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Luque Martín, Víctor J.
Moya, Andrés (dir.); Iranzo García, Valeriano (dir.) Departament de Lògica i Filosofia de la Ciència |
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Aquest document és un/a tesi, creat/da en: 2016 | |
Since Darwin’s times, evolutionary theory has been conceptualized as a causal theory. In order to emphasize this causal view, textbooks and most of the evolutionary literature talk about evolutionary forces acting on a population. Elliott Sober, in his influential book The Nature of Selection (1984), argues that evolutionary theory is a theory of forces because, in the same way that different forces of Newtonian mechanics cause changes in the movement of bodies, evolutionary forces cause changes in gene and/or genotype frequencies. As a result, selection, drift, mutation and migration would be the main forces or causes of evolution. Nevertheless, the appropriateness of the causal view, and particularly the Newtonian analogy, has been challenged in the last decade. Several authors (Denis Walsh, Mohan Matthen, André Ariew…) have argued for a new view, the statistical view, where the evolu...
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Since Darwin’s times, evolutionary theory has been conceptualized as a causal theory. In order to emphasize this causal view, textbooks and most of the evolutionary literature talk about evolutionary forces acting on a population. Elliott Sober, in his influential book The Nature of Selection (1984), argues that evolutionary theory is a theory of forces because, in the same way that different forces of Newtonian mechanics cause changes in the movement of bodies, evolutionary forces cause changes in gene and/or genotype frequencies. As a result, selection, drift, mutation and migration would be the main forces or causes of evolution. Nevertheless, the appropriateness of the causal view, and particularly the Newtonian analogy, has been challenged in the last decade. Several authors (Denis Walsh, Mohan Matthen, André Ariew…) have argued for a new view, the statistical view, where the evolutionary process and its parts (selection, drift, etc.) are mere statistical outcomes, inseparable from each other. The so called evolutionary forces should be conceptualized as statistical population-level tendencies, abandoning any causal role for them.
I have developed a third way to defend the causal view. Authors committed to the Newtonian analogy capture the common theoretical structure between evolutionary theory and Newtonian mechanics. On the other hand, causalists not committed to the Newtonian analogy share statisticalists’ concern about some important problems in the force interpretation (the most important being the mismatch in the analogy produced by the lack of directionality of genetic drift). My approach postulates a broader causal framework (a difference-maker account of causation) unifying different causalists approaches, and avoiding problems like searching a directionality for genetic drift. In addition, clarifies the features that any Zero-Cause Law must accomplish. Finally, my approach explains the reason why the force metaphor was formulated in the first place and why it still continues in evolutionary literature. The Newtonian analogy is illuminating insofar as it is helpful in revealing the causal structure of evolutionary theory. In other words, the theory is constructed from a Zero-Cause Law that stipulates a default behaviour and arises by introducing factors which alters that behaviour.
On the other hand, I have developed a new analysis of the Price equation, showing its virtues as a key equation in evolutionary theory, and overcoming recent critiques about its usefulness.La teoría evolutiva suele entenderse como una teoría causal donde las causas
principales del cambio evolutivo son identificadas con la selección natural, la deriva
genética, la mutación y la migración. Siguiendo este razonamiento, muchos biólogos y
filósofos de la biología han estructurado la teoría evolutiva de forma análoga a la
mecánica newtoniana, entendiendo la teoría evolutiva como una teoría de fuerzas. El
punto clave en el que se sustenta la analogía, es que la estructura de la mecánica
newtoniana permite identificar los elementos causales del sistema de interés. De esta
manera, la teoría evolutiva encuentra una útil imagen explicativa del fenómeno
evolutivo, estructurándose como una ‘teoría quasi-newtoniana’ (Maudlin 2004). Esta
forma de estructurar o conceptualizar una teoría de forma similar a la newtoniana ha
sido utilizada en diferentes áreas: en la composición de colores, de deseos, de servicios,
en la composición de “fuerzas sociales”, de deberes, en cuestiones éticas, y en la
composición de poderes causales en general (Massin 2016).
Esta analogía, sin embargo, ha sido desafiada en la última década, mostrando no
sólo las limitaciones de la misma, sino postulando una visión radicalmente nueva según
la cual las entendidas como fuerzas o causas evolutivas no serían más que
pseudoprocesos. La acción causal se encontraría en el nivel de los individuos siendo la
selección, la deriva, etc., resúmenes estadísticos de dichos hechos. Lo que nos
proponemos en este trabajo es analizar esta polémica, mostrar las bondades pero
también las limitaciones de la analogía de fuerzas y, sobre todo, vislumbrar cuál es la
estructura adecuada de la teoría evolutiva, prestando especial atención a la deriva
genética por ser el factor causal que peor encaja en el marco de las fuerzas.
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