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Is There an Empirical Disagreement between Genic and Genotypic Selection Models? A Response to Brandon and Nijhout

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Naftali Weinberger
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Abstract

In a recent paper, Brandon and Nijhout argue against genic selectionism—the thesis, roughly, that evolutionary processes are best understood from the gene's-eye point of view—by presenting a case in which genic models of selection allegedly make predictions that conflict with the (correct) predictions of higher-level genotypic selection models. Their argument, if successful, would refute the widely held belief that genic models and higher-level models are predictively equivalent. Here, I argue that Brandon and Nijhout fail to demonstrate that the models make incompatible predictions.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 78 , Issue 2 , April 2011 , pp. 225 - 237
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

I would like to thank Elliott Sober for reading previous versions of this article and for his tremendously helpful feedback. I would also like to thank the following people for reading and commenting on earlier drafts: Robert Brandon, Hayley Clatterbuck, James Crow, Joshua Filler, Michael Goldsby, Casey Helgeson, Naomi Weinberger, and three anonymous referees. Finally, I am very grateful to Bengt C. Autzen, for pointing me in the right direction for developing a corrected genic model, and to William Austin Casey, for his help with the minority advantage fitness function.

References

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