’t a nomological (necessary ) law. It is hugely contingent whether or not an organism can reproduce. The kind of laws that would meet the criteria are laws specifiable in the vocabulary of biology that relate phenotypic traits per se to fitness – generalizable laws of the form ‘P1 phenotypes are more likely to be fit than P2 phenotypes,’ or ‘trait 1 causes fitness in ecology E, but trait 2 doesn’t;’ or ‘in ecology E T1’s are selected and T2’s aren’t;’ or ‘trait T in ecology E increases fitness;’ or Fodor’s paradigm example of ‘All else equal, the probability that a t1 wins a competition with a t2 in ecological situation E is p’ or something similar. The trouble is, is that there are no such laws at the biological level; laws about the relative fitness of phenotypes. Laws that specify environmental features and phenotypic features and then quantify over their connections. The reason for thinking there are no such laws (besides the general consensus in the biology literature saying there are no such laws – again see Mayr on this), is that the fitness of given trait for a given creature is massively context sensitive. The trait of having long legs in one ecology might be helpful, while in another ecology the trait might be neutral or deleterious. Indeed, even in the same ecology long-leggedness might be helpful to one kind of creature while being neutral or deleterious to another creature. A law of selection – a law that governs fitness of traits – needs to apply across ecologies and across species; said laws must determine which traits win which competitions in which ecological situation. The point is simply that although leg length may affect fitness; it does not follow that there are laws that determine the fitness of a creature as a function of leg length.
Nomological laws just are intensional entities. If there were nomological laws at the biological level that link ecological variables and their effects on fitness, then a mechanism that can make use of said laws would be sensitive to coexstensive traits. However, as I have just explained, there haven’t been any discovered yet and it doesn’t appear hopeful that there will be anytime soon.
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natural selection is just another way of saying, “genetic change at population level does not happen randomly.”
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There is still the problem of free-riders.
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no!
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Why?
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“(one of which, and the most important, is Natural Selection) are mechanisms. ”
Natural selection is a kind of evolution, the mechanism is still Ecological factors, not NS. NS is a process because it cannot occur without the final result.
“The argument doesn’t turn on how genes are inherited. All that matters to Fodor’s argument is just that some genes are inherited.
“2) Why are all traits in an organism coextensive?”
Again, it doesn’t matter to the argument why (”
Those were not to be responded too separately, I’m afraid you’ve missed the point.
It actually maters an lot “why” or “how” traits are coextensive. I understand the the level of selection within Evolutionary biology is a controversial subject, but Darwin(who Fodor is specifically criticizing) clearly endorsed the idea of selection on the individual level, not a trait specific one. NS Explanatory power is not diminished in the lightest because it’s purpose was never to sufficiently (important fucking word here) explain trait variation. In fact it only needs to explain phenotypes made by exogenous factors. Coextensiveness is untenable without selection occurring on that level. It’s literally impossible. This is also why there is no difference between selected and selected for. All traits have been selected for. Selection is just reproduction. This is why i called it a law because it is the only condition of selection. Sober(2010) had a good refutation on the supposed nonexistence of selection laws:
This is a poor argument. The gravitational force now acting on the earth depends on the mass of the sun, the moon, the stars, and everything else. It does not follow that there are no laws of gravity, only that the laws need to have numerous placeholders. FP may object to this analogy because it is always the mass of these various objects and their distances from the earth that are relevant to the gravitational force that the earth experiences. My reply is that this makes no difference. The fact that an effect has numerous complexly interacting causes does not show that there are no laws about this complex cause-effect relation. Context sensitivity is no argument for lawlessness.
https://sci-hub.tw/https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/656020?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
I suggest you read his refutation of it. Also I’,m not sure why you’ve been ignoring my point about SS as a type of NS with intention behind trait variation?
Since organisms cannot be coextensive there is no intensionality present.
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“Natural selection is a kind of evolution, the mechanism is still Ecological factors, not NS. NS is a process because it cannot occur without the final result.”
This comment is so hopelessly confused that I really don’t know where to begin. Note that in the academic biology literature NS is clearly understood to be a mechanism. It is a mechanistic process (it has to be if we are all good naturalists here). If you can’t accept this, then there isn’t much point arguing with Fodor or proponents of his argument. Ecological factors are part of natural selection, not something separate from it. And x isn’t a process because it cannot occur without a final result. Many processes don’t have final results. So I am not sure what you mean by the last sentence.
“Those were not to be responded too separately, I’m afraid you’ve missed the point.”
Perhaps I did. That would be a shame. But then again, its not at all clear how the point is relevant to Fodor’s argument.
“selection on the individual level, not a trait specific one.”
This is a common mistake. Selection acts on phenotypes. Phenotypes just are an organisms physical traits. The central precept of natural selection is that variation exists in a population and that because certain individuals (with certain traits) are better at staying alive, they have a better chance of surviving and are more efficient at passing on their genes (the expression of which are traits). Over the course of generations, natural selection can cause directional change in a trait, favor the extremes in a trait, or reduce variation in the population. Two of the basic assumptions of natural selection are that variation in a trait is possible, and that a given expression of a trait is able to be inherited.
“Explanatory power is not diminished in the lightest because it’s purpose was never to sufficiently (important fucking word here) explain trait variation. In fact it only needs to explain phenotypes made by exogenous factors.”
And it won’t be able to explain phenotypes made by exogenous factors if it can’t explain traits of the phenotypes that are selected-for. TNS certainly is proposed as the (mechanistic) explanation for the fixation of phenotypic traits (this is not up for debate among biologists – it is widely accepted in the literature). Again, if you can’t accept this, then there isn’t much point engaging Fodor’s argument.
“This is also why there is no difference between selected and selected for. All traits have been selected for.”
I gave a couple of examples regarding the difference between selection and selection-for already. Moreover, if NS “selected for” everything such that there was no difference between traits merely selected and traits selected for their being a cause of fitness, then this would mean that, according to NS, the heart was selected for making thump-thump noises just as it was (or in the same way) as the heart was selected for pumping blood. But then the whole idea that fitness enhancing traits will be more likely to proliferate comes crashing down because everything is going to be selected for.
Regarding Sober’s “refutation,” I will just let Fodor answer this:
“Actually what he says is not that are such laws, but that we haven’t shown that there aren’t. And indeed we haven’t. Since the issue is entirely empirical, there’s no question of demonstrative arguments on either side. There are, however, straws in the wind, and we think they’re blowing our way.Here are two reasons for doubting that there are laws of evolution. The first is that there seem to be no examples of such laws. That is easily explained on the assumption that, in fact, there are no such laws. The second is that, if there were laws of evolution,they would have to be horrendously complicated. A long tradition of modeling evolution has identified at least the following factors, among others: effective population size,density-dependent selection, drift with or without selection, migration, gene flow and horizontal transmission, the diffusion of neutral mutations, mutational bias, biased gene conversion, differentials in fertility, sexual selection, variable sex ratios, the overlap of fertile generations, the fixation of deleterious alleles, phenotypic plasticity, and various kinds of epistasis (gene-gene interactions). Sober says (rightly) that complexity isn’t, in and of itself, an argument against the putative laws. But the kind of complexity that laws of evolution would require is, we think, without precedent in the other sciences. First of all, laws of evolution would have to take into consideration interactions at vastly heterogeneous levels: molecule to molecule, gene to gene, gene to cell, cell to cell,developmental module to developmental module, tissue to tissue, organism to organisms of the same species, organism to organisms of different species, and all these to the local ecology. The heterogeneity concerns both sheer size (from Angstroms to miles) and the conceptualization of the relevant kinds.”
Now read/insert Sober’s quote that you gave above…. and Fodor’s response:
“Well, of course there are laws of gravity; principally that the gravitational force between objects varies directly with their total mass and inversely with the square of their distance. Notice, however, that this law is quite simple; in particular, it has no ‘placeholders’ for the sun, the moon, the Earth or anything else except the masses and distances of the objects involved. That’s why the law of gravity would be unaffected even if there weren’t the sun, the moon, or the earth. What goes on when explanations appeal to laws is something like this: there are variables for relevant properties of things that fall under the laws; and there are specifications of the “initial conditions” in some domain to which the laws apply. Neither the moon nor its mass gets mentioned by the laws of gravity; but both do get mentioned in specifying the conditions that obtain when the theory of gravity is used to predict the gravitational force between (eg.) the moon and the earth. In consequence, the laws of gravity have very many fewer “place holders” than there are things in the universe to which they apply. We won’t argue for this view; but please take our word for it that a lot depends on getting it straight.So now the question arises whether this picture is plausible for the (putative)evolutionary laws of trait fixation. We think it pretty clearly isn’t; not, however, because there are very many creatures to which the laws would have to apply, and very many environmental features with which such creatures may interact. Rather, it’s because of the awesome heterogeneity of levels and kinds we have mentioned, and of the ways in which interactions of creatures with their environment depend on what kind of creature it is and what kind of environment it is interacting with. As we saw two paragraphs back,laws don’t need place-holders for each thing that falls under them, but they do need placeholders for each kind of thing that falls under them.
To make the point slightly differently, there are typically many kinds of creatures that can share an environment, and many kinds of environments that creatures can share.(We’re told that more than ten thousand species share Central Park). That being so, the putative laws that determine fitness as a function of such interactions would have to be complicated in precisely the way that the laws of gravity are not: They would need “placeholders” for each of the kind of creatures that they apply to and for each kind of environment that the creatures can interact with. And, to repeat, though the number of things a law applies to doesn’t determine how many placeholders it needs, how many kinds of things it applies to does. Given all that, could there be such laws about how creature/environment interactions determine fitness? In principle, sure there could. But are there such laws? We think the probability is asymptotically close to nil. The kind of complexity that does tell against a putative law is the kind that proliferates kinds beyond necessity.”
“Also I’m not sure why you’ve been ignoring my point about SS as a type of NS with intention behind trait variation?”
Organisms (humans in artificial selection aside) don’t intend for certain traits to be passed along. If animals have intentions, the intentions are probably rather primitive like the intention to mate. The content of the intention needs to specify which of the coexstensive traits were the ones intended to be passed along (which are the fit) from the traits that come along for the ride. An animals intention to mate won’t help. Given that you have raised this as a possible answer to Fodor’s argument, says to me that you don’t really understand the argument, since if you did understand the argument, you would see that an animals intention to mate won’t help distinguish between coexstansive traits (compare this intention, with a humans intention (in artificial selection) selecting for a shot snout in a dog, but this comes along with a fluffy tale – the intention for short snout distinguish’s what is selected-for from the free riding fluffy tale).
Out of interest, here is a discussion between Fodor and Sober on the book/argument. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKVwg5pxmIM&t=79s
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so you look at allele frequencies or frequencies of whatever variations in the genome for a population over time and you look at mutations at the individual level.
what you will find is…
anus 1. the frequencies do NOT change according a uniform distribution nor any random variable’s distribution.
anus 2. de novo mutations will have a near uniform distribution across the chromosome.
sorry i had to put “anus” before the numbers or they’d be deleted.
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“This comment is so hopelessly confused that I really don’t know where to begin.”
You can begin by dropping the pretentious and belittling tone. I don’t care what the literature says, that is not an argument in your favor.
“Ecological factors are part of natural selection, not something separate from it. And x isn’t a process because it cannot occur without a final result. Many processes don’t have final results. So I am not sure what you mean by the last sentence.”
Again you’ve missed the point. NS is a process because it has multiple parts. It’s emergent.
“This is a common mistake. ”
No. The only condition of selection is Reproduction. An arm cannot reproduce. You’re confusing how NS actually works with how Scientists compartmentalize it.
“I gave a couple of examples regarding the difference between selection and selection-for already”
No you haven’t. You don’t know whether “yellow legs” were selected for.
“Now read/insert Sober’s quote that you gave above…. and Fodor’s response:”
I don’t think you actually read Sober’s response. Fodor’s reply misses the point. It’s an argument from ignorance, god of the gaps, irreducible complexity. Context sensitivity does not imply that there are no laws.
“But then the whole idea that fitness enhancing traits will be more likely to proliferate comes crashing down because everything is going to be selected for.”
No, because some traits are more selected for than others. Select for is not a with or without phenomena.
” says to me that you don’t really understand the argument, since if you did understand the argument, you would see that an animals intention to mate won’t help distinguish between coexstansive traits (compare this intention, with a humans intention (in artificial selection) selecting for a shot snout in a dog, but this comes along with a fluffy tale”
I don’t think you understand the criticism. Sexual selection is when an organism intentionally mates with another that has a specific trait. In this instance the selection has intentionality behind it. Sexual selection is a type of NS.
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Apologies on the wait for a reply. Have been hard at work at law school.
“You can begin by dropping the pretentious and belittling tone.”
I do apologize if you take it to be such. But when you go on to say: “I don’t care what the literature says,” It is hard to take your comments seriously.
“that is not an argument in your favor.”
It most certainly is. Having scientific literature back up ones claims certainly is a point in ones’ favour. At least, if it isn’t a point in my favour, you haven’t shown it to be so.
“NS is a process because it has multiple parts. It’s emergent.”
Sure it’s a process. But importantly, it is a mechanistic process – this isn’t up for debate among biologists nor philosophers of science. Moreover, just because something has multiple parts it doesn’t make that thing a process. A pair of jeans has multiple parts, but a pair of jeans isn’t a process. Adding that it’s emergent doesn’t help either.
No.
Out of interest (perhaps this is piece of psychology), but the reason you make this mistake is probably because, by your own admission, you “don’t care what the literature says.” Perhaps if you changed this attitude, then less mistakes would be made on your part.
“An arm cannot reproduce.”
No one is saying that an arm can reproduce champ.
“You’re confusing how NS actually works with how Scientists compartmentalize it.”
Such a confusion is highly improbable. I took how NS works by reference to the relevant academic literature (again see Mayr and Michael to name just two). If there is a confusion, please point it out to both me, and of course, to them as well (while your at it, you may as well write a book telling every other biologist and philosopher of science about their confusion regarding how NS works).
“No you haven’t.”
Do please re-read the above conversation. However, I will also give another example. If I “select” a green bottle, and all and only green bottles contain beer, then I thereby “select” beer. But if I “select for” a green bottle, this does not entail that I “select for” beer. The difference between “selects” and “selects for” (or between extension and intension) is a matter of logic.
“You don’t know whether “yellow legs” were selected for.”
Again, the argument is not about what I or anyone else knows. The argument is not an epistemological argument. The argument is about the explanatory power of the theory (and the processes posited by the theory). The argument being that since the processes of NS can only make good on the notion of “selection” and not “selection for,” then the theory cannot discriminate between the explanatory outcome from the redundant correlated (co-extensively linked) outcome. Ergo, it cannot explain the proliferation of traits in virtue of fitness compared to the ride along traits. Essentially “selection,” and so the processes posited by the theory of natural selection, are not sensitive to differences in explanatory power.
“Context sensitivity does not imply that there are no laws.”
Fodor explained this point to Sober in their discussion which I linked. However, I will also explain it to you. The point about complex sensitivity turns on a underlying point: In order to have laws (or even a law) of selection you would have to be able to pick features of the context or ecology and features of the phenotype such that in general, or most of the time, or strictly (depending on how you view these laws), if you get one feature, then you get the other (better yet if and only if you get one, then you get the other). In other words, you need an appropriate taxonomy of both the environment/ecology (not to confuse the two) and phenotype such that you get the counterfactual or bi-conditional support. Again, no biologist (or anyone for that matter) thinks that there are such relationships. The question is just whether you think ever finding such laws, given the heterogeneity (hence complex sensitivity) of phenotypes and environments, is likely. And so far, it is appears to be highly unlikely.
“No, because some traits are more selected for than others. Select for is not a with or without phenomena.”
None of this makes any sense to me. Please do elucidate your view here.
“I don’t think you understand the criticism. Sexual selection is when an organism intentionally mates with another that has a specific trait.”
Unless the animal in question has an intention to pass on a specific trait to its offspring (something that as far as we know, only humans have), then this won’t help. Again, the content of the intention is important. And even if such an intention in animals was found, it is not clear this would help defeat Fodor’s argument since it is the mechanism itself that needs to have an intention – in other words, there needs to be an intention somewhere in the theory of evolution that distinguishes the fitness enhancing traits from the correlates in order to give the required explanatory power. Unless you want to go the creationist route, this kind of intention is ruled out.
Remember that Darwin tried to give a theory about what all instances of adaptation have in common. The trouble is that, when you do this level of abstraction with extensional processes you land up with a vacuous theory. This seems to stand apart from the logical point that you cannot posit extensional processes in order to explain an intensional phenomena. Although I could be wrong on this last point regarding the “this seems to stand apart” – they may actually flow from one to the other.
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“But when you go on to say: “I don’t care what the literature says,” It is hard to take your comments seriously.”
That’s funny, I tend not to take people seriously when they lack the ability to think for themselves. It takes considerable levels of ignorance to not provide any reasoning for accepting a definition other than “this guy said so”.
Exogenous factors are some of the mechanisms of trait variation. The entire process is called NS.
“Having scientific literature back up ones claims certainly is a point in ones’ favour. ”
It’s not an empirical matter.
“Out of interest (perhaps this is piece of psychology), but the reason you make this mistake is probably because, by your own admission, you “don’t care what the literature says.””
I caution you to not make the same mistake as RR and assume that when someone disagrees with something in the literature, it means they have not read it. I’d hate to see you embarrass yourself like he has lately.
“No one is saying that an arm can reproduce champ. I took how NS works by reference to the relevant academic literature. None of this makes any sense to me. Please do elucidate your view here.”
I’ll go ahead and try to explain what you’re clearly not understanding.
Saying a trait is selected or selected for and another is not, is a nonsensical statement. In a successfully reproducing organism all of it’s traits have been selected because they have all been passed down to the offspring. Now, some traits over time go under more change than others, hence why Selection for is relative, not absolute. This is also why you get confused at the terminology Scientists use, when describing trait variation. You assume they’re agreeing with you, in reality, you don’t actually understand the context of what they’re saying. Words aren’t things.
Fodor’s argument is not hard to understand. My criticism of it is. I’m more concerned with his misconceptions on Evolution in general and his subsequently false premises than I am with his conclusions. I actually agree with his conclusion to an extent.
“Do please re-read the above conversation.”
I’m not sure why. i didn’t miss anything the first time.
“The question is just whether you think ever finding such laws, given the heterogeneity (hence complex sensitivity) of phenotypes and environments, is likely. And so far, it is appears to be highly unlikely.”
Exactly, it’s an argument from ignorance. Which was Sober’s whole point.
“Unless the animal in question has an intention to pass on a specific trait to its offspring”
The reason doesn’t actually matter.
” it is not clear this would help defeat Fodor’s argument since it is the mechanism itself that needs to have an intention”
Hahaha, organisms are one of the mechanisms of SS and NS
“The trouble is that, when you do this level of abstraction with extensional processes you land up with a vacuous theory”
But of course in the end there is still a giant “so what” hanging over all of this. As you admitted already, this criticism doesn’t actually cause issues for NS or evolutionary theory in general because we do in fact have methods of formulating accurate adaptionist theories. So what is the significance?
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“It takes considerable levels of ignorance to not provide any reasoning for accepting a definition other than “this guy said so””
It isn’t so much that “this guy said so” it’s more so the combination that the argument presented is logically valid and, so far, no one has shown it to be unsound. It doesn’t matter who “said so” what matters is the persuasiveness of the content of the thing said/argument presented.
“Exogenous factors are some of the mechanisms of trait variation. The entire process is called NS.”
There we go. You are starting to make sense. This is in contradiction to your previous comments. Fodor’s argument is against the large reliance on exogenous selectors.
“It’s not an empirical matter.”
Your equivocating. Fodor’s argument is not empirical. But what the scientific literature says/describes TNS is/as, is an empirical claim.
“and assume that when someone disagrees with something in the literature, it means they have not read it.”
It’s the fact that you “don’t care what the literature says” that’s troubling. Don’t confuse reading literature with caring about the content of the literature.
“Saying a trait is selected or selected for and another is not, is a nonsensical statement.”
Really? Tell that to Darwin as well as the vast majority of biologists. Remember the central thesis is that certain traits are selected for being causes of fitness. Again, your views are in stark contradiction to modern day biology. Moreover, check out the definition of “nonsensical.” As far as I can tell, the syntax and semantics of the proposition “one trait is selected for and the other is not” is perfectly correct and thereby certainly makes sense (such a statement is also verifiable, if you want to hold a logical positivist criteria of intelligibility). By saying that such a proposition/statement is nonsensical you are denying basic propositional/sentential logic. Next you will be denying the validity of a modus ponens.
“In a successfully reproducing organism all of it’s traits have been selected because they have all been passed down to the offspring.”
Great. no one is denying this.
“Now, some traits over time go under more change than others”
Also fine.
“hence why Selection for is relative, not absolute.”
Not sure what you mean by this. But lets suppose you are right. Besides drawing a distinction between selection and selection-for thereby making the proposition “one trait is selected for and the other is not” perfectly sensical (so contradicting your earlier statement), this doesn’t actually go to addressing Fodor’s argument.
“This is also why you get confused at the terminology Scientists use, when describing trait variation. You assume they’re agreeing with you, in reality, you don’t actually understand the context of what they’re saying.”
Some rhetorical posturing here. Not much substance. Yet to see how anything said here is actually correct.
“Words aren’t things.”
Well they might be if you’re a Platonist. Thankfully I am not, so I can agree with you on this. Again, not sure what point this makes against Fodor’s argument.
“Fodor’s argument is not hard to understand.”
Odd considering you have failed to understand it.
“false premises”
Which one(s) is false?
“I actually agree with his conclusion to an extent.”
Please, do share.
“it’s an argument from ignorance”
It’s not an argument! It’s just a question of whether one thinks its likely to have laws of selection. That isn’t an argument. The thoughts regarding heterogeneity and complexity are suppose to motivate the position that it is unlikely there are such laws. And again, the consensus in the biology literature is that there are no law of selection.
“Hahaha, organisms are one of the mechanisms of SS and NS”
The point seems to be over your head. Unless there is some hand of God guiding the evolutionary process, then the required intentional agent in the mechanism of natural selection by which evolution occurs is not present. That is the point. Saying that organisms are one of the mechanisms of SS and NS doesn’t help. It doesn’t even begin to get you to an intentional agent guiding the evolutionary processes and the distribution of phenotypic traits. Compare this (mother nature) with artificial selection where this is a mind controlling the process and selecting for the traits (the breeder). There is no gardener or breeder in nature. Mother nature isn’t an agent who has intentions.
But of course in the end there is still a giant “so what” hanging over all of this. As you admitted already, this criticism doesn’t actually cause issues for NS or evolutionary theory in general because we do in fact have methods of formulating accurate adaptionist theories. So what is the significance?
It isn’t just a “so what” (again throwing doubt that you understand Fodor’s argument). The argument does cause issues for the explanatory power of TNS. In other words, the argument causes problems if TNS is supposed to be considered a scientific theory (with predictive power, counterfactual support, and that generalizes over the phenomenon the theory purports to explain – generalizability of explanation over the phenomenon is the first thing you want in a scientific theory), rather than just individual post-hoc causal stories (AKA natural history). If Fodor is right, TNS isn’t a scientific theory and its unlikely there could be such a theory of phenotypic trait fixation (TNS is vacuous and the best we can hope for is good old fashioned natural history).
The criticism about building a theory on the level of abstraction that Darwin tried to do is analogous to the criticisms leveled against Skinnerian learning theory.
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Philosopher Roger Sansom writes in his book Ingenious Genes that “… evolution … [is] not law-like in any widely recognized way” (pg 20).
Philosopher Michael Ruse writes in his book The Philosophy of Human Evolution (pg 16) “More precisely, Darwin tried to make reasonable or common sensical the very fact of evolution — all organisms have a common descent by natural processes from one or just a few simple forms — and at the same time provide a mechanism of change that speaks to final cause this mechanism being something Darwin called “natural selection.”
“… we know that he became an evolutionist and discovered the mechanism for which he is famous, natural selection, in the late 1830s… (Ruse, 2012: 16)
“… Darwin introduced his main mechanism of natural selection.” (Ruse, 2012: 18)
NS is clearly seen as a mechanism by Darwin and his contemporaries.
It doesn’t matter if Melo doesn’t think that NS is a mechanism. Fodor’s argument addresses, and successfully refutes, both Darwin’s original idea and the further neo-Darwinian Modern Synthesis.
Traits are coextensive. When they are coextensive selection cannot act on T over T’, since that implies a mind or laws of selection. Neither exist. Therefore NS cannot explain why organisms have the traits they do.
Saying that organisms can’t be coextensive doesn’t address anything that Bucky wrote. Melo’s pontification that NS is not a mechanism is irrelevant; NS is proposed to be a mechanism to explain trait fixation and speciation. Though Fodor’s argument shows how the structure of NS is not logically valid. Fodor agrees that organisms are “selected”, what he disagrees with is the claim that NS explains trait fixation and that NS can choose between coextensive traits (that it can choose between counterfactuals. It can’t).
I suggest you read What Darwin Got Wrong, because it’s addressed there.
Yes there is. Bucky gave at least four examples.
NS is not an explanatory mechanism. It does not explain biological trait fixation.
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“it’s more so the combination that the argument presented is logically valid and, so far, no one has shown it to be unsound. ”
What argument? No argument has ever been produced for NS being a mechanism for trait fixation. NS is trait fixation caused by exogenous variables. It’s nonsensical to say: “trait fixation caused by exogenous factors causes trait fixation”. Therefore, NS is a process, it’s literally just a name for a phenomena we witness.
“There we go. You are starting to make sense. This is in contradiction to your previous comments.”
No it’s not. I’ve been saying the same thing this whole time.
“But what the scientific literature says/describes TNS is/as, is an empirical claim.”
I’m not equivocating anything. No empirical evidence could suggest NS is a mechanism, nor that it’s main object of selection is traits. That itself is a priori truth from the definition of NS. Since reproduction is the only law of selection, traits cannot be selected, and saying it’s a mechanism is a tautology.
“Not sure what you mean by this. But lets suppose you are right”
How would you understand the implications if you can’t even grasp what I’m saying?
“Besides drawing a distinction between selection and selection-for thereby making the proposition “one trait is selected for and the other is not” perfectly sensical (so contradicting your earlier statement), this doesn’t actually go to addressing Fodor’s argument.”
Not so fast. The relativity doesn’t make any sort of distinction. All selected traits are also selected for, because selection acts upon whole organisms, which is what I mean by “arms cannot reproduce”. The purpose of this point is that it demonstrates 1) how flimsy Fodor’s argument is. It stands on subjective semantics and not actual truths. and 2)Organisms cannot be coextentsive to one another. This refutes his argument, but i’ll explain that at the bottom.
“Some rhetorical posturing here.”
What do you mean by “posturing”? I was simply explaining why you’re confused.
” Again, not sure what point this makes against Fodor’s argument.”
Seriously? His entire argument comes from his confusion between how NS works and how Scientists compartmentalize it.
“Odd considering you have failed to understand it.”
No. Judging from how your responses are either misguided arguments from authority or ignorant questions, I think it’s more likely you haven’t actually understood any of my points.
“It’s not an argument! It’s just a question of whether one thinks its likely to have laws of selection.”
It’d be impossible for there not to be. As all Biological systems come from physical ones.
“That isn’t an argument. The thoughts regarding heterogeneity and complexity are suppose to motivate the position that it is unlikely there are such laws. And again, the consensus in the biology literature is that there are no law of selection.”
That is an argument, a poor one to be specific. The laws do exist, whether we have actually attempted to flesh out these laws and add them to Evolutionary theory is a whole another story. So it’s false to say there are no laws. I’d hate to argue this way, but he started the overt semantics and unfortunately it’s his grave.
“The point seems to be over your head. Saying that organisms are one of the mechanisms of SS and NS doesn’t help. ”
How ironic. It completely circumvents the problem. Organisms have intentions for trait selection. It’s not hard to understand. Except maybe for you.
“It isn’t just a “so what” (again throwing doubt that you understand Fodor’s argument). The argument does cause issues for the explanatory power of TNS. In other words, the argument causes problems if TNS is supposed to be considered a scientific theory (with predictive power, counterfactual support, and that generalizes over the phenomenon the theory purports to explain – generalizability of explanation over the phenomenon is the first thing you want in a scientific theory), rather than just individual post-hoc causal stories (AKA natural history).”
I don’t believe NS is a theory or a mechanism, which is where I agree with Fodor, but the way he is lead to this conclusion is riddled with errors. We’ve established that Organisms(the object of selection) cannot be coextensive, I figured Fodor understood that, or did he? Reading through his book it become extremely apparent that he is confusing the theory of NS with NS. The actual process is given intensionality by the way we choose to compartmentalize it, but that’s acceptable because we are beings with intentions.
Of course this doesn’t mean NS isn’t vacuous, because it is. But the conclusion of Fodor’s argument is not absolute in the slightest, there is simply no justification for why it should be. NS is not a sufficient explanation but it is still an explanation that we use all the time, and it works perfectly fine. You cannot remove NS from Evolutionary theory. NS Is predictable and it is general, but it’s not specific. It being simply “natural history” doesn’t make it less scientific(look into Clelands’ paper on assymetrical causation and the common cause explanation).
I’ll ask one more time, so what?
RR,
Don’t interrupt, adults are talking.
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“What argument? No argument has ever been produced for NS being a mechanism for trait fixation. NS is trait fixation caused by exogenous variables. It’s nonsensical to say: “trait fixation caused by exogenous factors causes trait fixation”. Therefore, NS is a process, it’s literally just a name for a phenomena we witness.”
It’s been a while. I will reply to the parts of your comments that are worth replying too. Here is a list of sources that all clearly state that natural selection is a mechanism. It is one of the central mechanisms of evolution. If we are all good naturalists, then it has to be a causal mechanism. There isn’t anything else it could be. Sure, it’s a process, but notice, it is a mechanistic process. That is the general consensus anyway. Now there have been debates in the philosophy of science discussing what definition of mechanism fits best with the theory of natural selection (see the debates between Skipper & Millstein, Barros, and Havstad). Since you are hung up on calling it a “process” (without actually giving an account of what you mean by “process”), then I am happy to adopt that terminology. Notice however, that it is still a process, the theory of which, is supposed to explain phenotypic trait fixation. As such, it needs to explain which is selected for in cases of coextensive traits where one trait is a cause of fitness and the other is a correlate of a cause of fitness. As such, Fodor’s objection still applies.
https://www.khanacademy.org/science/biology/her/evolution-and-natural-selection/a/darwin-evolution-natural-selection
https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/evo_25
https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/evo_32
https://evolution-outreach.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1007/s12052-009-0128-1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/natural-selection/
Ernst Mayr, “What Evolution Is” , New York, Basic Books (2001)
Michaelis Michael, “Evolution By Natural Selection” CRC Press (2015)
“I’m not equivocating anything. No empirical evidence could suggest NS is a mechanism, nor that it’s main object of selection is traits. That itself is a priori truth from the definition of NS. Since reproduction is the only law of selection, traits cannot be selected, and saying it’s a mechanism is a tautology.”
Notice that, as a matter of logic, it is not possible for a person to, one at the same time, deny that natural selection is a mechanism while claiming that the statement natural selection is a mechanism is tautological. Further, there is distinction between “empirical evidence showing that the biological literature says that natural selection is a mechanism” versus “empirical evidence showing that natural selection is a mechanism.” I was claiming the former, and so attacking the latter simply misses the point. Finally, there is no reproduction law of selection. Besides being more than a tad bit question begging against Fodor’s position, there is simply no law of reproduction because whether an animal reproduces is contingent.
“Not so fast. The relativity doesn’t make any sort of distinction. All selected traits are also selected for, because selection acts upon whole organisms, which is what I mean by “arms cannot reproduce”. The purpose of this point is that it demonstrates 1) how flimsy Fodor’s argument is. It stands on subjective semantics and not actual truths. and 2) Organisms cannot be coextentsive to one another. This refutes his argument, but i’ll explain that at the bottom.”
I have no idea what you mean by “relativity doesn’t make any sort of distinction.” So, I won’t address it. By saying “all selected traits are also selected for,” then you have completely collapsed TNS. If NS “selected for” everything such that there was no difference between traits merely selected and traits selected for their being a cause of fitness, then this would mean that, according to NS, the heart was selected for making thump-thump noises just as it was (or in the same way) as the heart was selected for pumping blood. But then the whole idea that fitness enhancing traits will be more likely to proliferate comes crashing down because everything is going to be selected for! Finally, it is not up for debate that natural selection acts on the phenotype (it does not act on whole organisms).
“Seriously? His entire argument comes from his confusion between how NS works and how Scientists compartmentalize it.”
This doesn’t appear to be so at all. Nothing you have said, nor any of the criticisms against Fodor by professional biologists or philosophers raise this as an objection.
“It’d be impossible for there not to be. As all Biological systems come from physical ones.”
So, we have gone back 50 years to the view that biology is just “physics plus labels”? Look, obviously there will be a physical explanation of why trait A instead of the coexstensive trait B was selected for (because everything is physical; every event is physical event). The idea is to give a biological explanation. No one doubts evolution is law governed since the laws of physics apply everywhere. What TNS needs are biological laws: laws generalizing over biological kinds. If you really want to reduce your biological explanations to physical explanations, then the biology drops out completely.
“That is an argument, a poor one to be specific. The laws do exist, whether we have actually attempted to flesh out these laws and add them to Evolutionary theory is a whole another story. So it’s false to say there are no laws. I’d hate to argue this way, but he started the overt semantics and unfortunately it’s his grave.”
It is widely accepted in the biological literature that there are no biological laws of selection: laws specified at the biological, as opposed to physical, level (Elliot Sober being the exception, but his “laws” are just mathematical models). What you have claimed is this: “There are laws of selection, but we don’t know what they are, and they haven’t been added to the theory of natural selection or the theory of evolution.” This is bizarre. If we don’t know what the laws are, then there is no reason to suppose there is any laws. Not unless you are miraculously divining them. In which case, please do inform the rest of the biological community!
“How ironic. It completely circumvents the problem. Organisms have intentions for trait selection.”
Organisms do not have any intentions for which traits they pass along. When the Peppered Moth mates it does not intend to pass on its colour. In artificial selection, intentions are relevant since you can ask the breeder, “hey breeder, did you intend to breed for/select-for the fluffy tail or short snout?” The breeder can tell you; you get an explanation of the causal chain. Animals, however, do not intend to pass along certain traits and not others. Similarly, the environment (or Mother Nature) doesn’t have intentions either.
“The actual process is given intensionality by the way we choose to compartmentalize it, but that’s acceptable because we are beings with intentions.”
No, it’s given intensionality by purporting to explain phenotypic trait fixation in virtue of fitness.
“It being simply “natural history” doesn’t make it less scientific”
Uhh, it does make it turn out that it isn’t a scientific theory. Scientific theories are supposed to be generalizable. That is, theories are supposed to generalize over the things the theories purport to explain. Individual causal histories (aka natural history) doesn’t; it doesn’t tell you what all adaptations have in common as such. If the explanation is met in different ways for each case of adaptation, then it is no longer a generalizable explanatory theory: it doesn’t tell you what the common feature of all these cases of adaptations is!
“I’ll ask one more time, so what?”
So what? So, the theory of natural selection isn’t, and cannot be, an explanatory scientific theory of phenotypic trait fixation in virtue of fitness.
Look, the problem is aptly stated: whatever mechanism or, if you like, process, that is working in the world that selects for traits in virtue of fitness, needs to be sensitive to the difference between coexstensive traits. Ecological exogenous selection pressures, aren’t, and cannot be, sensitive to the difference between coexstensive traits. Therefore, a theory which posits ecological selection pressures as the process or mechanism cannot fully explain why traits proliferate in virtue of fitness.
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You clearly don’t understand the point. Trait fixation due to Exogenous factors is what NS is. So it is redundant to say that Trait fixation caused by exogenous factors is the cause of trait fixation. Exogenous factors are the mechanism not NS. This a priori truth regardless of you, Biologists, or Fodor’s ignorant assertions on the matter. NS is a type of evolution not a mechanism of evolution.
“Finally, there is no reproduction law of selection”
A phenotype cannot be selected if the corresponding organism does not reproduce. Evolution is impossible without reproduction.
“I have no idea what you mean by “relativity doesn’t make any sort of distinction.” ”
That doesn’t surprise me. I imagine that if you’re going to “debate” with someone you would pay attention to the actual arguments and points taking place.
“By saying “all selected traits are also selected for,” then you have completely collapsed TNS…. the heart was selected for making thump-thump noises just as it was (or in the same way) as the heart was selected for pumping blood. But then the whole idea that fitness enhancing traits will be more likely to proliferate comes crashing down because everything is going to be selected for! ”
False. The free rider trait having the same valid selection story does not invalidate the fitness causing traits story. Fodor’s thesis is not contradictory but more on the contrary. I think this comment more or less highlights how little you understand Fodor’s critique. It’s not about what we know. I know that pump-pump was selected for not thump-thump. The mechanisms of NS do not. I can point to many examples of “singular” traits changing through time while its coextensive “partners” remain stagnant.
“it does not act on whole organisms”
Yes it does.
“This doesn’t appear to be so at all.”
Hahaha. You might need to reread Fodor’s book.
It’s specifically about how TNS does not match 1:1 with how NS operates in real life. Because Phenotype instead of singular traits are what is selected the same selection story can equally explain both the fitness causing trait and the free rider trait. Despite TNS stating the opposite.
“This is bizarre. If we don’t know what the laws are, then there is no reason to suppose there is any laws. ”
Non-sequitur.
“Organisms do not have any intentions for which traits they pass along. ”
False. I find it hilarious how you’re completely ignoring the existence of Sexual Selection. That’s just intellectually dishonest. Don’t waste my time.
“So, the theory of natural selection isn’t, and cannot be, an explanatory scientific theory of phenotypic trait fixation in virtue of fitness.”
You say that, but none of what you or Fodor have posited so far proves this assertion.
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“Trait fixation due to Exogenous factors is what NS is.”
Correct, as long as you are not arguing that if one trait is causing increased reproductive success, then it just is being selected for.
“So it is redundant to say that Trait fixation caused by exogenous factors is the cause of trait fixation. Exogenous factors are the mechanism not NS.”
No one is saying this.
“A phenotype cannot be selected if the corresponding organism does not reproduce. Evolution is impossible without reproduction.”
Correct. No one is suggesting otherwise.
“That doesn’t surprise me. I imagine that if you’re going to “debate” with someone you would pay attention to the actual arguments and points taking place.”
Right back at ya champ.
“False. The free rider trait having the same valid selection story does not invalidate the fitness causing traits story. Fodor’s thesis is not contradictory but more on the contrary. I think this comment more or less highlights how little you understand Fodor’s critique. It’s not about what we know. I know that pump-pump was selected for not thump-thump. The mechanisms of NS do not. I can point to many examples of “singular” traits changing through time while its coextensive “partners” remain stagnant.”
This is rich coming from you. Notice that in previous comments I had to correct you numerous times on Fodor’s argument. In other words, you didn’t understand Fodor’s argument until I explained it to you. Further, there was no epistemological argument in the comment you are responding to. You were trying to argue that every trait is selected for! This is false, and if it were true, then there would be no distinction between traits that cause fitness and traits that don’t! TNS is the theory that traits are selected for being a cause of fitness.
“It’s specifically about how TNS does not match 1:1 with how NS operates in real life. Because Phenotype instead of singular traits are what is selected the same selection story can equally explain both the fitness causing trait and the free rider trait. Despite TNS stating the opposite.”
You have just proved my point for me. There is no confusion on the part of Fodor regarding the fact that there really are selection pressures that operate to cause phenotypic trait fixation versus the contention that the theory of natural selection cannot explain what it purports to. It’s not Fodor who is confused here, it’s you pal!
“Non-sequitur.”
Bahaha really?? What epistemic standards do you ascribe to? Look, if you are going to claim that X exists, then you better have some justification for it! Don’t say “I’m sure x exists, but I don’t know of any instantiations of x nor do I have any justification for x.”
“False. I find it hilarious how you’re completely ignoring the existence of Sexual Selection. That’s just intellectually dishonest. Don’t waste my time.”
It does not follow from sexual selection to the conclusion that lower organisms intend to pass along certain traits. A creature might be attracted to trait T1 in a mate, it does not begin to follow that the creature intends to pass along any traits to its offspring. Go ask a peacock to represent the relevant counterfactual, then come back and tell me how you made out. Representations of counterfactuals is what is needed here. To take a page out of you book: Don’t waste my time!
“You say that, but none of what you or Fodor have posited so far proves this assertion.”
Fodor’s argument deductively proves it! Look, there is only one way to attack a deductively valid argument: deny a premise and show it is untrue! Until you do this, you really are wasting everyone’s time!
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“Correct, as long as you are not arguing that if one trait is causing increased reproductive success, then it just is being selected for.”
If a trait is the one enhancing fitness then it is being selected for.
“No one is saying this.”
You actually just posted multiple examples of people saying this. Erroneously calling NS a mechanism. Try and keep up.
“Correct. No one is suggesting otherwise.”
You actually did by stating that it is not a law of selection. Unless of course we’re referring to two different instances of laws
” Notice that in previous comments I had to correct you numerous times on Fodor’s argument.”
No you didn’t.
“Further, there was no epistemological argument in the comment you are responding to. ”
If you aren’t making an epistemic argument, then whatever you are saying is highly irrelevant. If I can differentiate between coextensive traits, then it really doesn’t matter.
“You were trying to argue that every trait is selected for”
They are, as every trait is coextensive with one another.
“You have just proved my point for me.”
Ha. You either have very poor short-term memory or difficulties reading. We both agree with Fodors main argument. But we different in the conclusions we reach. I take a more skeptical approach to it. The point of my comment was to highlight how little you know what the implications of his argument are, and you beautifully proved my point with this ignorant reply. So thank you.
““I’m sure x exists, but I don’t know of any instantiations of x nor do I have any justification for x.””
There are physical laws right? So why wouldn’t there be biological laws?
“It does not follow from sexual selection to the conclusion that lower organisms intend to pass along certain traits”
I like green eyes and I intend to mate with a women who has green eyes so that my children will also have green eyes. What do you mean by “lower organisms”?
Furthermore Organisms don’t need the intention to pass the trait along, they only need the intention to select an organismfor reproduction because of the specific trait they have.
“Fodor’s argument deductively proves it! ”
LMAO, no it doesn’t.
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Where’s the error? I don’t remember which premise you deny in Fodor’s argument:
“Selection-for is a causal process.
Actual causal relations aren’t sensitive to counterfactual states of affairs: if it wasn’t the case that A, then the fact that it’s being A would have caused its being B doesn’t explain its being the case that B.
But the distinction between traits that are selected-for and their free-riders turns on the truth (or falsity) of relevant counterfactuals.
So if T and T’ are coextensive, selection cannot distinguish the case in which T free-rides on T’ from the case that T’ free-rides on T.
So the claim that selection is the mechanism of evolution cannot be true.”
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It’s a non sequitur. Even if both stories for the free rider and it’s fitness causing trait are true this doesn’t mean exogenous factors don’t filter phenotypes and thus lead to trait variation. It is “and” rather than “or”. The truth of the former does not contradict the truth of the latter story.
Remember we already know that NS happens. So the error I see is that the conclusion does not follow from the premises no matter if they’re true or not.
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They can’t lead to the FIXATION of traits because NS can’t distinguish.
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It does though. That’s not what under contention here.
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That’s the conclusion of the argument which follows from the premises.
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It doesn’t though.
I’m not sure what you’re confused about.
NS happens. That’s not a debate.
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Traits aren’t selected-for. That’s the heart of the problem.
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Ok? That doesn’t contradict any of my prior statements. I didn’t say traits were selected for.
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Bucky said “So, the theory of natural selection isn’t, and cannot be, an explanatory scientific theory of phenotypic trait fixation in virtue of fitness”
Melo said “You say that, but none of what you or Fodor have posited so far proves this assertion”
The 5-premise argument proves the assertion.
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“If a trait is the one enhancing fitness then it is being selected for.”
And you have reduced natural selection to a definitional truth!! I guess next you will be arguing that John being a bachelor EXPLAINS john being an unmarried man! As Fodor says: “The theory of natural selection claims that a trait’s having been selected for causing reproductive success explains why a creature has it. But then it can’t also claim that ‘a trait was selected for’ means (or IS) that it is a cause of reproductive success. For if it did mean that, then theory of natural selection would reduce to “a trait’s being a cause of reproductive success explains its being a cause of reproductive success” which explains nothing (and isn’t true).”
“You actually just posted multiple examples of people saying this. Erroneously calling NS a mechanism. Try and keep up.”
Calling natural selection a mechanism is not identical to saying that “Trait fixation caused by exogenous factors is the cause of trait fixation.” Go find me a quote from any of those sources which says the aforementioned quoted sentence.
“You actually did by stating that it is not a law of selection. Unless of course we’re referring to two different instances of laws”
Care to explain?
“No you didn’t.”
Umm on August 1st 2018 you said there is “no intensionality in the phrase “select for phenotype,” I corrected you on this silly mistake on August 17th 2018. On August 23 you thought Fodor’s objection was an epistemic issue; I corrected you on this the same day. You also thought that natural selection acts on whole phenotypes (now you are saying it acts on whole organisms – at least try to be consistent?). I have also corrected you multiple times on your position that NS isn’t a mechanism (although you still don’t accept this). On August 30 2018 you claimed there was no difference between selection and selection for; I corrected you on this on September 2nd 2018 (interestingly on September 4th you say that some traits are selected for more than others – hence demonstrating the distinction you claim to deny). You thought Sober’s sieve was a good answer to Fodor’s objection (August 30) which I refuted on September 2nd.
So, you made at least two misunderstandings of Fodor’s argument which I corrected you one: First, you thought that selection for isn’t intensional. Second, you thought his argument was an epistemic one. As such, I did, in fact, correct you on your misunderstandings.
“If you aren’t making an epistemic argument, then whatever you are saying is highly irrelevant. If I can differentiate between coextensive traits, then it really doesn’t matter.”
Since Fodor isn’t arguing that we/you cannot differentiate between coextensive traits, the fact that we/you can differentiate between them is irrelevant! The objection is whether the theory has the logical apparatus to differentiate between two extensive traits.
“They are, as every trait is coextensive with one another.”
Facepalm. Just because every trait is coextensive with one another does not mean that every trait was selected-for being a cause of fitness! You are committing the very fallacy that Fodor says is at the heart of evolution. You are reasoning that because every trait is selected, therefore, every trait is selected for! This is a logical fallacy.
“The point of my comment was to highlight how little you know what the implications of his argument are”
I agree with Fodor on the implications of his argument: that the explanatory power of TNS is vacuous, and is read in post-hoc to individual causal stories (aka natural history). Further, that TNS is not an explanatory scientific theory of trait fixation.
“There are physical laws right? So why wouldn’t there be biological laws?”
Here is a parody of this statement: There are physical laws right? So why wouldn’t there be laws about winning military battles?
“I like green eyes and I intend to mate with a women who has green eyes so that my children will also have green eyes. What do you mean by “lower organisms”?”
You have a mind with intentionality that is capable of representing counterfactual situations. IF you want to argue that peacocks can also do this: intend to pass along, say, blue feathers when they mate, then go right ahead. As far as anybody knows, human are the only animal with the cognitive ability to represent counterfactual situations. One ought to also remember that it is largely exogenous selectors/selection pressures (that is, selection pressures outside of the organism) that do the filtering. It is not the organisms themselves that do the selecting of traits on the neo-Darwinian picture.
“LMAO, no it doesn’t.” and later, in a different comment, you say “It’s a non sequitur. Even if both stories for the free rider and it’s fitness causing trait are true this doesn’t mean exogenous factors don’t filter phenotypes and thus lead to trait variation. It is “and” rather than “or”. The truth of the former does not contradict the truth of the latter story.”
Firstly, Fodors argument is an instance of modus tollens. Therefore, it can’t be a non sequitur. Modus tollens are logically valid. Logical validity means that the truth of the conclusion NECESSARILY FOLLOWS from the truth of the premises. As such, to attack a deductively valid argument you have to deny a premise! I am guessing you never took a propositional logic class in university? Secondly, Fodor is not arguing that selection pressures do not filter out certain traits, nor is he saying that the selection story of one trait invalidates the selection story of the coextensive trait. What he is saying is, in a theory that purports to explain traits being selected for in virtue of their being a cause of fitness, you need to have selection pressures sensitive to the differences between the two stories; exogenous pressures are not sensitive to this!
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” “a trait’s being a cause of reproductive success explains its being a cause of reproductive success””
No. A trait’s function is the cause of an organism’s reproductive success and explains how said trait changes and reaches fixation relative to its free rider. That’s how the statement actually goes.
The issue is that you’re using “cause of reproductive success” twice in a sentence but each instance has a different meaning than the other.
“Calling natural selection a mechanism is not identical to saying that “Trait fixation caused by exogenous factors is the cause of trait fixation.” ”
Yes it is. Evolution is just a species’ change over time due to X. NS is the same thing, except X is specifically exogenous factors.
“Umm on August 1st 2018 you said there is “no intensionality in the phrase “select for phenotype,””
Yes it has been contested by other scholars whether Fodor is even using the term intensionality correctly, which he never actually addresses in any of his rebuttals.
“I corrected you on this silly mistake on August 17th 2018. On August 23 you thought Fodor’s objection was an epistemic issue”
Actually, Fodor argues that if we consider two coextensive traits, we cannot distinguish between two explanations. The simple fact of correlation gives us, they assert, no indication for what explanation should be considered true. It’s a kind of underdetermination. The evidence underdetermines the “selection for” explanation. So you can infact argue that it is epistemic as it is a matter of theory choice, a problem at the heart of epistemology.
If you except that it isn’t epistemic, then the critique fails to be substantial in any real way. Hence why I decided to take the skeptical route.
“You also thought that natural selection acts on whole phenotypes (now you are saying it acts”
Whole phenotype= Organisms. At least the way I was using the terms.
” I have also corrected you multiple times on your position that NS isn”
You didn’t.
“On August 30 2018 you claimed there was no difference between selection and selection for”
There isn’t.
“interestingly on September 4th you say that some traits are selected for more than others”
By that statement I meant some traits have a function that is more useful for the current environment than others.
“which I refuted on September 2nd.”
Hahaha. You haven’t refuted anything.
“another does not mean that every trait was selected-for being a cause of fitness!”
If you were split down the middle, would you be dead or would you still be able to have sex? You clearly aren’t understanding the point.
“So why wouldn’t there be laws about winning military battles?”
There probably are.
“As far as anybody knows, human are the only animal with the cognitive ability to represent counterfactual situations.”
LOL. You think animals can’t make decisions with conclusions in mind?
“Logical validity means that the truth of the conclusion NECESSARILY FOLLOWS from the truth of the premises”
5 does not necessarily follow from 4. So it isn’t modus tollens.
“What he is saying is, in a theory that purports to explain traits being selected for in virtue of their being a cause of fitness, you need to have selection pressures sensitive to the differences between the two stories”
This right here, is how I know you have no idea what you’re talking about. This statement can only be true if the free rider’s story contradicts the story of the fitness causing trait. Now why is this? Because I am the theory maker, not NS. NS doesn’t need to differentiate anything as long as I can. So while this does mean NS is impotent, it doesn’t mean Exogenous factors are not causes to trait variation. That’s a ludicrous position to even take.
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Do you agree that (1)-(4) are true in Fodor’s argument?
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“No. A trait’s function is the cause of an organism’s reproductive success and explains how said trait changes and reaches fixation relative to its free rider. That’s how the statement actually goes.”
Notice your previous claim of “If a trait is the one enhancing fitness then it is being selected for” is a definitional statement: enhancing fitness = being selected for. But if that’s the case, then it doesn’t explain anything; it just give a definition! The idea is that TNS says enhancing fitness EXPLAINS it being selected for. In other words, the trait is selected for BECAUSE it is a cause of reproductive success.
“The issue is that you’re using “cause of reproductive success” twice in a sentence but each instance has a different meaning than the other.”
What? No, the problem with saying that “a trait causing reproductive success just is being selected for” is that it reduces the theory of natural selection to a tautology rather than an explanation. So, this response is no good.
“Yes it has been contested by other scholars whether Fodor is even using the term intensionality correctly, which he never actually addresses in any of his rebuttals.”
Probably explainable on the assumption that he is using intensionality correctly and feels it isn’t worth responding to an ill-informed claim that he isn’t using it correctly. Look champ, you didn’t even know what intensionality was until I explained it to you back in August of 2018. An intensional context is one where you cannot substitute co-referential terms while preserving truth. Example: If all Scotts are drunks, then selection of a Scott is selection of a drunk (“selection of” is extensional). However, selection for a Scott is not selection for a drunk (“selection for” is intentional). Here’s another example: If all chairs are green, then sitting on a chair equals sitting on a green thing. However, wanting to sit on a chair is not the same as wanting to sit on a green thing (“wanting” is intensional). It follows logically that if I sit on a chair, and all chairs are green things, then I sit on a green thing. It does not follow logically that if I want to sit on a chair, and all chairs are green things, that I therefore want to sit on a green thing. The intensional object is the referent or property that is, as it were, in the mind of the agent selecting. The reason that nomological laws are important is that they too can differentiate between coextensive property. That is, nomological laws are intensional entities.
“Actually, Fodor argues that if we consider two coextensive traits, we cannot distinguish between two explanations.”
Not exactly. It’s that the theory cannot distinguish between the two explanations. We can distinguish because we can run experiments or imagine a counterfactual situation where we get one of the traits and not the other, and then intuitively decide which will impact fitness. However, the theory cannot distinguish. Here’s where you are partly right though: if you rely JUST ON THE THEORY, then you couldn’t distinguish either. So well done! You finally got something right (partly)! Have a gold star.
“If you except that it isn’t epistemic, then the critique fails to be substantial in any real way.”
No, don’t confuse ontology with epistemology. This is the mistake Simon Blackburn made in his initial reply to Fodor.
“There isn’t.”
There is. Indeed, there has to be. Why? Because the relevant counterfactuals ride on it! By denying the distinction between traits selected for and traits selected of, you are denying the distinction between causation and correlation! Ironically, this is what some initial readers of Fodor thought he was doing (Samir Okasha, for example).
“If you were split down the middle, would you be dead or would you still be able to have sex?”
… I’ll just let that quote stand on its own.
“There probably are.”
Wow. Buddy, there’s a reason that military battles are in the realm of history and not part of their own category of hard special sciences. Here’s what you have just said: There are four special sciences: physics, chemistry, biology, and military battles. Go on, show me a nomological counterfactual supporting law connecting the mount of mud on the ground with the outcome of battles.
“LOL. You think animals can’t make decisions with conclusions in mind?”
Don’t equate having an intended goal as being identical with representing counterfactuals or, in other words, acting on what might have been. Sure animals have impulses and desires, and maybe they even have conclusions in mind (this is actually highly debatable in the field of animal psychology, cognition, and consciousness). The general consensus at the moment is that only humans and maybe primates have certain “conclusions in mind” as it were. Humans, however, can act on events that might happen whereas no one, except maybe you, thinks other species (besides maybe primates) can do this.
“So it isn’t modus tollens.”
Ok, I’m taking you to propositional logic class. A modus tollens is of the form:
If P, then Q
Not Q
Therefore, Not P
Fodors Argument takes this form, except Q is a disjunctive premise: So we have:
If P, then Q or R
Not Q nor R (that is, the disjuncts are severely denied)
Therefore, Not P
Again, this is a logically valid modus tollens argument. Now, here is Fodor’s:
(P) If TNS is an explanatory theory of trait fixation, then (Q) it has a mind or (R) it has nomological laws of selection
(NOT Q) There is no mind in TNS; (NOR R) There are no nomological laws of selection (that is, the disjuncts are severely denied)
Therefore (NOT P) TNS is not an explanatory theory of trait fixation.
Now, you seem to deny (NOR/NOT R). That is you claim there are nomological laws of selection. As such, that is where the interesting part of this debate/discussion is. The rest of this nonsense regarding you denying the distinction between selection of traits and selection for traits, and you denying that natural selection is a mechanistic process/mechanism is really tiresome and not that relevant.
“This statement can only be true if the free rider’s story contradicts the story of the fitness causing trait. “
No, it doesn’t have to be contradictory. The story is just different in the sense that the free rider’s explanation supports a different counterfactual. Namely, that if the creature didn’t have the free rider trait, the organism’s fitness would not be impacted.
“NS doesn’t need to differentiate anything as long as I can.”
The theory of NS will need to offer selection pressures that differentiate (tell a different story) if TNS is going to explain trait fixation in virtue of fitness. It is irrelevant whether we/you can tell the difference. Again, not epistemology.
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“Notice your previous claim of “If a trait is the one enhancing fitness then it is being selected for””
I’ll try to be more precise with my words. As the second statement is what was meant by the one you just quoted.
“What? ”
It’s not a tautology as I just explained. You’re committing the equivocation fallacy.
“Look champ, you didn’t even know what intensionality was until I explained it to you back in August of 2018.”
Hahaha. LoOk cHaMp, you haven’t explain anything I didn’t already know.
“Not exactly. It’s that the theory cannot distinguish between the two explanations. ”
I’m aware. by “we” I meant NS. But that should be obvious considering I’ve been saying that this entire discussion now. Again, I’ll be more precise with my words.
But of course you’re not actually correct because TNS can differentiate. It’s NS that cannot. I am the theory maker and any addendum i use to help differentiate is an extension of the theory. Somebody actually had a really good paper on the matter. Ill find it a little bit if you’re interested.
“No, don’t confuse ontology with epistemology.”
How am I confusing the two?
“By denying the distinction between traits selected for and traits selected of, you are denying the distinction between causation and correlation! ”
I think it’s pretty telling that you don’t seem to understand that Fodor’s contention implies that Selection and selection for are indistinguishable.
“I’ll just let that quote stand on its own.”
Another point that flew over your head.
“hard special sciences. ”
Imagine thinking “hard science” is a coherent concept.
“Go on, show me a nomological counterfactual supporting law connecting the mount of mud on the ground with the outcome of battles.”
Ah. So this is why they say it isn’t wise to argue with idiots.
I’m one of those people who believes everything has multiple interacting deterministic causes. “So yes there are nomological counterfactual supporting law connecting the mount of mud on the ground with the outcome of battles.” The reason said laws are hard to establish is because of the sheer complexity and difficulty such an undertaking would require. But they exist nonetheless.
“The general consensus at the moment is that only humans and maybe primates have certain “conclusions in mind” as it were. ”
That’s absolutely false.
” I’m taking you to propositional logic class.”
I know propositional logic. You don’t understand what I’m talking about though. I’ll explain one more time below.
“No, it doesn’t have to be contradictory.”
Yes it does. Otherwise it is not wrong to say exogenous factors select for traits in virtue of fitness. Subsequently, (5) cannot follow from (4). Nevermind the fact that (5) is not even a coherent sentence.
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“It’s not a tautology as I just explained. You’re committing the equivocation fallacy.”
No one is equivocating. It follows, as a matter of deductive logic, that if you hold the position, which you have espoused in an earlier comment: “If a trait is the one enhancing fitness then it IS being selected for” while simultaneously holding the position that “TNS is the claim that a trait’s having been selected for enhancing fitness EXPLAINS why a creature has it” (which is what TNS is), then your position reduces to “a traits being a cause of enhancing fitness explains its being a cause of enhancing fitness.” This is a deductively logical consequence of holding those two positions! There’s no equivocation here, it is simple deductive reasoning! …. And you claim to know propositional logic hahaha.
Look, you are holding that it is true by definition (by using the term “is”) that enhancing fitness equals selection-for. But then you cannot hold, one at the same time, that enhancing fitness explains selection-for. Here is a parody of you position: John’s being a bachelor is his being an unmarried man AND john’s being a bachelor explains his being an unmarried man. Obviously, that conjunction is a crazy position to hold. Definitional truths can’t explain anything! Please brush up on your logical reasoning!!!!
“you haven’t explain anything I didn’t already know.”
Strange seeing as you continue to persist in raising objections premised on misunderstandings on basic logic and about concepts such as intensionality, extensionality, causation, nomological laws, etc.
“I am the theory maker and any addendum i use to help differentiate is an extension of the theory.”
Incorrect. Not every part of evolutionary biology is a part of the theory of natural selection. Your mixing up your part-whole relationship (Elliot Sober made a similar mistake debating Fodor). TNS is a part of the whole of evolutionary biology. However, the entirety of evolutionary biology is not a part of TNS. Further, if the position that “any addendum I use to help differentiate is an extension of the theory” was true, then I can claim “Newton’s theory suffices to account for electro-magnetic effects for, after all, Newton’s laws can be added to Maxwell’s to give an account of electro-magnetic phenomena!” (Credit to Norbert Hornstein for this).
It’s a thing about theories that they explain the phenomenon they purport to without using a bunch of ad-hoc propositions tacked on! Essentially, your position is just going to reduce to the banal position: “hey, there is a principle of sufficient reason, so tell me enough about the world, throw everything into the cauldron, and I can come out with an answer” – yeah, no shit, but that isn’t a theory!
“How am I confusing the two?”
You appear to be saying that unless his argument is epistemic, it can’t be substantial in anyway. However, the argument has ontological implications for the theory. You have, it seems, confused epistemic irrelevance with ontological irrelevance and thereby confused your ontology with your epistemology.
“I think it’s pretty telling that you don’t seem to understand that Fodor’s contention implies that Selection and selection for are indistinguishable.”
It’s pretty telling that you assert others don’t understand Fodor’s argument while, in the same breath, misunderstand his argument yourself. Notice, his argument wouldn’t be an objection to TNS at all if selection and selection-for are indistinguishable! His argument only goes through if there is an actual distinction and that we can find this distinction out! There is nothing epistemically inaccessible about the distinction between selection-of and selection-for, nor does Fodor’s argument imply there is. I’m going to dumb this down for you, here is the question Fodor is asking: “hey folks, look there is a real ontological distinction between selection-of and selection-for, also we know there is a distinction between selection-of and selection-for. Question, does TNS have the conceptual/logical apparatus to make this distinction?”
“Imagine thinking “hard science” is a coherent concept.”
Imagine thinking it isn’t a coherent concept! The term “hard science” is a colloquial term for natural sciences. The term “soft science” is a colloquial term for the social sciences. Here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_and_soft_science
“Ah. So this is why they say it isn’t wise to argue with idiots.”
Oh the irony.
“I’m one of those people who believes everything has multiple interacting deterministic causes. “So yes there are nomological counterfactual supporting law connecting the mount of mud on the ground with the outcome of battles.” The reason said laws are hard to establish is because of the sheer complexity and difficulty such an undertaking would require. But they exist nonetheless.””
Firstly, it doesn’t follow from the position that everything has multiple interacting deterministic causes to the conclusion that there are nomological laws quantifying over every causal chain of events. The only way to get from your premise to your conclusion is if you reduce down to the level of physics and chemistry, but then you don’t have nomological laws at the level of explanation quantifying over “mud and battles.” Instead, you have the uncontroversial position that there are nomological laws at the level of positron and electron flow, etc.
“That’s absolutely false.”
Err no. In the field of animal cognition, it is the animals ability at tool use that generally warrants the conclusion that they act with a certain goal in mind. Primates can do this quite well. However, it is debatable as to how their minds represent future events such as goals/outcomes/conclusion (if they do at all). The representational/computational theory of mind is the general consensus for human minds (interestingly, Fodor was a pioneer in this field). However, it is debatable whether animal minds have the requisite level of cognition to represent certain conclusions or goals. Tool use does provide evidence in favour of this, and the use of tools has been documented in many species, but it is the general consensus that only primates and humans have the required level of cognition needed to represent certain conclusions: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cognition-animal/#WhatAnimCogn
“Yes it does. Otherwise it is not wrong to say exogenous factors select for traits in virtue of fitness.”
I think you are using contradictory in an unconventional way. The story of how the free-rider comes to fixation doesn’t contradict the story of how the fitness causing trait comes to fixation. This is because each story has a different referent (albeit referents that are coextensive). Now, if what you are saying is that the story of how the free-rider trait comes to fixation needs to be a different causal story than how the fit trait comes to fixation, then yes that is correct.
“Subsequently, (5) cannot follow from (4). Nevermind the fact that (5) is not even a coherent sentence.”
Firstly, (5) is a coherent statement since it is syntactically correct and there is nothing unsound with the semantic composition. Secondly, do you not have Fodor’s book? He explains on the very same page (page 114 of the updated paperback edition) how (5) follows from (4). The very next paragraph after (5) explains it. Do you need me to reproduce it for you?
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“No one is equivocating.”
I find it hilarious how you make statements like this: “Strange seeing as you continue to persist in raising objections premised on misunderstandings on basic logic and about concepts such as intensionality, extensionality, causation, nomological laws, etc.”
And then go on two paragraph rants not understanding my point in the slightest. It makes it all the more apparent how idiotic you actually are.
You stated: “The theory of natural selection claims that a trait’s having been selected for causing reproductive success explains why a creature has it. But then it can’t also claim that ‘a trait was selected for’ means (or IS) that it is a cause of reproductive success.”
Which is of course a vast oversimplification of what NS states. It is only tautological when overtly simplified and then “cause of reproductive success” is used in two different ways (equivocation fallacy). In the first part of the sentence it means “this trait has a function that increases an organisms chances for reproduction (aka Selection)” and in the second part it means “this trait then moves to fixation”.
“yeah, no shit, but that isn’t a theory!”
Oh it’s not? Then I guess Fodor is even more wrong than he was before. Notice I’m not saying that Gravity must account for electron degeneracy pressure when explaining the existence of stellar bodies or anything like that. I can produce a citation that’ll better elucidate my contention if you’re actually interested, but Im not going to dig for it if you’re just going to continue missing the point and wasting my time. At this point, I’m just humoring you.
“His argument only goes through if there is an actual distinction and that we can find this distinction out!”
I wonder what this conversation would be like if you could understand English? Fodor’s contention makes the distinction as it’s used by most Biologists utterly useless. That’s what I was saying, your arguments are more pedantic than RRs and that’s saying something.
“However, the argument has ontological implications for the theory. ”
And this might be true, but it doesn’t mean it’s substantial. Notice, even though you apparently think Fodor’s argument is true and has “substantial” implications for NS, nothing has changed. The field has continued to grow knowledge exponentially and fodor’s thesis has more or less been forgotten by everyone.
“The term “hard science” is a colloquial term for natural sciences.”
Yeah I know. It doesn’t mean the distinction is backed by any coherent logic. Check out Cleland’s paper on assymetrical causation. Most Issues with “soft sciences” are issues with the the way the scientists within the fields conduct their research and nothing inherent to study itself.
“Err no”
Err yes. It’d help to actually read literature on animal cognition and not a article from SEP
“I think you are using contradictory in an unconventional way. ”
I’m not. I’ll explain further below
“Firstly, (5) is a coherent statement since it is syntactically correct and there is nothing unsound with the semantic composition. Secondly, do you not have Fodor’s book? He explains on the very same page (page 114 of the updated paperback edition) how (5) follows from (4). The very next paragraph after (5) explains it. Do you need me to reproduce it for you?”
It’s incoherent because it’s a tautology. Maybe that’s “coherent” to you in a very semantically shallow way but not for me as it’s incredibly redundant and implies the proponent is extremely ignorant. So (5) Must mean Exogenous factors cannot explain trait variation,fixation,selection whatever.
So since (5) states that Exogenous factors cannot explain trait variation it cannot follow from (4) as (4) does not demonstrate that the selection selection story is incorrect. It is not “or” it is “and”. (4) states: “So if T and T’ are coextensive, selection cannot distinguish the case in which T free-rides on T’ from the case that T’ free-rides on T.” So all it’s demonstrated is that both stories are true, it hasn’t proved that exogenous factors do not explain trait variation. Quite the opposite actually, because Fodor’s arguments rest on both stories having being true.
So (5) does not follow from (4).
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Maybe you can explain how what you said addresses Fodor’s explanation of (5):
“‘Where did you get (5)?’ you may wish to ask. ‘Why is it so important that a theory of evolution should reconstruct the distinctions between free-riders and hangers-on?’ We’ve already seen the answer: evolutionary theory purports to account for the distribution of phenotypic traits in populations of organisms; and the explanation is supposed to depend on the connection between phenotypic traits and the fitness of the creatures whose phenotypes they belong to. But, as it turns out, when phenotypic traits are (locally or otherwise) coextensive, selection theory cannot distinguish the trait upon which fitness is contingent from the trait that has no effect on fitness (and is merely a free-rider). Advertising to the contrary notwithstanding, natural selection can’t be a general mechanism that connects phenotypic variation with variation in fitness. So natural selection can’t be the mechanism of evolution.“
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I just did explain it.
Since both selection stories are true, it cannot be the case that exogenous factors do not cause trait variation.
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How can it be the case?
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You literally just said that EF explains the fitness causing trait and it’s free rider. So if it explains the fitness causing traits fixation then (5) is incorrect as it explicitly states that it cannot explain trait fixation.
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“It is only tautological when overtly simplified and then “cause of reproductive success” is used in two different ways (equivocation fallacy).”
If “cause of reproductive success” is used in two different ways, then it can’t be tautological! FYI it isn’t being used in two different ways, therefore, it is tautological.
“Oh it’s not?”
Exactly, and TNS is supposed to be a theory.
“I can produce a citation that’ll better elucidate my contention”
If you can’t explain it yourself, it’s likely you don’t understand the contention the paper makes.
“Fodor’s contention makes the distinction as it’s used by most Biologists utterly useless.”
No, Fodor’s contention shows that TNS can’t make the distinction.
“nothing has changed. The field has continued to grow knowledge exponentially”
Of course the field of evolutionary biology has grown! Fodor’s attack isn’t against the field of evolutionary biology. The field is vast and has many interesting claims. Fodor’s answer to your point is that the theorists are “vastly smarter than the theory.” Essentially, the field grows by good empirical field biology and then NS is read back into the claim. Notice however, TNS isn’t doing any explanation. That is, the same facts would be found even without TNS.
“It doesn’t mean the distinction is backed by any coherent logic.”
The fact there is a distinction suggests it is made based on coherent logic.
“Check out Cleland’s paper on assymetrical causation.”
A search of Novanet, Google Scholar, and google turned up no results. If you could cite this paper correctly, or link it, that would be great.
“Most Issues with “soft sciences” are issues with the way the scientists within the fields conduct their research and nothing inherent to study itself.”
Ahh look, a coherent logical distinction between soft science and hard science.
“It’d help to actually read literature on animal cognition and not a article from SEP”
Notice, the SEP is a reputable summary of the relevant literature. The SEP articles are written by the top academics in the relevant field. Some of my former profs have written these articles. It’d help to actually give an argument refuting what the SEP and I have said rather than just offer a flat out denial without any argument.
“It’s incoherent because it’s a tautology.”
A tautology cannot be incoherent. It says the same thing twice. There is nothing coherent about that. It’s arguably just a reduction of an analytic statement. An analytic statement is true by definition. No incoherence here.
“So all it’s demonstrated is that both stories are true, it hasn’t proved that exogenous factors do not explain trait variation. Quite the opposite actually, because Fodor’s arguments rest on both stories having being true.”
No, it is demonstrating that according to TNS both stories are true. But we know, as a matter of fact, that not both stories are true: The yellow legs (the free-rider) do not cause fitness, the long legs (the trait selected-for) does cause fitness. The trouble is that TNS explains both in the same way, when, as a matter of fact, there is something causally different about the long legs. That is, as a matter of fact, there is a different explanation for the fixation of the long legs than there is for the explanation of the fixation of the yellow legs. If TNS is the theory that explains the flow of causation through the fit trait, then it (the theory) needs to have something different to say about this trait than it does about the free-rider. It doesn’t have anything different to say about the two traits. Therefore, it doesn’t explain the flow of causation through the fit trait. RR has already given you Fodor’s explanation of how we get 5) from 4). Since nothing you have said in response to RR has addressed this, I will leave it at that.
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EDIT: “there is nothing coherent about that” should read: “there is nothing incoherent about that”
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“If “cause of reproductive success” is used in two different ways, then it can’t be tautological!”
Right, so it’s not tautological.
“Exactly,”
So you disagree with RR when he states that Fodor thinks NS must account for all trait variation under all conditions?
“it’s likely you don’t understand the contention the paper makes.”
Hahaha. If only that’s how things actually worked.
https://sci-hub.tw/https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10670-012-9414-3
“Fodor’s attack isn’t against the field of evolutionary biology. ”
He’s attacking NS as a theory. NS(exogenous factors) is utilized by evolutionary biologists as an explanatory mechanism for trait variation. Since it hasn’t actually affected EB in any meaningful way, his critique is impotent.
For 150 years everybody in the business has known, very clearly, that cases of natural selection are diverse. The point is elementary: the natural selection of moths in polluted woods results from the causal process in which dark coloration makes for effective camouflage; the natural selection of finches in the Galapagos stems from causal processes in which beaks of different sizes and shapes enable birds to crack open seeds and thus obtain food; the natural selection of (male) guppies in streams results from causal processes in which spots on the fish are large enough to attract mates but not so large as to interest predators; and on and on and on. Any search for a universal piece of machinery implementing natural selection would be futile. Yet that makes not the slightest difference to the Darwinian project. The explanation of the history of life can proceed in just the ways it has done and continues to do, exploring the famously problematic cases (the origins of the cell, the evolution of sex), finding some general types of processes that occur with considerable frequency (kin selection, balanced polymorphisms), tracing the causes of particular transitions about which scientists (and others) are curious (increased brain size in the hominid line, the evolution of flight).
“That is, the same facts would be found even without TNS.”
It’d be the same exact processes of NS, you’d just call it something else so that this insubstantial thesis wouldn’t be considered utterly worthless.
“If you could cite this paper correctly, or link it, that would be great”
Click to access ClelandCommonCauseExplanation.pdf
It was literally the first thing that popped up. You clearly didn’t look that hard.
“Ahh look, a coherent logical distinction between soft science and hard science.”
No. The distinction is made under the assumption that there is something inherently wrong with the fields themselves. It’s not logical because there’s nothing inherently wrong with them, but instead the scientists.
“Notice, the SEP is a reputable summary of the relevant literature.”
No it’s really not
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982215002134
“A tautology cannot be incoherent”
Redundant statements are incoherent to me because they don’t offer anything of value. Again, don’t waste my time with shallow semantic arguments.
” RR has already given you Fodor’s explanation of how we get 5) from 4).”
Yes, which I already refuted. 5) can’t be true if 4) is true. If it is true that NS equally explains both the fitness causing trait and its free rider than it is a contradiction to say that it doesn’t explain the fitness causing trait. Because you literally just stated that it does. So you either need to change your wording or admit the argument is false.
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This quote is from West-Eberhard (2003) – Developmental Plasticity and Evolution:
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“So all it’s demonstrated is that both stories are true, it hasn’t proved that exogenous factors do not explain trait variation.”
This is nonsense. If selection theory can’t distinguish T and T’ then exogenous factors (the environment, the proposed “filter” that traits go through) can’t explain the fixation of phenotypic traits in biological populations.
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The mechanism of natural selection is invoked to explain why one trait is selected-for over another. “Selected-for” is intensional so one would have to explain how there can be intensional causation without minds or laws. The theory is supposed to explain why some traits perform better or worse and it’s due to selection-for one trait over another. Whatever the outcome is, how does the ToNS predict it?
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anus 1 and anus 2 also apply to phenotype, aka traits.
the free-rider/spandrel presupposes a column or vice versa. who cares?
very little if anything in the “theory of evolution” can be tested in the way theories of physics are tested simply because of the time frame.
but what does it mean when boffins say “this site in the genome shows heavy and recent selection”?
i think it means that the site is far less variable than other sites.
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NS cannot distinguish between anus 1 and anus 2 when it comes to causes of fitness since it does not have a mind, it cannot intend.
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Just in case my final point is not detailed enough, organisms are tied to their niches, and NS selects on the individual level in real time. We see trends of isolated traits change temporally(think skin color in humans coinciding with migrations) relative to others, which gives incentive for Biologists to study which ecological disruption catalyzes such changes( The Vitamin D hypothesis). Even though NS cannot work on such a level we still reduce it to said level in order to explain these patterns. This creates intensionality, but this intensionality is only prescribed through we thinking beings with intentions. NS Doesn’t need intentionality or laws, because the way it works is not 1:1 with how we use it to form Adaptionist theories. This does not circumvent the issue, but the problem itself is insignificant, because no Biologist or “neo-darwinist”(as RR so idiotically calls it) Believes NS is a full explanation for trait variation, which is all Fodor’s argument proves. It doesn’t prove impotence, as discarding NS would actually weaken the explanatory power of Evolutionary theory as a whole. Never mind the fact that Historical science and it’s “theories” requires different methods of verification than does experimental science.
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here’s a simple experiment.
a layman is given the native ranges of the distinct members of a large taxon with wide distribution, a large variance in geography.
he is also given descriptions of the distinguishing phenotypes of the members of the taxon.
if he can match the members of the taxon to their native range even approximately, then (((fodor’s))) argument is proven to be just more jewish humbug.
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How?
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Mate, you’re an absolute idiot who’s simply too dumb to understand the science. You’re just making a complete prat of yourself with this site.
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It’s not an empirical issue.
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what do you mean how?
of course “layman” is a continuous term. some laymen are more laymen than others. some less.
can phenotype and environment be accurately PAIRED by people who ONLY know two things:
the set of phenotypes
the set of environments
?
if the answer is “no”, then (((fodor))) is proven right.
if the answer is “yes”, then (((fodor))) is proven wrong/jewish.
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NS can’t distinguish.
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He’s saying that if I can predict pairs accurately based on TNS alone then Fodor’s contention is impotent.
It’s actually a really good point. Because if we can differentiate fairly easily, then how does Fodor’s argument even matter? That experiment would prove NS can predict what we need it to as a theory regardless of whether it has counterfactual laws of selection or not.
That simple truth is probably why no one has ever taken his critique seriously and despite this “huge conceptual issue” the field’s knowledge has STILL grown exponentially.
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Again: Fodor’s argument isn’t if WE can differentiate. Can we use the theory to differentiate two competing stories of trait fixation? Oh, NS favors both? Then it’s not a mechanism and doesn’t explain trait fixation. For NS to explain the fixation of phenotypic traits then it must predict the trajectory of every phenotype in every environment. If NS it to predict the dynamics of allelic frequency changes, then it had to predict that allele A will change in frequency when deconfounded from B assuming A and B are coextensive. So T moving to fixation is just as consistent with selection theory as T’ moving to fixation. Thus, if it doesn’t explain it it doesn’t predict it. So if T and T’ are correlated and Natural Selection is invoked to explain why T moved to fixation and T’ is just a correlate, then the theory has to predict that T would move to fixation when deconfounded from T’.
The question is:
How does the theory of natural selection predict the outcome—whatever the outcome is?
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No shit RR.
But why does it matter if the theory can’t predict if I can.
Spoiler alert: it doesn’t.
“It must predict the trajectory of every phenotype in every environment”
But in the oh so wise words of Bucky: “tHaTs iSnT a ThEoRy”
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i would guess that for lots of taxons (((fodor))) would be right.
but also lots of taxons (((he))) would be wrong.
the distinction between the “just-so story” and the “what-really-happened story” is the distinction between bio-boffin and naif.
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Genes that leave behind the most copies of themselves will become the most common in the population, i.e. will be “naturally selected”.
We may not know the reason or which phenotype leads to this reproductive success but that’s our problem, not a failing of the concept of natural selection.
You are one dumb kid.
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what exactly are you trying to say here.
The universe itself is a gradient of asymmetrical distributions of mass, energy, etc. The ‘universe’s formula’ determines everything, and does not need any mechanistic explanation. It is unrevealable to us because the information space required to accurately model it would encapsulate more data possible than the entire universe, that is to say, we are constrained to an approximation of the universe’s laws that is only ever so more accurate, but not sufficiently enough to precisely determine X in Y.
Natural selection is simply an emergent process that is seemingly stochastic because we cannot know all the possible variables and all the contingent information necessary to produce such phenomenon. Otherwise, if you were omnipotent, you would know precisely what, where, why, when, how and every single causal event.
Now you are just trying to argue plain semantics in GxG interactions with undefined concrete value attributes in what is clearly a continuous random variable system that cannot be defined as such. I am tired of hearing the same people telling me that you don’t see X, but you see 32^x collection of electron spin pairs in some y orientations at z time with a,b,c ion bla bla bla. Look, that is pointless and meaningless, we use high-dimensional information compression on the metaspace so we can relate with one another. If you want to start arguing that X, T, Z is non-definitive due to non-distinguishability due to non-emulatability due to non-completeness of modelling due to physical constraints, lalala no statistical power to differentiate, lalala, narrow broad sense heritability this and that, I don’t care and it is a meaningless statement to say that NS is not an explanatory mechanism – saying so is like saying ‘no human theories’ ever conceive are an explanatory mechanism because we see A, B, C events that do not correspond to our incomplete models. Kapeesh? Thx.
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NS can’t explain trait fixation because there are no laws of selection and there is no agent of NS.
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What do you mean “there are no laws of selection and there is no agent of NS”?
Genes that leave behind the most copies of themselves come to dominate the population. That’s basically all there is to natural selection. There’s no agent picking which genes to become the most common, it just happens by matter of statistics.
Ever heard of Dunning–Kruger effect?
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I explained the situation in another comment. Basically, when two traits are coextensive there is no for NS to “select-for” either coextensive trait because it lacks a mind and there are no laws of selection. If you agree there is no agent then good. Then you must argue for laws of selection. Laws of selection don’t exist. Therefore NS isn’t an explanatory mechanism and domestic) and doesn’t explain trait fixation.
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What do you mean “Laws of selection don’t exist”?
Genes that leave behind the most copies of themselves become the most common in the population. That’s basically all there is to it.
Do you not understand basic maths? Seriously, do you understand basic algebra and calculus?
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There are no laws about traits that are selected-for. It’s not an empirical issue.
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Again you haven’t explained what you mean by “laws” of natural selection. Genes that have the highest reproductive success will come to exist at the highest frequencies (and vice-versa). That’s all there really is to the principle of natural selection.
We can’t always know exactly why certain genes have the highest reproductive success but it is a mathematically necessary fact that if a gene variant has become the most common then it must have had the highest reproductive success in the past.
Do you understand that very simple mathematical principle?
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Whether a trait increases fitness or not is extremely context-sensitive so there can’t be laws of selection.
There must be laws about the relative fitness of having the traits in question. You keep bringing up genes, but the point is when two traits are, locally or otherwise, coextensive.
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What do you “context-sensitive”? A trait may increase fitness in one environment but not another? How is that a problem with natural selection?
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NS can’t distinguish between the free-rider and the fitness-enhancing trait. Whether or not a trait increases fitness is context-sensitive, meaning it depends on the environment, natural history and other factors.
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Good God, you’re just an idiot who isn’t smart enough to understand basic science and maths and it’s not worth trying to explain things to you.
So, see you later. Carry on reading books by cranks and believing you’ve found some devastating flaw in established science, when the truth is you’re just too dumb to understand it. In the meantime people are doing real science and furthering our understanding evolution and the human condition.
Just one last thing, haven’t you noticed that whenever you debate people they call you a fucking idiot? Why do you think that is?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect
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What does that address? Dunning-Kruger is irrelevant to this conversation.
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You have no self-awareness.
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You didn’t address laws of selection. There are none. So NS can’t be an explanatory mechanism.
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“Just one last thing, haven’t you noticed that whenever you debate people they call you a fucking idiot? Why do you think that is?”
LMAO this made my day.
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Did you see him make a prat of himself on WestHunt? I think Greg banned him.
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I actually agree with RR s contention. Cochran was acting childish and was clearly ignorant of the literature.
RR isn’t stupid because he’s an egalitarian. He’s stupid because he’s a fallacious extremist whos parrots ideas too complex for him to actually understand. The definition of a pseudo intellectual.
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Cochran is incoherent when people disagree with him (which is all the time).
What
Nothing that comes from my mind to my fingers to text is “too complex” for me to “understand.”
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“What”
YOU’RE AN EGALITARIAN!
The only HBD concept you endorse is race realism. Which is only to protect your namesake.
“Nothing that comes from my mind to my fingers to text is “too complex” for me to “understand.””
Hahahaha. So delusional.
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What’s an egalitarian?
Appeal to motive.
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“What’s an egalitarian?”
Somebody who propagates blank slatism like you.
“Appeal to motive.”
Haha, no. Nice try though.
Race isn’t real. Genetic differences in intelligence are.
You think the opposite. Which is hilariously stupid.
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“Blank slatism”?
Yes, it is an appeal to motivation.
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No it’s actually not. You don’t even know how to properly call out fallacies.
Your minimalist race concept would still be wrong even if you had no ideological motive. I’m just simply pointing out your transparent hypocrisy.
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rr is what happens when jews control your brain. sad!
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Do you have discussion about racial differences on masculine traits?
like beard growth, testosterone level, scalp hair growth rate\texture etc
Does the fact that North East Asians with the lowest T level can explain why their relatively lower creativity, and higher conformism compared to whites?
I tend to agree with the evolutionary theory that North East Asians developed their large brain which lead to their hyper intelligence in order to adapt to extreme cold climate environment, However, some questions marks still remained
1)Why whites, and especially North Europeans whites, evolved with lighter pigmentation than North East Asians (skin, eyes, hair)?
2)Why South Asians(Indians, Pakistan)born with wavy hair along with very dark skin?
3)due to their low T, North East Asians characterized by reduced sexual dimorphism , doesn’t this should be disadvantage given the well established knowledge of sexual selection as a type of natural eugenics mechanism?
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https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2018/08/12/creationist-michael-egnor-on-an-especially-loony-anti-darwin-rant/
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did you ever read the non-darwinian evolution page on RW?
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Non-Darwinian_evolution
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No mention of Noble or Moore?
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I don’t know much about it – my brother does. He created that page and almost everything on there like 8 years back. I think he has similar views to you on natural selection scepticism. This isn’t my view at all though and I consider myself a neo-Darwinian.
I used to have some fringe views myself, I’m an ex-transformed cladist and created the wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformed_cladistics I never got though round to doing it on RationalWiki – I would though have criticised it (I held some unorthodox views myself on evolution many years back)
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https://vdare.com/articles/lunatics-take-over-asylum-oliver-d-smith-rationalwiki-and-the-wikipedeans
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Mike, what did your father have to say about you being sexually attracted to young teenagers despite being in your 40s?
“I admitted I’m attracted to 15 year olds. I have something called integrity.”
– Mikemikev
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Michael_Coombs#Paedophilia
http://archive.is/9oDUI
https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/rememberingstevecoombs
https://www.justgiving.com/remember/691011/Steve-Coombs
“Steve was loved by so many for his good humour and easy-going nature. He fought so bravely against Parkinson’s, a disease which stripped away his ability to enjoy his life to the fullest. As part of his legacy we’d like to support Parkinson’s research so that treatments for Parkinson’s can be improved, with the ultimate hope that one day a cure will be found.
Anything you’re able to contribute will be gratefully appreciated.
All our love, The Coombs Family x”
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https://en-gb.facebook.com/lorraine.coombs.7
Perhaps someone should alert Lorraine Coombs of the racism their son is posting online?
Mikemikev posted the following vile racist rant that breaks hate-speech laws and malicious communications:
No it isn’t you retarded subhuman nigger. It’s merely noticing that niggers are cancerous jungletrash that wreck everywhere they go like fucking locusts. How about this: name one majority nigger city or nation that is a nice place that people want to go to. It doesn’t exist, and it never will because niggers are incapable of civilization. This is what you are referring to. No white person thinks they ‘invented’ civilization, only that shadow shitskins such as yourself are literally destroying ours. Stay mad tho, your niggerkike tears are actually an accomplishment I can claim and I have caused an ocean already without a sign of slowing down. Fuck your pathetic bait thread as well, no bump for you
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Michael_Coombs#Black_people
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What mechanism explains slapheads?
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You’re very very sick.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Michael_Coombs
“Our main problem here is propaganda fuelled miscegenation with imported negroes, not overseas white men playing around with the local girls, as they inevitably will.” – Michael Coombs
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Michael_Coombs#Interracial_sex
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Mikemikev’s mother’s facebook profile says “be kind”.
https://en-gb.facebook.com/lorraine.coombs.7
Mike why not take your own mother’s advice?
Trolling, harassing people online, posting racism etc, isn’t kind.
I mean what does your mother think of your views about “removing” Muslims and Jews?
“The Jew and Muslim has been working together since day 1. They may lay down smoke and pretend to be at each others throats, but they are working together. White Europeans are their common enemy. They need to all be removed.” – Mikemikev
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Michael_Coombs#Islamophobia
And what do you mean by “removing”? Is that more threats of violence?
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https://vdare.com/articles/lunatics-take-over-asylum-oliver-d-smith-rationalwiki-and-the-wikipedeans
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Is there any day you will wake up and not stalk me online? I mean you only commented on this blog after following me here.
Your unhealthy obsession with me is mentioned by like a dozen seperate posters in your own Kiwi thread:
“Mike is incredibly dumb. He falls for every bait. His low iq is highlighted by the fact that he is unhealthily obsessed with Oliver. It’s his sole purpose for waking up in the morning.”
https://kiwifarms.net/threads/mikemikev-michael-coombs-twinkle-toes-velcro-pants.17243/page-242#post-2021571
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STFU slaphead
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